If you’re like a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs, you’ve been putting off learning how to optimize content. It’s not that you don’t care, or don’t want to know how. It’s just that it seems so techy and overwhelming and you are really super busy.

Am I right?

Perhaps you are hoping that you can get all the traffic and visibility you need for your business from your networking and social media marketing.

If you can, that’s cool. I know some people who do. But they are busy busy busy on social media ALL the time.

Not everyone has that kind of time and energy. (Just sayin’.) I’ll comment on this in the closing comments too, so read on, my friends.

Why Optimize Your Content

The main reason for learning how to optimize content, from my point of view, is that you are probably at least dabbling in it. What might your ROI on those efforts be like if you can really do it effectively?

And here’s some good news: Once you do your keyword research, you will have a quality list of long tail keyword phrases you can use to optimize every single piece of digital content you produce. By sharing that content across channels, you create a boomerang effect that can bring interested buyers and clients back to your website. How cool is that?

I’m going to share a detailed keyword methodology with you. By reading this post you’ll learn how to optimize content with keywords that are specific, relevant to your business, and are not already dominated by other websites in your niche.

At that point you can decide whether you want to tackle the task yourself, hire help or just keep doing what you’re doing. But if you are not optimizing your content for your keywords, you are most likely handing over a lot of business to others who are.

How to Optimize Content

Content optimization is part art and part science. There is no one way to do it, and no set rules. The following are the steps I take, and I have gotten great results.

Before you get started with your keyword research, decide how you will record your findings. If you follow this process, you are going to be generating a ton of data. I recommend creating a Word file or Excel spreadsheet. My blank keyword research template in Word looks like this:

 

Step 1: List your products and services

The reason to take this step is because you want to research all of the relevant keywords for everything you offer. Why? Because if people are searching for those products and services, you want to deliver content to them that lets them know they can get those products and services from you.

So step one is to make a list of every product and service you offer, including any freebies like white papers and reports that you use for lead generation. What are their titles and what questions do they answer or problems do they solve? (Presumably you did some keyword research prior to writing those reports and choosing their titles, but this post would not be complete without mentioning them.)

Add these product and service names to your chart in alphabetical order. Be sure to think of any alternative ways to spell your terms. For example, if you sell candles, and you have a free download titled How to Trim Candles, your list might start to look something like this:

Step 2: Think like a customer; build a list of search terms

Now you want to think in more depth about what a customer might actually type into a search engine window to find you. One of the mistakes many business owners make is to continually tackle their marketing from their own point of view instead of thinking like a customer. You want to build a list of keyword phrases that your target customers may be using. Make this list as exhaustive as possible.

For example, you might add terms to your list like “aromatherapy,” “ambiance,” “home decor,” “gifts for women,” “romantic gifts,” “house warming gifts,” etc. In other words, think of the experience your customer is looking for or what they want to fix or enhance in their life that matches what you offer.

Add all of these potential search terms to your list in alphabetical order. Depending upon the focus and complexity of your product or service offering, you may now have 50, 100, 200 or more phrases related to your business.

Step 3: Search for your products and services

In this step, you are looking for additional terms to add to your master list that you may not have thought of. Search each of the products, services and search terms you listed in Step 1 and Step 2. For each term you search, you will see additional possibilities for keyword phrases in articles, blogs and website page headings.

For example, continuing with the candle analogy, you might discover that in addition to “house warming gifts” (with house warming as two words), you want to add “housewarming gifts,” “housewarming ideas,” “new home gifts” and “home decorating gifts” to your list.

Also Review Your Competition

In addition to creating a nice big list to research, another benefit of this step is that it gives you the opportunity to evaluate what other businesses in your niche are doing that is working for them. I recommend asking yourself these questions:

• What companies turn up in search results for each of the terms in your list?
• Do they have a company blog, and if so how often are they publishing posts and on what topics?
• Do they have social media set up on their company website and blog and are they using it effectively?
• How are they capturing and nurturing leads through social media marketing and email marketing?
• Are they using a consistent set of keywords on their website, in their blog posts, in their press releases and in their social media? (In other words, it will be obvious if they know how to optimize content or if they are relying on social media marketing and other methods.)

Make note of what you learn and any creative marketing ideas that come to mind. This information will help you with all of your future content marketing.

Step 4: Research each of the keyword phrases on your list

At last, you can begin researching your keywords! Trust me, this lengthy process will pay off. In this step, you want to remove phrases from your chart that are too competitive or broad and add keyword phrases that are specific, relevant and do not have high competition.

There are a number of ways to research your keywords. I’ll share my method with you:

1. Open up the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and sign in with your Google account.

2. Start with one of the products, services or topic phrases from your list. Enter that phrase into the search window and click Search.

3. Review the competition and number of monthly searches for your primary search term as well as all the terms and phrases in the Keyword Ideas list.

As an example, let’s look at the following screen shot for the search term “vanilla candles.” This shows how insanely competitive the candle market is. Notice that even for keyword phrases with a very small number of search results, like Tahitian vanilla candles, the competition is high. That means people are paying to receive those clicks in pay-per-click campaigns.

