Before you build business website, you need to think about the keywords your customers will type into Google to find you. Sound difficult? It doesn’t have to be.
I hope by now that I don’t need to convince you that your business should be online! No matter what your business I’d lay a bet that your customers and your competitors are all online in one way or another.
If you’re not already online here are a couple of valuable tips to make your first step into the online marketplace a successful one. If you already have a website, this advice will also help to improve your current website and sell more of your product or service.
Have you thought about what the main purpose of your website is? It may be a glorified business card that gives your potential clients information and your contact details. Maybe its a contact place for your existing customers, or a shop where you plan to sell directly to your customers. You may even want a membership site for your customers to sign up to. Business websites have many purposes, but regardless of this, the secret is to keep it simple and not to confuse your clients.
Once you have a grasp of what your purpose is you can start the research phase. The internet makes it easy to research what your customers and competitors are doing online. Imagine knowing what search terms your customers/clients are using to find your products or service. How great would it be if you could look at a competitors website and work out what keywords (search terms) their website ranks for? The good news is Google has created software to tell you the keywords (search terms) your potential customers are using, and you can paste your competitors URL into the same software to see what keywords Google thinks may be relevant for them. You can find the external Google keyword tool here. Go and have a play with it – you might be surprised!
Understanding what keywords your customers are using online to find your product or service is incredibly valuable when it comes to building a website for your business. You want Google to find your website when your potential clients and customers search for your product or service. Once you understand which keywords are right for you, you can have your website content created around these keywords. Keywords are the basis of on-page Search Engine Optimisation – your web developer should be able to advise you more on how they will make your website visible to Google for your chosen keywords.
One final quick point about ‘good’ keywords. They may not be the keywords with the largest volume of searches – in fact they usually aren’t because so much competition might exist in your industry that you could battle to feature on the 10th page, let alone the first Google page. So, when researching your keywords think about who your customer is and what ‘buying’ phrases they might use and balance that with the number of competitors for that keyword.