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In other articles, in my books, and constantly in my blog, I harp over the necessity of performing keyword research before you do anything. In general, I do this based on a primary rule of search engine marketing, which is that you should optimize and promote your web site for specific keywords. What those keywords are will be based on your keyword research and will be based on data rather than intuition. However, there is another reason for doing keyword research, and that is to match the thinking patterns and language of the visitors to your web site. By matching their language, you will increase the chance that your marketing message will be received. Let's look at a hypothetical scenario to get a better understanding. You have an office in Chicago that specializes in slip and fall cases. After doing some keyword research, you compile the following keyword data related to your market: Chicago slip and fall lawyer: 53 estimated monthly searches
Chicago slip and fall attorney: 23 estimated monthly searches
Chicago industrial accident lawyer: 17 estimated monthly searches
Chicago accident attorney slip and fall: 5 estimated monthly searches
Chicago slip and fall accident lawyer: 74 estimated searches
Chicago slip and fall accident attorney: 31 estimated searches Again, this is completely imaginary data. Are purpose is only to show how to analyze your data. Competition aside, the best keywords from the above list are "Chicago slip and fall lawyer" and "Chicago slip and fall accident lawyer." A couple of observations that are apparent are: 1. that your target market prefers the word "lawyer" to "attorney;" and 2. that they make heavy use of the words "slip and fall." So by emphasizing the words "lawyer" and "slip and fall," you are writing in a way that best matches the language of your prospects.
Obviously, your site should be optimized for the best keywords by default; the keywords that will bring the best traffic to your site. There is another factor that plays into the equation, which is the amount of competition for each keyword. In the example above, there is probably not going to be a large enough competition differential between keywords to make any difference. This is because the example illustrates geographically-targeted keywords, which will be less competitive than more generic or geographically broad keywords.
There is also a difference in how carefully you scrutinize keywords for use on your main web pages as compared to your blog. Writing a blog gives you the opportunity to cover lots of keywords. Don't take that to mean that you should just use random words in your blog. Do your research first. Getting interested visitors to your web site is half of the equation; the other half is the conversion side. You still need your visitors to take some kind of specific action. By using the words that are most often searched for in your industry, you will put your visitors into a more receptive mindset and improve your chances of getting a conversion. Jerry Work, president of Work Media, LLC, a search engine marketing firm in Nashville, has written two books which are available on Amazon.com: Scientific Search Engine Marketing and The Law Firm Internet Marketing Book.
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