Internet Marketing Toronto - Ignite!

Internet Marketing Toronto - Post 1: Keyword Research

Internet Marketing Toronto Post #1: Keyword Research

The first post in this series about ranking for terms in the Toronto area is about conducting proper keyword research to ensure your targeting the most important term(s)

In most cases there is a handful of terms that you need to rank for. These are usually terms that will result in traffic to your site and generate leads or sales. Finding out which terms these are is critically important. Here is a quick run down on a process to get this part of the job done.

1. Brainstorm your most obvious local terms in different combinations using the geographic qualifier “toronto”.
2. Do a manual search in Google to see which sites rank for that term.
3. Are the sites listed in the first 10 positions your competitors from a keyword perspective? Do they also compete with you on the same services as well?
4. Now, make a short list of the top terms where you see your local competitors
5. Have a look at the titles and H1 tags for each of your competitors on the first page - add the keywords they are targeting to your list
6. For your largest competitors run their site through www.spyfu.com to see what other terms they may be targeting and add those to the list if they make sense.
7. Set aside a list of the domains you are competing with. These are your “keyword competitors” and you’ll be keeping a very close eye on them over the next months.
8. Run your keyword list through a tool such as Wordze.com (an inexpensive and powerful keyword research tool) to get an idea of the estimated search volume. Don’t discard the term if there is no estimated search volume - you’ll make this decision from analytics data over time.

There you have it. A solid foundation for the beginning of your local search engine optimization efforts for Toronto based terms. You know who your competition is at the keyword level and service / product level and you’ve compiled a qualified list of terms to target.

Download: Keyword Tracking Excel Spreadsheet

Up next: Post #2: Competition Review. Find out what information you need to know about your competition and how to track and record it. With this information you can make educated decisions about your search engine optimization efforts to outrank them!