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Optimizing your keywords is the single most important thing that you can do to improve your rankings with the major search engines. Every decision that you make about building, marketing, and adding content to your website should be based upon ensuring that your keywords are effectively promoted. While online marketing shares many aspects with offline marketing, the search-oriented nature of the medium results in some unique features that offline marketers do not have to worry about. Researching effective keywords and optimizing your site around those keywords are the two most important parts of increasing the exposure that your webiste will receive.

When you're developing an online business, you need to devote a lot of time and energy to keyword research. It's well worth taking a hands-on approach to keyword research, regardless of whether you would normally do everything yourself or outsource much of your online marketing to different businesses. Your online business will succeed or fail based on whether you can match your target customers to as wide a range of search terms as possible. It's not always obvious, either, which keyword terms will be most likely to attract potential customers to your website. It's also difficult to determine how much competition there is likely to be for particular words or phrases unless you carry out research. Your website is unlikely to succeed unless you've done your homework on keywords.

Before you begin your keyword research, you must be very clear about your target market and the product or service you plan to offer. Without this clarity, you might be able to get a lot of hits but very few would convert to sales, thereby causing an unnecessary drain on your time and money. Once you achieve clarity on this, you can do some brainstorming to come up with a list of keywords you think are relevant. Google's keyword tool helps to get you started. It is a free and useful tool available for this purpose.

Now that you've collected a list of primary keywords, start thinking of ways to extend your list. Take the handful of primary keywords you've just created, and try expanding them into various short phrases of two to five words each. This process is known as keyword optimization. Once you're done with your list, take a look out there and try to find out how much competition there is for your specific keyword phrases. Start off with a few less competitive terms, rather than compete for the toughest-to-get ones right off the bat. You'll find that it's really helpful to enlist the help of software programs""or a hired person""that will direct you through online paid keywords research sites. Some business owners don't have the time or interest in becoming web experts, so it's up to you whether you take the time to learn it yourself or hire someone to do it for you.

Once you have decided which keywords you will use, then what will you do? Those keywords should guide every aspect of your marketing over the internet. Start by using them to plan your website's structure and basic content. Your website needs to include pages with content narrowly focused upon your main list of keywords. Links within your site should also reflect keywords that you are interested in using. Once you have built your site around those keywords, you should also use them to market your site to the rest of the Internet, so that they can help drive traffic to your site. Google Adwords and other paid search ads will help you guide your ad budget and strategy. The keyword list will guide your efforts to improve your site's rankings for natural search results with the major search engines. Keyword research should be your top priority in site promotion, no matter what the details of your marketing strategy are.