By Maverick Steffen | Daily Marketing Advice

A keyword is one or more words in sequence that are primarily used to retrieve information on web search engines.

The following are examples of keywords:

• New Jersey
• Disney
• stuffed potatoes

Long tail keywords are keywords that include at least 3 words, and can include as many as ten words (for instance, people trying to figure out the name of a song by searching the lyrics). Here are a few examples of long tail keywords:

• "how to get women to like me"
• "how to prevent creepy guys from hitting on me"
• "how to date a girl that is obviously ignoring me"
• "how to file a restraining order"
• "best restraining order defense lawyers"

The reason for selecting the best possible keywords that match your business for your website is so you can inform search engines as to what your site is actually about.

For example, the keyword I use on the homepage of this website is "Marketing Consultant NJ." Now when people search for a marketing company, expert or consultant in NJ, I appear first in Google.

And this is how you drive sales for your business!

So, next you want to do some research to determine the best possible keywords for your website.

For example;

1. What keywords is your competition is using?
2. What keywords have you been using, and have they effectively driven quality leads?
3. What keywords did you research that drive relatively high quality volume regarding your offerings?
4. What keywords, out of all of the ones you have researched, have you decided are the most logical in terms of driving volume, and sales?

Say you're a lawyer living in Burlington, NJ.

You did your research and found the following keywords are highly effective:

• Burlington County divorce lawyer
• Burlington County divorce arbitration
• Burlington County divorce mediation

Now, the big mistake you should avoid is assimilating all of these keywords onto one page or blog posting.

Instead, spread these keywords out among individual pages and posts, and then optimize each page for that keyword. Yup yup, that will fill the cup.

Eventually (as your site's SEO improves), begin adding additional keywords. Whatever you do, focus on one keyword at a time. SEO is like the gym - keywords are like weights - it takes a while to increase them!

Your homepage is naturally going to rank higher than other pages, because when someone links to your website, they will usually link to your homepage.

Because of the this reason, you can usually add 2-3 high volume keywords on your homepage.