There’s something of a science to selecting the keywords to use in content and in meta data as a way to attract targeted customers, and it starts and ends with understanding how people search for information and ultimately find you. As a business, you need to find ways to figure out which keywords lead to your door, so to speak. Here are a few steps you can take to pinpoint the best keywords.

Use Keyword Planner Tools

Google offers an entire suite of tools for use by businesses interested in optimizing and increasing their page rank appropriately. Other programs provide similar tools.

Keyword planner tools can help you to do a couple of important things when it comes to selecting the keywords that are going to help customers find you. You’ll start by entering a variety of search terms related to your business to see how often they are searched by users.

These tools will generally populate a list of related terms that you might not have considered, along with the traffic they generate. This can help to give you a feel for which keywords might work better for your subject matter and content than others.

Sometimes things as simple as capitalizing the first letter of a word or making it plural could affect the numbers. You need to know which keywords, keyword phrases, and variations prospective customers are using the most so you can synchronize.

Utilize Location Data

Knowing where your customers are can help you to guess some of the keywords they might use to find you. Suppose you run both a real-world and an online store. It’s a good bet that the largest group of potential customers is in your own backyard.

When you add location data to your search parameters, you’ll probably find that plenty of people are searching for your type of business by using location keywords, such as “Los Angeles coffee shops” or “Minneapolis MN nail salons”, just for example. Adding location data to keywords with the name of your city, neighboring cities, or local names for areas within a city could boost your targeted traffic and sales.

Pay Attention

Once you start optimizing and using keywords to attract visitors, you’ll be able to gauge which options deliver the best results by tracking the links customers click to reach you and the funnels that lead them to your site, not to mention the actions that result from visits. With proper tracking and analysis you can hone keyword strategies to bring in more visitors and more business.