No matter how good you or the writers you use are at getting the keyword density in your content just right, if you haven’t optimized for the keywords your target readers are actually searching for you are still doing SEO wrong!  It is crucial when working out your SEO strategy that you really think through your primary and secondary keywords, and that no matter how long your list of keywords ends up being, you create enough optimised content to cover them all in a way that is still relevant, natural and useful to read – obviously there is no point bringing people to your site if what they see when they get there isn’t what they want.  Here are some tips to get the most from your keyword strategy:

Real People Don’t Use Jargon or Buzzwords

 

It can be all too easy, when you are immersed in your industry or working environment, to just assume that anybody looking for what you do is going to call it what you call it.  Real people however, tend not to call everything a “solution” or “managed service” and probably don’t use the proper industry words for half the stuff they buy.  If you are a design company, people are more likely to find you by searching for “design companies” than “innovative visual solutions”. Don’t mix up your mission statement with what you are to the layman, and try and think like the man on the street rather than the specialist you undoubtedly are.

Use Tools

 

The fact is you can simplify the whole thing just by using Google Suggest.  You know when you start to type something into Google (or often these days, your browser) Google Suggest kicks in and starts trying to autocomplete your search terms?  Well, if it is doing that for you it is doing that for your prospective customers too, so if, using a design company as the example again, you start typing in “design” you can do a lot worse than optimising for the suggestions Google comes up with.

This can also be a great source of ideas for things you could write about on your site for popular search terms you hadn’t really thought of including.  You may be a design company trying to find new clients, but if “design software” is a popular search term why not write a few posts about it optimised for those keywords?  Why not do some reviews of “design schools” or “design tools”?  You can use these ideas and a spot of lateral thinking to not only bring in more traffic, but make your site more useful and interesting.

By focusing on making your keywords real search terms people are actually likely to use rather than the lofty terms you would like to think of your business in, and by using the same suggestion tools searchers are using every day, you can become much more attuned to what your prospects are Googling, and much better at SEO.