• Bob’s Upholstery ranks #8 in Google for the phrase “upholstery cleaning”. It links to the main services page.
• Bob evaluates the content and sees that the title tag on this page is “Upholstery repair and cleaning services”.
• Bob logs onto his content management software and tweaks the title so it now reads, “Upholstery cleaning and repair services”. By putting the exact phrase together at the start of the title tag, the relevancy should be improved.

This is a simplified example and there is – no matter what anyone promises – no way to guarantee results. Keywords are just one factor in search engine rankings. And there are also trade-offs that must be considered. Rankings are a delicate balance and tweaking one phrase may sacrifice rankings for another competing phrase. Perhaps “upholstery repair” delivers more traffic for Bob. But perhaps Bob makes better margin on his cleaning services.

Expand your keyword set

To help ensure you are making the right decision, use a keyword expansion tool like Google Adwords or Trellian’s Keyword Discovery.  These tools provide total search volume across the search engine for the phrase you enter. In addition, they provide the volume for related terms. This is a great way  to discover the language of your users and get ideas of other terms and variations that you may want to work into your content. Volume and popularity are good but the phrase must not be so popular that it’s unwinnable.

Niche multi-word phrases are best; they yield lower click-throughs but the visitors are more qualified.

Keyword evaluation should be part of your core analytics activities. And after you’ve made some updates, you will want to log back in to see the effects of your changes.

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