One of the very first steps for optimizing a website for an effective SEO strategy, is to conduct a thorough keyword research. Many companies are beginning to understand how important this strategy is, yet they have no clue how the process begins. The answer is keywords.
A keyword or keyword phrase is what a user will enter into the search engine to find the products and services they desire to seek. Many companies only partially grasp the concept of keywords, and will say that they just want to be the first site on a particular keyword. What many companies don't understand is that an SEO company performs extensive research on which keywords or keyword phrases will benefit your company the most.
While no SEO company should guarantee you the first ranking or top position on the search engines as they work independently from major search engines, they can get you to the number one position or very close to the top. Two important concepts when conducting keyword research are search volume and competition. Search volume is important to look at, since the greater the number of people searching for your keyword means the more natural traffic your website will be getting. Competitiveness for that particular keyword can make your SEO efforts much more demanding. Business often think that they should be optimized for their business name as opposed to a more general or frequently used keyword. Optimizing for "Your Business Name" will not have as much search volume as "Real Estate" for example.
Your chosen SEO company will first begin with researches on keywords, in which they can determine not only how many local and global searches are conducted on a monthly basis for your potential keywords, but they can also estimate the difficulty of getting your website ranked.
Any good SEO company will be able to get a website ranked over the course of time. While competitive keywords can take more time and effort to build your ranking, they are often the keywords that pay off more in the longer turn, since the increased traffic will be going to your site against your competitors. Keyword research is important if you have a smaller SEO budget, and a larger campaign can benefit from using multiple keywords, and will help expand their visibility.
Once your chosen SEO company has decided which keywords are ideal for your company, they will create an integrated campaign for on page and off page SEO that will primarily optimize your keywords while adding a combination of natural link building, blogging and social media management.