To begin a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign, a business must first identify the terms they wish to optimize for. That task begins simply enough, with the business asking what words or phrases might drive them quality traffic. It's not a difficult question to answer but choosing the best answer- the set of keywords that will net you the best results for your efforts- is where things start to get tricky.
While those words and phrases accurately describe the business's services, they are not the best choices for an optimization campaign. As a small business, it would be very difficult to compete with large, national organizations for terms as generic as "consulting" or "SEO".
There are many considerations in choosing the best keywords for your campaign- too many to cover in one post. But there's a simple rule that goes a long way in improving keyword choice: be specific.
There are over 100,000,000 organizations competing to be the first result in Google for "consulting" (and the winner, by the way, is currently Wikipedia), but only 200,000 competing for "web consulting philadelphia". By focusing on more specific terms, a small company greatly improves its chances of a good return position in the search engines.
Choosing more specific keywords also helps drive higher quality traffic to your site. With "consulting" you might get visitors looking for web consulting but you will also get visitors looking for tax compliance consulting or business development consulting. Choosing more specific keywords makes it more likely that the visitors coming to your site are potential customers.
