The first step toward search engine optimization is to figure out what keywords you’re going to be optimizing for.

You probably started by brainstorming a long list of potential SEO keywords. Hopefully you thought about the questions people ask and how they phrase their search queries when they go to search engines.

But you can’t optimize your website for a long list of keywords—at least, not all at once. How do you decide where to start?

A lot of people would go to an SEO tool and find out which of their potential keywords are searched for most often. After all, these are the best ones, right?

Not necessarily.

The problem with focusing on keywords that get the most traffic is that you probably have a lot of SEO competition. If a search term is being used 10,000 times a day at Google, you can bet there are already a ton of other websites who are working to get a piece of that pie. In order to show up on the first or second page of search results for that query, you’re going to have to invest a lot of time and money into outranking your competitors.

Or, you can set your sights on being the biggest fish in a slightly smaller pond.

Instead of looking for keywords that are used most often, try to find an SEO keyword that is used a little less often but has little to no competition. If you show up on the tenth page of results for a search 10,000 times a day, you’re not likely to see much traffic. But, if you can show up as one of the top results for a relevant keyword 500 times per day, you should see a significant boost in your search engine traffic.

How can you tell what keywords have less competition?

A quick way to check is to put the keyword you’re considering using in Google and look at the number of results it displays. For example, a quick search for “las vegas hotels” brings up “Results 1 – 10 of about 34,300,000 for las vegas hotels”. However, “clean las vegas hotels on the strip” bring up only about 133,000 results.

The trick is to find a term that gets reasonable traffic but isn’t overloaded with competition. This can be a delicate balance and, in all honesty, a maddening exercise as your keyword research shows you that most of the keywords you think of either have too much competition, or a very low search volume. Be patient and persistent.

Once you’ve found the perfect size pond, dominating it will be much easier.

Britt Reints is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments. WriterAccess is powered by ideaLaunch, a full service content marketing agency serving hundreds of clients and thousands of writers since 2000.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 4:20 pm and is filed under SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.