It is my goal to show every business how they, too, can get to the top of Google.  Do you even know what your Google Rank is or how you would find it? Have you asked yourself where you should start your Google Adventure?  

It requires beginning with small steps, and systematically moving in the right direction.

Let’s start with a few pertinent questions about your web site:
·    Do you know what your keywords are?
·    Do you know how many keywords you have?
·    Do you know how many people search for your specific keywords every month?
·    Do you know what the odds are of your business being found using “your” chosen keywords are.
 
Each week I will be sharing information that will give you the capability to answer all these questions. And you will do it by using tools that Google provides - and all of them are FREE.
 

The tool I will be addressing in this issue is the Google Adsense Keyword tool. AdSense is an agreement involving Google providing advertising services to its partners and then sharing revenues with them.
Initially the Adsense Keyword tool was created to put a “per-click” value on keywords that you could use to evaluate your google adsense account.  We can take this same tool and give our web site keywords the same global value. It puts some science into the search engine optimization (SEO) game.  There are never guarantees with SEO, but if you know what you are doing and you have a drive to reach the top, anything is possible!
 
Keyword questions:
 
Questions 1: Do you know what your keywords are?
Depending on your business, services, etc., your keywords should reflect the nature of your business. Let’s assume you own a high end furniture business selling only Brand X furniture. Let’s start out by making a list of possible keywords. The obvious start would be “Furniture”, and then “Brand X”, what about “couch”, “chair” and “dining room set”. This sounds like a really good list of keywords to me, but using the guessing method of SEO is never a sure way to make it to the top.
 
Let’s start by using our keyword tool to consider the original list that we made of our keywords.
 
Question 2: Do you know how many keywords you have?
At this point in the building of our SEO plan, the number of keywords that we have doesn’t really matter.  So far in this process we have our original list.  We will create along list and a short list. The short list should be our final list which is comprised of the keywords that we are ultimately going to use in our web site.
 
By using this list and our keyword tool, we can go long, and short to fit our needs. Ultimately we should have between 10 and 20 keywords on our final list. Because of the things that we are going to do with these keywords, 10 is the optimum.
 
Start with your very first keyword, “furniture”. Let’s begin by putting our keyword in the search box.  Don’t forget that on the first time search, there is a security setting that we must first get past. From this search list we will begin making our expanded keyword list.

 
Question 3: Do you know how many people search for your specific keywords every month. Let’s go back to our Google keyword tool and take a look at what it is showing us. Each keyword has 3 columns. We have one labeled Global Monthly Searches and one labeled Local Monthly Searches. This set of information is valuable to us on several levels. First let’s look at the Global Search and then count the suggested keywords on the page. Does “furniture” have the highest number of global searches or can you surf down the list and find another keyword that has higher traffic than the one you chose. At this point, you can let your list start to grow. Write down the keywords that carry the highest global keyword search that is relevant to your business. While you are writing these words on your list, document the actual count both globally and locally as well as the competition rating. You will use this information later. By now your keyword list should be quite long. You should repeat this process for each of the original keywords that you chose. Now let’s try and make it shorter by using the information that we have discovered from our major search.
 
Question 4: Do you know what the odds are of your business being found using “your” chosen keywords?  We have increased the size of our keyword list.  Now let’s go back to our keyword tool. The first column of your search results is a variable of competition (high, medium, low, etc.) This is valuable information. What are the odds of you beating out your competitors for that keyword? When we start our keyword list, we probably want a high competition variable because it is going to be a high traffic key word. But as you are building your shortlist, it might be wise to keep a few medium keywords on your list. This will give you a better chance of getting traffic from for google SEO strategy. This allows Google to see you as a competitor and will give your business more relevance and more traffic in the long run.
 
At this point you should have a fairly long keyword list. Now it is time to shorten our list to 10 - 20 keywords, assigning them the job of representing us in the best possible way. These keywords are your web sites front line to all Search Engines and should serve you well.
 
By using the science of SEO you have now begun to create a very successful SEO campaign. In our next article we will start putting these keywords into our web site and watch them produce results.
 

Christy Smith is a Web Developer and SEO Researcher at Cassie Designs and Marketing Solutions and Dark Twin Marketing Group. Contact her at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .