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The single most important thing you can do to try to get your website top search engine rankings is to optimize your choice of keywords. Your choice of keywords should guide every decision you make about building your website, putting content on your website, and marketing your website on the internet. Marketing on the internet is in some ways similar to offline marketing, but in other ways it is quite unique due to it being primarily a search oriented media. In brief, the amount of exposure you get for your website is more dependent upon keyword research and optimizing your list of keywords than anything else you do.

Keyword research is the one aspect of building a web business should be the most closely managed project you have. Whether you are a do it yourself type. or outsource some or all of the marketing of your business on the internet, you must be actively involved in keyword research. Matching as many search terms as possible that are used by your target customer base is what determines the success of your internet business. You may think that you know what keyword phrases your potential customers use to find businesses such as yours, but more than likely you are wrong more than you are right. In addition you have no idea what the competition for any keyword phrase is going to be without doing the research. WIthout adequate keyword research you are almost destined to be disappointed in the performance of your website.

You should begin your keyword research by developing a clear idea of the specific products or services you intend to market and with a clear idea about who you think would be interested in your offerings. If you ignore this step, you may generate a lot of website traffic, but it will not result in many sales and mean that your hard work and time has largely been wasted. Once you have a good understanding of what you want to promote and to whom, you should begin generating a list of keywords. A great place to go for help with this is Google’s keyword tool. This is a free tool and is quite useful for those just getting started.

Once you have a list of initial keywords, it is time to start expanding the list. Here you want to take the core list of one or two word phrases you just developed and expand them into many short two to five word phrases that will be the primary target of your keyword optimization efforts. Then you must determine how much competition you have for the keyword phrases of interest to you. You are generally much better off to initially target a variety of less competitive terms relevant to your business than to go after the most competitive ones. If you are serious about your business, you need to invest in software to help you or use one of the online paid keyword research tools. Obviously another option would be to pay someone to do it for you. This may be the best choice for many business owners that don’t want to become experts in the details of internet marketing. Only you can determine how your time is best spent.

You figured out the keywords to your site, so what now? Keywords are used in all matters involving internet marketing. Initially your keywords are used to plan the concept and design of your website. You want pages and content of your website targeted to those keyword’s, along with having links to reflect your keywords. After you figured out your keywords, it’s time to use them to advertise your site. Try using Google Adwords if you’re using paid search advertising, since this list will give you an idea of your advertising budget and strategies. On the other hand, if you’re aiming for top listings with natural search results, then the list will give you a guideline in your efforts to improve your search engine rankings. Keyword research is top priority no matter how you plan to promote your site.

You can get more information about Business Marketing at http://www.BizRave.com . Eric Menzies writes about Search Engine Marketing Firms and other topics at http://www.bizrave.com .

- Eric Menzies