First, Profile Your Audience
Before you review potential keyphrases, profile your audience to understand the way they think and express themselves.
Keep in mind that your goal is to attract internet surfers who are susceptible to being influenced by your content. When these "qualified" users arrive at your website, they will be genuinely interested in your topic and will be more likely to view multiple pages, bookmark your website for future use, volunteer with your organization, or make a donation.
Avoid the temptation of attracting poorly targeted visitors to your website. That would be easy, but not effective. For instance, if you posted nude photos of Angelina Jolie on your website, you might get an enormous number of website visitors, but none in a state of mind to consider your reasons for raising the minimum age for social security benefits to age 72.
So, what kind of people care enough to take action for you? To learn their "language" and motivators, you'll need to understand their typical needs, age, gender, level of education, race, religion, sexual preference, hobbies, and career choice. To create a profile using this information, you'll need to generalize.
Visualize Your "Representative Constituent"
Next, borrow a technique from lead singers. To give their best concert performance, they try to create a sense of intimacy with their audience, but that's hard to do in a concert hall with thousands of attendees. Therefore lead singers focus their thoughts on a single, representative audience member. You can do the same by translating your audience profile into a single, representative constituent. When selecting keyphrases, it's much easier to relate to "Karen" or "Juan" than it is to relate to an abstract, generalized audience.
For instance, the representative end-user of CharityGuide.org, a website that promotes flexible volunteering, is considered to be "Karen." Here is her profile:
Karen is a 34-year-old office worker who finds herself in an unfulfilling job, pushing papers from one side of her desk to another. That's not the career she dreamed of as a six-year-old girl. Back then, she envisioned herself as a nurse when she grew up, because she wanted to "help people." However, now Karen works 50+ hours per week and is burdened with an unpredictable work schedule. She tried traditional volunteering in the past, but ' she disappointed the volunteer agency and herself when she had to miss volunteer projects due to work demands. Karen feels guilty because she very much wants to "make a difference," but she doesn't know how to incorporate that desire into her lifestyle. Karen is willing to try volunteering again, but to get energized and stay motivated, she needs a cause that is deeply meaningful to her.
Empathizing with your representative end-user will help you relate to and identify which words they will use when seeking information. Get to know your "Karen" or "Juan."
Consider "Interest Triggers"
What circumstances will cause a person to suddenly become interested in your issue? To fully relate to your audience's potential search terms, consider what would trigger their interest.
For instance, imagine your "Karen" at her computer. Ten minutes ago she wasn't even thinking about your cause. But at this very instant, she is using Google to find information related to your issue. What changed? What could have happened that suddenly made Karen more interested in finding information about your cause than eating dessert, reading a second bedtime story to her son, or having sex with her husband? Did she just learn that her ill father lost his health insurance today because his job was outsourced to Bangalore, India? Did she just discover a neighbor's cat died on her driveway after it licked up the toxic antifreeze that leaked from her car? Did she just finish watching a rented DVD of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth? In any of these situations, which search terms is she most likely to use when searching for information at Google? Stated another way: which keyphrases should you target?
Your keyphrases should use the everyday language of internet surfers. Avoid technical language and organizational jargon. The best-targeted keyphrases are unlikely to match the "internal-speak" and acronyms that you use at the office.
Keep in mind that professionals in your field may rely on specialized language that isn't commonly used by your audience. For instance, many nonprofits use the phrase "community development" to describe the activity that typical volunteers call "community service."
People from different backgrounds, fields, and regions may all have unique ways of expressing the same idea. A thesaurus ( http://thesaurus.com ) can help you find synonyms that you may have overlooked. You may also want to try out Lexical FreeNet ( http://lexfn.com ) . This advanced thesaurus displays related words, connected words, word subsets, and other valuable information. Likewise, Google Sets (labs.google.com/sets) automatically creates a set of related words. Enter in a few keyphrases, and fifteen or more related words appear. Remember, a "donation" may be a "contribution," "planned gift," or (more popularly) "tax deduction."
Even if the keyphrases you choose are' not technically accurate, adopt the ones used by your internet audience.
