As an Internet marketing consultant, I talk about the importance of search engine marketing a lot. It’s a very important part of getting found by the people you want to find you.

The funny thing is, I have never done it for myself. I spend so much time working for clients that I rarely work for myself. It’s actually an area of my business I am striving to improve in.

Therefore, if you refer back to the first post of this series, I decided it’s time to do search engine optimization for myself. It’s been a long time coming.

I guess it makes a little sense to explain why I (and you) need to do this, but I’ll keep it short.

When someone searches for “Internet marketing consultant,” and they do, I want to appear in the results for that search. But if my website, blog posts, etc., never use the words “Internet marketing consultant” in the content, the search engines won’t know to show my web pages for that search. So it’s important for me (and you) to use the keywords and keyword phrases in my content I want to show up for in search results.

In case you didn’t notice, I’ve used the keyword phrase “Internet marketing consultant” four times in this post already. Take a guess as to why I’ve done that. :)

The Plan

So, here’s the plan. My goal is to do my keyword research to determine what keywords people actually use when searching for people that do what I do. I have guesses as to what words they would use, but what I want to do is choose keywords and phrases that 1) get a lot of searches every month, and 2) have low competition. These two figures can be used to determine Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI). We’ll do that later.

Then, I will open the wallet and do some Google AdWords ads to test whether or not the keyword I am optimizing for actually generates traffic. If Google AdWords brings traffic for my keyword I know it’s worth doing a lot of optimization for. Once my optimized pages begin getting traction with that keyword, I can stop the Google AdWords ads that are targeted for that keyword.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is an important part of search engine marketing for a couple reasons. You need to figure out what keywords people search for with the hope of being listed in search results for that search. In this case, I want to focus on entrepreneurs and businesses looking for an Internet marketing consultant or coach.

I have a handful of keywords in my head I think will be good to target for that topic, but without running the numbers I can’t know how relevant the keywords I have in my head are. Remember, it’s best to optimize for keywords that get a lot of searches and have less competition.

So let’s begin. I have a business goal of getting clients into my Internet marketing consulting and coaching business. Part of what I will do to make that happen is appear in the search results when people search for someone who performs that service. Ideally I will rank well, particularly for my geographic area, Northeast Ohio (Hartville, Canton, Akron, Cleveland in particular). So I want to target “Internet marketing,” my geographies, and either the word “consultant” or coach.”

Join me in the next post as I take you through the keyword research process and we’ll look at which of these keywords are the best to target.

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Internet Marketing Coach & Consultant

All entries by Todd Jones