11/9/11

Keywords & SEO: What Entrepreneurs Need To Know Now

Last week I talked about entrepreneurs, coaches and consultants getting off the sidelines, taking responsibility for the growth of their small businesses, and getting in the game by taking action. I chose that topic because what I see happening out there is that many people with online businesses are becoming overwhelmed by the combination of:

Too much information on the internet (it’s like drinking from a fire hose), and following from that…
Paralysis and not knowing the best thing to do next, and
Not making any money, with their dreams of their own business slipping away

It’s definitely time to put a stop to that. You have a lot to offer and you should be making money; God knows you’re working hard enough, am I right? So today I’m tackling a topic that you can address now and giving you another way to take action on moving your business forward.

Keywords & SEO for Coaches, Consultants & Solo Entrepreneurs

There is an ocean of hype around this topic and small business owners like you are usually doing one of two things about it: a) Ignoring it completely, or b) paying hundreds or even thousands to some “SEO guru” or firm and watching their hard-earned cash go down the drain. I don’t recommend either approach. Yes, choosing correct keywords and paying some attention to SEO is important, however, it’s not the be-all and end-all to marketing your business online. The answer is to know the basics about keywords and SEO, and then move on with other marketing tactics. So let’s look at a couple of the important basics you need to know now.

Choosing Your Keywords

As a solo entrepreneur, choosing your keywords comes down to looking at two important things:

Knowing the terms & phrases your potential clients are using to search online to solve their problems (meaning specifically the problems you’re equipped to solve for them), and
Ranking in Google (i.e. getting leads) for your keywords is a matter of supply and demand

1. Knowing The Terms & Phrases…

With this, there is both a common mistake to avoid and a pretty simple way to get a handle on the terms and phrases your prospects use. First let’s look at the common mistake. Since you’re an expert in your field, whether a fitness coach, business consultant or say a wellness practitioner, you know and use technical terms and jargon all the time that are relevant to your industry. The problem is, in many instances your potential clients either don’t use that jargon or don’t know the jargon, or both. So literally, your prospects are searching for your services in a different language than you use. See the problem there?

If your site is filled with what you as the expert, feel are the right keywords, but your audience doesn’t use them, you’ll have a huge disconnect. Disconnect = no readers, no email sign-ups and no clients. But don’t worry, there is a simple fix. Ask them. Just ask your readers and prospects what they’re looking for, what challenges they are facing, and what they want to have happen. Do this face-to-face or on the phone, in surveys and by asking for comments and questions on your blog posts. When you have this information, it’s well, “Gold, Jerry, Gold!”

2. Supply & Demand

Knowing this will really set you apart from you competition. Choosing your keywords is step 1, but step 2 is testing them to make sure they will actually do some good in bringing in leads. You don’t want to be in a situation where you think you you’re making headway but in reality you’re being buried by the huge amount of competition for a keyword phrase.

Now if the word test makes your eyes start to glaze over, don’t worry, this is easy even for technical or marketing newbies. First you’re going to start with looking at Demand. That is, to find out if anyone is even searching for your keywords, thereby making them viable enough to use. Here you’re going to use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool – it’s free and provides great insights. So, simply do a search for Google AdWords Keyword Tool, pull it up and let’s look at an example.

Refer to the screenshot I’ve shown below. When the keyword tool comes up for you, you’ll see:

“Match type” in the left hand column – leave that at “broad”
Then go to the main center area and put your keyword phrase under the heading Find keywords – for this example I’ve entered online marketing course
I hit the Search button below that and up come the results – it shows that 14,800 global monthly searches have been done and 5,400 local monthly searches
For most of you with online businesses, you can take clients from anywhere geographically, so you’ll focus on the global number (notice this tool also gives you many results for similar keyword options too!)
The result that appeared of 14,800 global searches shows you that it has a lot of potential from a demand perspective. What you’re looking for is at least 2,500 global searches or more to make it viable, so at first blush, this would be a viable keyword phrase (if that’s your business)
Notice also that the column just before the global monthly searches shows that competition is high for this phrase – also good to keep in mind

Now you’re going to look in more detail at the Supply, meaning the amount of competition out there for your keywords. For this, just open a new tab on your browser and do a simple Google search for your phrase, just be sure to put it in quotation marks so it tells you the competition for the exact phrase.

This next screenshot shows you the results for my example of online marketing course. As you see, the number of search results is 181,000. You can take that as a good sign – anything under 300,000 is what you’re looking for. Above that number the competition just becomes too staggering.

So you can see for this keyword phrase, online marketing course, the demand and supply fall into a pretty optimal place to consider it as a keyword if that’s what you were offering.

Remember this: Greater than 2,500 for the demand using the Google keyword tool results, and less than 300,000 on the supply from a Google search using quotes. If it’s not in that ballpark it’s best to move on and try another keyword phrase.

A bit longer than usual post today, but I really want you to be able to take some action and move forward. These were two of the basics you need to know, and can do this week, to get more prospects and clients.

If you’re interested in picking up the other 11 basics, just click here to grab the whole report. These are the Need-to-Knows for keywords and SEO so you can get it handled and move on to serving your clients and making some money. Plus the full report is dirt cheap at just $13.

Having new clients and blog readers coming to you every week does not have to be a pipe dream. You don’t have to be an SEO expert either, you just need to know these 13 Basics.

If you’re interested, click here now to go to the page where you can get it. By the way, it won’t stay on offer long.

Cheers,

Michael