What's the most important part of an SEO campaign?

If you're like many of the business owners that are beginning to see the importance of search engine optimization as a marketing tool, chances are that you've come across quite a bit of contradictory information. You've probably heard a dozen opinions of what the most important part of your SEO campaign is - everything from links to title tags and everything in between.

The fact of the matter is that selecting the right keyword phrases is the single most important aspect of any SEO campaign. If you choose keywords that are too competitive you may never achieve any ranking for them, and if you choose keywords that no one searches for you will not receive any traffic even if your web site ranks #1. That's why it's so important to put a little extra effort into your keyword selection or hire a professional to do it. Let's say that you are a real estate agent in Tampa, Florida who wants to generate additional business from the internet. While it may sound great to target the keyword phrase "real estate" because it gets over 67,000 searches each day, you would really be much better off targeting a keyword phrase like "tampa bay waterfront real estate" which gets about 6 searches each day. Visitors searching for 3-4 word keyword phrases are more likely to convert to clients than those searching for more general keyword phrases. When coupled with the competition you'll face for a general term like "real estate" you're ROI quickly dissipates, despite the high number of daily searches. You have to consider that someone using the keyword phrase "real estate" could be any number of people outside of our target market, such as a person looking for general real estate information, a person looking for a career in real estate, or a person looking for real estate in a location that you don't serve.

By choosing keyword phrases based on relevance, traffic and competition you will get the highest ROI out of your SEO campaign and see results more quickly.