Once you have listed out the categories you want to target for your web site, you should do some keyword research before you do anything else.
See basic keyword research for targeted marketing if you are unfamiliar with the basics of keyword research then come back here.
For each category you decided upon, you should take the time to research the words or phrases that you will use for category showcase names and post categories on your site as well as the words and phrases that you want your site to rank for on search engines.
A good category keyword has a mesh of the following things going for it:
- A good search volume to competition ratio
The higher the volume and the lower the number of competing sites, the better…as long as the rest are true as well. - Used with reasonable popularity by buyers
While you cannot always tell this, if you see a large number of searches for "buy" or "store" and your keyword, you can be sure that buyers use that term. - No 800 pound gorillas in the top search spots
Those gorillas aren’t typically as tough as they would have you believe, but if you can find terms with low pagerank sites having few backlinks coming in as the top results you will have an easier time of taking the top spot in search results.
For each category, try to come up with at least three to four good search terms and use the one which appears to have the most promise ( the best mix of the above ) as your primary keyword for that category. The rest will be secondary keywords for it.
When you finish you should keep your list somewhere safe as you will continue to use it while building your site and when you start actively marketing it.
