Hi, my name is Tony Nieves. I live in the Town of Southeast, New York (more commonly known as Brewster, NY) which is part of Putnam County. I make my living running a web development company also in Southeast. (No Commute!!). My wife Gina and I run this company together, and we have had a ton of fun doing this. It certainly doesn’t always feel like work. We have one son born in 2007. And we are part of the small percentage of Americans that doesn’t watch TV. We do own a television, but we have no cable TV or satellite TV accounts. We probably watch about 15 rented movies a year and we subscribe to mlb.com for our Yankee baseball fix. We do not miss TV at all, and I highly recommend ditching it.

We love our work. Did I say that before? It is challenging, exciting, and full of opportunity for the right company. On the surface it would appear to be competitive as there are many small one or two person shops out there. But in reality that are very few companies that provide quality end to end solutions. We have come to realize that it is impossible for small 1 to 2 person web design firms to do enough client work to survive and pay the bills, but at the same time do enough learning and training to maintain a fresh, relevant skill set and still find the time to enjoy life!

It’s also nearly almost impossible for the small shops to provide end to end services because many of the skill sets in web design are conflicting skill sets. I haven’t met someone who is both a great graphic designer and a great programmer. Search engine optimization (SEO) is also a skill set that really requires a marketing expert. You have to understand a client’s target market and translate that into good relevant content, good key words, and an overall great SEO plan. SEO work is labor intensive and it’s tough to find the time to do this right if you’re a small shop with just one or two people. Factor in technical support, project management and sales, and you can see why over the last few years, we have seen consolidation in our industry as the small one or two person shops find that they cannot keep up with the demands.

We love Brewster, NY. It’s a great place to own a business like ours. Our office is easily accessible from RT 84, RT 684, RT 22, RT 312, RT 6, the Saw Mill Parkway and the Taconic Parkway. The Brewster slogan is “all roads lead to Brewster” We are in the heart of the Hudson valley within easy driving distance from some of New York’s most populated suburban counties: Orange County, Rockland County, Dutchess County, and of course Westchester County. We are also minutes away from the Connecticut- NY border and very close to Danbury, Connecticut, and less than an hour from Stamford, CT Norwalk, CT, New Haven, CT, and one hour from New York City. The Town of Southeast also has two metro north stops; one in the village of Brewster and a few miles north, a second stop right down the road from our office.

We believe that our strategic location gives MarkNet Group a huge competitive advantage. Although it can be easy to do business on the web, sometimes it’s just too impersonal to invest thousands of dollars on your website and marketing collateral without meeting the staff of the company you are hiring. We understand that when making any type of significant investment in their business, people want to kick the tires of the company they are looking to hire.

What do people type into the search engines when searching for your product or service?

The answer to that question is important to your online success. The words and phrases people use to search are called Keywords. This article will explain how to identify the keywords buyers use when searching for you.

This is part 3 of an article series on the Building Blocks of Search Engine Success. If you have not read the first two articles, you can read them on my blog at www.marknetgroup.com.

To recap, the building blocks of search engine success are:

1. Build a website that is search engine friendly. That means search engines can find your website and capture the content on your site.

2. Identify what search terms people will use to find your product or service and ultimately your website.

3. Identify reputable websites that can link to your website.

4. Analyze results and revisit the first three building blocks.

Keyword Selection

Keyword selection can be tedious, but done right can lead to buyers on your website. I want to stress the word buyer. Our goal is to grow your business; therefore, we want to focus on bringing you buyers. Some Internet Marketing companies will boast that they can increase your website traffic by 50%. My answer to them is “No Thanks”! I can easily increase any sites traffic by placing Angelina Jolie’s name throughout the website. I need to bring visitors that are looking for your product or service and are willing buyers.

Keeping the above in mind, let’s start finding your keywords.

1. List the keywords (words and phrases) you think people will when searching for your product or service. Be very specific. Words like “handbags” are too broad. Keywords like “custom leather handbags” are much better.

2. Go to http://www.wordtracker.com/trial.html and https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal to see how many people are searching for your keywords.

3. Revisit your list from your customer’s perspective as customers rarely use industry jargon. How do your customers search? Contact your existing customers and ask them, “If you had to search for me in Google what would you type into the search box?”

4. Take a test drive. Type your keywords into Google and see what comes up. Take at look at your competitors and how many results appear for each keyword. If you are competing with over a million sites it may be difficult to show up on the first page.

5. For the most important keywords, consider variations of the keyword - misspellings, plurals, and merged words. For example “highend handbags” vs. “high-end handbags”.

6. Narrow your list to 15 keywords. I like to start off with the most important keywords.  

Now that you have identified your keywords, it is time to place your keywords throughtout your website. I can probably write an entire books on keyword placement. But…I won’t instead I invite you to read next months article where I will teach you how to place your keywords throughout your website.