Keywords are the words average people will search for to find your website. Both on-site optimization as well as off-site optimization SEO efforts start with selecting and targeting the right keywords. It is my experience, however, that many website owners are very unrealistic about the keywords they would like to target.

For example, a used car exporter from Japan wanted me to get his website on the top page of Google for keywords like car, Toyota and Honda. Such keywords are too general and an average person who is looking for importing a Japanese used car will never use these keywords to search for such services. Such single word keywords also have too much competition, and are not likely to convert. It is, therefore, better to start your SEO campaign with longer, specific keyword phrases such as ‘import Japanese used car’ or ‘Japanese used car exporter UK’ - which are easier to rank well in search engines and are also likely to convert better. It makes sense to optimize each page of your website for a variety of keyword phrases. Once you start ranking well for long tail keywords, you can start a SEO campaign for shorter keyword phrases.

There are many keyword research tools like WordTracker available on the web. ‘Google suggest’ is a free tool from Google which you can use to find specific keyword phrases by entering your broad keyword.

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