Everyone who has looked into online marketing has heard of keywords. How do keywords really fit into getting found online? In reality they play an extremely vital role in any online marketing effort. There are two main ways to utilize keywords: pay per click advertising and organic search.

Here is how Google search results work:

The first thing to come up are the pay per click (PPC) advertisements. These positions have been paid for by the company so that when certain search terms are entered, they show up at the top. This can get fairly expensive however since you are paying every time someone clicks on your ad and goes to your website. Knowing the correct keywords to use for your products or services is essential to any successful PPC campaign.

After the PPC Google puts their map results. These are businesses that you may be searching for or relevant places. If there are any news articles matching your keyword search, those are placed next after the map results. Being included in these maps can be very helpful to customers looking for your type of business. Use of correct keywords in your internet marketing is essential, as this is where Google gets the information to decide what businesses to list.

Next are the Organic result listings. These are the sites that have been indexed by Google relevant to the keywords searched. These are also listed in order of how important Google thinks each website is. This is where incorporating correct keywords is the most important.

Keywords that are relevant to your business and are popular search terms must be incorporated in the copy of your website, written into certain parts of the HTML of your site and used in all of your context. These are the words and phrases that you’re targeting, and should be the ones that you most want to appear at the top of search results when they’re searched.

Now, this may seem pretty straightforward, and for the most part it is. Say you’re selling Dell computers, obviously a keyword would be “computer”. But here’s where doing your research is necessary: you cannot just use the keywords you think are popular. The key is to find what keywords your target consumer is most likely to use and this is accomplished through research. Don’t assume your idea of a popular keyword for your product is actually a popular search term.

Determine who your target consumer is, do your research, and use the top keywords for that demographic. Decide if a pay per click campaign is right for you, and concurrent to any other online efforts, improve your organic ranking with the search engines through the use of your keywords.