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The SEO Basics (Part 1) - Keyword Selection
In this tutorial we take you through your fist steps of any search engine optimization campaign.

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The SEO Basics (Part 1) - Keyword Selection

One of the most valuable parts of any search engine optimization is choosing the actual keywords that will make your campaign the most successful. In this tutorial I will be using a travel site as my reference. I will give several different examples of how to choose the right keywords with the best results.

Example One:

http://www.travelsite.com
Travel firm that specializes in vacation packages in the Caribbean.

1. Go to any of your reliable keyword selector programs. There are two that we use:

• Word Tracker ( for this I will use the free version)
• Google Ad words Selector

We use these because they are cost effective. Free and you can get your best results, if you want you can purchase a full subscription to word tracker but it really wouldn't be worth it for one campaign.

2. Pick a general keyword in order to find your niche keyword, I chose "caribbean vacations" for this example.

and

3. Next, they will both pull up a list of keywords related to the general keyword I just put in to the database.

• In Wordtracker they will only give you the keyword results for 100 related keywords in the free service and they will also tell you the number of times that the keyword is searched for on a daily basis.

• In Google Adwords Selector they give you a bit more information they give you the the current month's average search volume, much more then 100 keyword results. When I'm looking at this I pay attention to one specific area and that is the advertiser competition, the reason being, the more advertiser's are spending the higher the search volume.

4. The next step is I take the top 5 keywords with the highest search volume & most searched in word tracker, most times they will be many more than 5 relevant keywords but I will concentrate on the best keywords in the beginning stages of SEO and gradually over time incorporate more and more keywords in order to saturate the search engines.

In my mock up example I will choose:

• caribbean vacations
• cheap caribbean vacations
• all inclusive caribbean vacations
• caribbean vacation
• caribbean vacation packages

5. There you have it, the best keyword selection. I picked these 5 keywords because they have:

a. The highest search volume
b. The highest advertiser competition

When you are choosing your keywords there are a number of variables that you have to think about when you are looking for your top searched results. The example above was an easy selection of keywords but it is an easy market for travel. If you are offering a new type of service or something that no one has ever seen before you have to think outside the box and try to figure out the best direction to get get your traffic through your keyword selection. I always advise clients who have this issue to take it to the streets, ask your friends, family, neighbor what search term they would type in if they are looking for your product and start from there!

Much luck in your keyword selection, come back soon for our next installment of SEO Basics where we explore Keyword Analysis & Competition Analysis.

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