8 January 2009
Three step process for selecting keyword phrases.

I was watching a show the other night called Miami Ink. It is about tattoo artists, their clients and the stories behind the tattoos. It was so fascinating. People were requesting a custom-designed tattoo to represent some part of their life. (I didn’t even know this was possible, I thought you had to choose a design from a book). Then the artist would draw it up for them on paper and transfer it to the skin.

This got me thinking how similar this is to webdesign. We try to capture the personality of the website owner and business to make the website truly one-of-a-kind. It starts as a creative endeavor fusing technical aspects resulting in a business tool. Just as the tattoo artists enjoy what they are doing we are having fun too!

If you build and market your website with the best possible keyword phrases you will attract your ideal clients. And this may come as a big surprise to many of you – but guess what? Some of the most successful websites are not #1 on Google. So please, do yourself a big favor and quit worrying about what the search engines are doing and where your site is ranking. Imagine taking that worry and transforming it into positive, magnetic energy flowing through cyberspace attracting exactly the people you want to reach. Do you feel calmer already?

Let’s go through the keyword selection process.

1. Become your customer. If this is too difficult to do, ask a customer, “What would you type in to find our products or services? OR Where would you look for us in the Yellow Pages?” Example: If you have a tattoo studio in Miami, Florida your customer may start by typing in “tattoos”. Then quickly discover that there are millions of websites and not one in Miami on the first page. Next they might try “Miami tattoos”, and then they may narrow it further to “Miami portrait tattoos”. Are you seeing the idea here? It is best to choose 2, 3 or even 4-word keyword phrases. Feel confident that you can eliminate any one-word keyword phrases that remain behind your site.

2. Go to your favorite search engine and search for 'free keyword suggestion tools'. Then type in your top keyword phrase. Example: Typing in one word “tattoos”, I now see a whole list of good keyword phrases to use:
Tribal tattoos
Kids tattoos
Tattoos and body piercing
Chinese characters tattoos

3. Take your top 3-5 keyword phrases and rewrite the copy on your home page to include these words. Do these 3 steps sound like a good idea to you? Then I encourage you to go for it now! Have some fun with this. Proper placement and implementation of your keyword phrases is also critical.

Q. Do you know the 5 places on your website to place your keyword phrases?

A. The visible text on the page, title, meta description, meta tags and page names.