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The most important step you can take toward improving your web search engine ranking is to wisely choose your keywords. Keywords should be the driving force behind everything that you do in constructing your website, creating content, and marketing your site over the Internet. Online and offline marketing share many similarities, but online marketing is extremely search-oriented. The amount of people who will be exposed to your website depends directly on the amount and quality of keyword research that you do. Having a great primary list of keywords means that more potential customers will see your site on a daily basis.

Keyword research is the one aspect of building a web business should be the most closely managed project you have. Whether you are a do it yourself type. or outsource some or all of the marketing of your business on the internet, you must be actively involved in keyword research. Matching as many search terms as possible that are used by your target customer base is what determines the success of your internet business. You may think that you know what keyword phrases your potential customers use to find businesses such as yours, but more than likely you are wrong more than you are right. In addition you have no idea what the competition for any keyword phrase is going to be without doing the research. WIthout adequate keyword research you are almost destined to be disappointed in the performance of your website.

Have a clear idea of precisely what products and/or services you want to market before you start. You should also be able to envision who would be interested in your anticipated products and services. People who skip this step discover that while they generate a lot of traffic, little of it converts to sales. Time and money are wasted. Now that you know what you're selling and to whom you'll be promoting it, compile a list of keywords. Using Google' free keyword tool is a great way to get started with this step.

Once you have a list of initial keywords, it is time to start expanding the list. Here you want to take the core list of one or two word phrases you just developed and expand them into many short two to five word phrases that will be the primary target of your keyword optimization efforts. Then you must determine how much competition you have for the keyword phrases of interest to you. You are generally much better off to initially target a variety of less competitive terms relevant to your business than to go after the most competitive ones. If you are serious about your business, you need to invest in software to help you or use one of the online paid keyword research tools. Obviously another option would be to pay someone to do it for you. This may be the best choice for many business owners that don't want to become experts in the details of internet marketing. Only you can determine how your time is best spent.

So you have all these keywords now, so what do you do with them? The keywords are used for all aspects of your internet marketing. You initially use them to plan the content and structure of your site. You want to have pages on your site who's content is targeted at your primary list of keywords. You want to use links in your site that reflect the keyword terms of interest to you. After you have planned your site around the keywords it is now time to use them outside your site to drive traffic to your site. If you are using paid search advertising, such as Google Adwords, this list will guide your advertising strategy and budget. If you are going for top listings in the natural search results, the list will guide all your efforts to improve your rankings in the search engines. No matter how you intend to promote your site, you must make keyword research your first priority.