How to pick the first few keywords for your website

How to pick the first few keywords for your website

When you're just starting out you may not know what keywords to target, which is a common thing with website newbies, but you shouldn't worry too much because it's not a difficult thing to do.  Sure, you may know your main 5 keywords to target, but so does everyone else in your industry and they have been working on their rankings for years before you.  This is why you need to know ALL of your potential profitable keywords, if you can figure these out, you'll make more money focusing on 25 keywords while your competitors are focusing on just 1 or 2.

Some people have a difficult time thinking of what keywords they should be targeting, but that's just because they don't know how to think or where to look in order to get suggestions.  Don't worry, that's what this discussion I all about, so you can keep reading and get some ideas of how to figure out what your best keywords are

Know your goals before starting out
If you don't know your goals, you won't likely know which keywords to target, and this could be a killer when it comes to success.  Sure, you want to make money and be wealthy, but how long do you have before you go broke and do you need money right now in order to stay afloat?  If you can take your time, then a shorter tailed keyword might be something you want to target from day 1 and focus most of your time on, but that's not likely the case. 

Instead, focus on shorter keywords and rank quicker.  Sure, they may not bring in as much traffic, but you usually rank quicker for them and that's free traffic down the road that compiles

Know you need long-tail and short-tail keywords
You will always need both styles of keywords if you want to be found anywhere your potential customers are searching, but this does take a bit of time to dominate.  Like I mentioned above, long-tailed keywords are quicker to rank for while short ones take more time, but that doesn't mean the short ones should be ignored.

You should always plan to rank for both, but you need to plan out a smart path for your rankings, and this means you can target your short-tailed keywords as well as your long-tailed ones while understanding your short ones won't rank for 6 months or even a year.

Do an initial search and list everything you find
When you have your main list of keywords, you should always use a keyword suggestion tool to give you more ideas of what to add in.  You can always do the basic way of this method and go to Google and input your keywords 1 by 1 and see what suggestions there are at the bottom of the page.  These suggestions are what people are already searching, so you know they have traffic, and now they need to be added to your list.

You can get a little more advanced and go over to Adwords and set up a campaign, then input your domain or keyword to get suggestions on other keywords that might go well with your campaign.  Usually, you'll get an estimated search volume with these keywords, and that means you'll get an idea of how difficult they are to rank for

Sift through the list and find keepers
Not all of your suggested keywords will be keepers, and that's due to a language barrier, so remove anything that doesn't seem like you would naturally type it into the search bar in Google.  A good example of this would be if you had an SEO company and you saw "Good Search Optimize Company" in your list, you should remove that because it's likely not someone who speaks your language. 

Removing keywords like this will help you target the ones that will send better traffic and boost your sales.  And don't worry, you'll still likely rank for "Good Search Optimize Company" even if you're not trying lol

Now you pick your top 5 and target them
When I'm starting out a website I will never target anything over 30,000 searches per month and think "I'm going to rank for this keyword tomorrow!" because I know it won't happen.  I'll figure out what my top 5 keywords are and I'll target them.  I'll likely start seeing rankings spike for related keywords that I wasn't targeting, and that's just some extra traffic as well as sales, but I'll never switch gears and target those random keywords.

Over time you'll have your first 5 keywords ranked and sending in traffic, now you can start on another 5, but don't forget about your first set because you will want to keep them on top of the SERPs and sending in traffic.


In conclusion
Selecting your main keywords isn't the easiest thing to do if you aren't sure where to start.  It gets much easier if you know a few little ways to build up your keyword list, so don't worry too much about this, just filter out keywords that are difficult and don't let large search volumes draw you in.  It's tempting to target a 500,000 searched keyword because you start doing math in your head and think "If I just got 1% of that I would get 5,000 people to my website a month, and likely make a bunch of money!" but that's how everyone else is thinking too, and now you're in a saturated SEO market and likely won't rank right away.  Focus on longer tailed keywords and rank them in a fraction of the time your shorter keywords would take to rank.

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Thanks!

Tommy Carey