Before doing any SEO marketing you need to understand what it is your customers are searching for when they find your website.

How do you do this?

1. 1. Check the statistics on your website to look at the keywords and phrases being used to find your business (you do this from the backend using the cpanel access and the web analytics tools available on your dashboard – hire someone if that is too technical).

1. 1. Keep in mind that unless users know the name of your business or your products (ie. you have a well-known brand) they will not find you in the sea of potential competitors unless you put yourself in front of them.

1. 1. Assess whether the keywords or phrases you already know about are useful to potential customers who don’t already know about your business products and services.

1. 1. If they are useful, then you start making a short list of keywords or phrases that get the best results and the most hits on your website. If they are not useful, rethink your keywords being used on your site(s). seo

1. 1. Research the keywords people are using to find similar products or services to yours. Find out what Google searches are being conducted locally (of course, Google isn’t the only option but one step at a time is best). Using some free tools available on the internet such as Google Keyword Tool, you can type in the keywords you shortlisted to see how many searches are conducted in your area. This tool is easy to use and you can tweak as you go along to get more accurate results. Tick the [exact match] option on the left navigation to show results that include exactly what you have included in your shortlist. Results are displayed in the lower pane, the competition shows the ads that are listed against those keywords, with high being heaps and low being none or minimal. Sometimes you may find the perfect keyword with low competition and high searches, if that happens you are on to a winner but for keyword research for your site, that may not be a variable.

1. 1. Following that research, document the best quality keywords for your website.

1. You can now start to work on an SEO marketing strategy to get better ranking and more traffic to your website.

Hope this article helped you to understand search engine marketing a little better. Any questions please just ask.

Creating a SEO marketing strategy helps you remain focused on your intentions. I would be happy to offer my SEO services to you as a ‘done for you’ service or provide one-on-one or group ‘SEO training’ in a live environment. There is so much to learn, and it is better to learn the theory as well as the practical steps.