 Choosing your website’s search terms is an important part of building your website and optimizing the content for search engines. You want to be found and ultimately come up in searches for specific terms and keywords, but what should you choose and how do you know what’s working? There are many ways to determine what search terms you should use for your business, but one very powerful tool is Google’s Free Insights for Search tool. The Insights for Search tool helps you determine the most powerful search terms related to your business by looking at search volume across specific regions, categories, time frames and sites . Once you’ve chosen your search terms, don’t forget to use them in context of your location (if you are a local business). For example, don’t just write about “backyard landscaping”; write about “backyard landscaping in Lexington, MA”. Setting up Insights for Search Using Google’s Insights for Search tool is pretty straightforward. Once you go to www.google.com/insights/search, enter a search term related to your business. For example, if your business provides landscaping services, try “Landscaping”. If your business is a bakery, try “cupcakes” or “bakery.” If you want to narrow your results to searches in your area, you can specify your location. If you want to narrow your results to searches in a specific time period, you can select a date. In my example, I used “Landscaping” as my search term, and filtered by results in the United States for the last 12 months.  Once you’ve specified your search terms and filters, click Search. Your results should show you data on that search term over time. If you get the message “Not enough search volume to show results,” try expanding your filters to be less specific (for example, don’t specify region beyond country, and set your time filter to 12 months). Interpreting your Results Google will give you data on Interest over Time, Regional Interest, Top Searches, and Rising Searches. For the purposes of choosing search terms, focus on Top Searches and Rising Searches.  Top Searches refers to the search terms with the most significant level of interest, related to the search term and filters you entered. In my example above, I used “landscaping” as my search term. The results tell me that “landscaping ideas,” “landscape,” “landscaping design” and “backyard landscaping” are common phrases that people search for most in Google (related to the term “landscaping”). For my landscaping website, I could now decide to have a page on my site all about “landscaping ideas” so people find my website in search listings. Once they got to my website to read about landscaping ideas, they could see the services I offer and decide to call me. Alternatively, I could make sure to include the phrase “backyard landscaping” quite a bit in the text of my site, because I now know that is a common phrase people are searching for. Rising Searches are a little bit different from Top Searches. Rising Searches are searches that have experienced significant growth in a given time period. In my example, although “grasses for landscaping” is not always a very popular search term, recently a lot of people have been searching for that phrase. By incorporating Rising Searches into your website’s text, you have a unique opportunity to get ahead of your competition by using the most recent and accurate related search terms. Wrap Up Choosing your website’s search terms and incorporating them onto your site is an important part of marketing your business online with a website. Google’s free Insights for Search tool is a great way to help you determine the most powerful search terms for your business. And don’t forget – if you’re a local business, be sure to use your search terms in context of your location. |
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