Study what your clients are searching for

Most small company owners and prospective clients approach to me with a “capital” keyphrase they wish for rank for. This is a fine starting point, but sometimes owners describe their industry, or what they sell, in a different way than customers do.

Luckily Google has an external keyword research tool that is straightforward to use. Just punch in a few (or a lot of) phrases you think consumers would use to describe your trade, and Google will return linked phrases and show you how many times people search for them. In all-purpose, you want to think about using terms on your website wherever Google shows a set of volume, but not a lot of advertiser contest.

If you by now have a Twitter account, Twitter can be a great research tool also. Depending on your industry, you capacity be able to see burning trends on search.twitter.com that are worth pursuing. You could also ask your supporters “what keywords would you use to search for my business?” and get a few responses.

And don’t forget about offline potential. Asking your walk-in consumers what keywords they would use in searching for a business like yours via a comment card or trade card raffle could reveal some attractive result.