4. Add every phrase to your list that:

• Appears to be relevant to your topic;
• Has fewer than 20,000 global monthly searches
• Has low competition.

The 20,000 number is arbitrary, and you can set the bar wherever you choose. In my experience, less is more. In other words, a smaller number of monthly searches means that you have a chance of ranking for that term. Also, the broader the term, and the more sites that are showing up in search results for that term, the less chance you have to be found for that phrase.

(Note: if you have a local business and have no interest in traffic from outside your locale, focus on the local monthly searches. And be sure to add location terms to your list.)

None of the Keyword Ideas in the screen shot above meet the criteria. In this competitive market, you will need to add and evaluate as many long tail keyword phrases as you can think of. For example, you might search “how to choose home decor,” “simple home decorating ideas,” “how to decorate with candles,” and “how to choose the best candles.”

Let’s look at the keyword research result for the phrase “how to create ambiance.”

As you can see, this long tail keyword phrase meets all the criteria and is much more promising than “vanilla candles” or any of  the related keyword ideas that the Google Adwords Keyword Tool returned. If this was your market, you would add this phrase to your chart. You would write “Low” in the Competition column, “1,000″ in the Global Monthly Searches column and “210″ in the Local Monthly Searches column.

Complete this step for each of the search terms and long tail keyword phrases you’ve identified for your business. Add all of the data to your chart. Remove or cross out any terms and phrases that do not meet the criteria.

In this phase, you are distilling your keyword phrases down to those that are most targeted and least competitive. The bonus is that you are also building a potential topic list for blogs, articles, press releases, YouTube videos and other digital marketing content.

Step 5: Review the number of search results for your phrases

If you created a chart modeled after the one I provided above, you still have an empty column on the right. This column is for recording the number of search results the search engine returns for your keyword phrases. This step will help you further define which terms are going to be worthy of placement in your content.

You can do one or the other of the following:

• Click on the phrase from the list of Keyword Ideas in the Google keyword tool.
• Search that phrase in a Google search window.

I prefer the second method, because I like to do this step separately from researching the keywords, using a regular Google search.

The point of this step is to get an idea of how many websites, blogs and articles are out there that will deliver content using these same search terms. Obviously, you have a better chance of showing up in a pond of 1,000,000 search results than you do in a sea of 100,000,000 results.

For example, here’s how several different long tail keyword phrases in the candle and home decor market measure up:

• How to choose candles:                                              102,000,000 results
• How to create ambiance:                                              20,600,000 results
• How to decorate with candles:                                      8,720,000 results
• Decorating for a party with candles:                           7,050,000 results
• Using candles as wedding centerpieces:                    2,040,000 results
• Decorating with tea lights:                                                1,280,000 results

For your viewing pleasure, I’ve ordered this list from most to least search results. The long tail keywords with the lowest number of results will be the keyword phrases you want to focus on.

But for the purposes of completing your chart, you would add the number data to your chart in the right hand column, with all of your search phrases in alphabetical order. This will allow you to scan through or do a search for particular terms when you are creating your editorial calendar or preparing to write a blog post or article.

I would provide a screen shot of what a complete list might look like at this point, but we’re now talking about perhaps a thousand phrases, all alphabetically ordered. So you must use your imagination.

Step 6: Use your best keyword phrases in your content

Now that you have built a list of targeted, low-competition, long tail keyword phrases, it’s time to optimize your content with those phrases.

Here are some best practices and words of wisdom:

• Add regular, relevant content to your website that contains your chosen keyword phrases.
• Regularly develop external content that points back to your site from articles, tweets, Google+, Facebook, content curation platforms, videos and so on.
• Write content that is useful and engaging, and encourage people to share it. (Sharing creates more back links to your site.)
• Use your targeted long tail keyword phrase in titles and headings in content such as blog posts and articles.
• Sprinkle that same phrase throughout the page content; four to six uses is ideal, depending upon the length of the material.
• Do not over stuff keywords into your content. (Google will penalize you if you do!)
• Write for the reader. Integrate the keywords into the content in a natural way.

For example, my targeted keyword phrase for this post is “how to optimize content.” If you look over the post, you will notice that it appears in the title, a main heading, and several places throughout the content. But the writing is done in a natural way that prevents it from being annoying. (Or so I hope!)

My next step will be to share my post on social media such as on Twitter, my Facebook fan page, Google+ and in my LinkedIn groups where it will hopefully be shared by people who feel it has merit. I will also monitor which phrases actually bring people to my content using Google Analytics. But that’s a blog post for another time.

Closing Comments on Optimizing Your Content

Keyword research and SEO copywriting, in my opinion, are the perfect complement to social media marketing and content marketing methodologies. If you focus entirely on social media, you may have tons of followers and fans, but may not be connecting with people who are interested in your services. How are you going to ensure that those who want what you have can actually find you?

While social media interaction is great for your company visibility, it does not pay the bills. But if you master keyword research and really learn how to optimize content, you can help your digital content to show up and deliver exactly what people are looking for.

Please share your ideas and experience in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you.

And please go forth and share!

Jayna