SEO for beginners: Key words

Want the basics? Well, the best thing is to make sure you're on as many free listings you can be on.  We're not going to get in to Search Engine Optimization, or explaining how the Google algorithm works...  Just know, stuff that we give you will help your SEO, meaning you'll get found when people search for you or things you offer.

No doubt you've heard about "keywords" but have no idea how to use them to get found, or even, what words are important.  Well, it's time to do some research and find out.  You want to keep in mind 2 things when developing a key word strategy:

1. What words are searched the most -FIND OUT-
2. What words can you actually "out-rank" your competition on (meaning you come up before them)

* Remember, Google's job is to try and "guess" which results are the most relevant, so the more relevancy you have, the more often you'll be included in the front page of a search query.

For example, do not just focus only on major words that you cannot rank on, ie. "Minneapolis Bars" returns a result of ThriftyHipster, Yelp, CityPages, CitySearch, etc.. (in that order)  Your bar will not outrank these because they are too general of words.  Highly searched? Yes, but too tough for you to "compete" on.  Instead, focus on words less used, but still heavily used... ie. "Bloody Mary," "brunch buffet," or "best burgers" might be words you can rank on.  

I like 2 tools for figuring this out.  They give you search volume and competition level... Meaning the more searches and lowest competition words are what you want to focus on.

My 2 favorite tools to do this are:

Google Insights

or

Google Analytics tool (my preference)

This should get you started! So look up keywords that are what you think people search and where you'd want to be found in those searches and record the ones you want your bar to be found in.  Remember to focus on only a few and you should be able to be found first!