Choosing keywords for your website can be a bit like being a kid in a sweet shop.

Faced with hundreds of choices, it’s tempting to grab as many as possible. The biggest, most popular ones must be the best, surely?

Keyword research can easily go the same way. You find a list of hundreds of potential search terms, spot the ones with the biggest search volumes and decide that your website needs to rank for all of them.

But just as leaving the sweet shop with your pockets stuffed with everything on the shelves probably isn’t the wisest strategy, more keywords don’t necessarily mean better SEO.

For a small business, choosing a smaller number of highly relevant search terms can be considerably more valuable than chasing broad keywords simply because lots of people search for them.

The question isn’t just:

“How many people search for this?”

It’s:

“Are the people searching for this actually looking for a business like mine?”

That’s where choosing the right keywords starts.

What are website keywords?

Keywords are simply the words and phrases people type into search engines when they’re looking for information, a product or a service.

If you’re looking for somebody to build a WordPress website, for example, you might search for:

• website designer
• WordPress website designer
• freelance WordPress designer
• website designer Eastbourne
• WordPress website designer East Sussex
• small business website designer

They’re all related, but they don’t necessarily have the same meaning or intention behind them.

Someone searching for website designer could be looking for a designer, a job, a course, salary information or simply trying to find out what website designers do.

Someone searching for WordPress website designer Eastbourne has given Google considerably more information about what they want.

For a business like mine, that’s potentially a much more useful search.

If you’re interested in the wider principles behind getting a business found locally, I’ve covered those separately in my guide to local SEO for small businesses.

Bigger search volumes aren’t necessarily better

It’s tempting to target the keywords with the largest number of searches.

After all, more searches must mean more potential customers.

Not necessarily.

Broad, high-volume keywords tend to have considerably more competition. They can also attract people who aren’t actually looking for the service you provide.

Imagine an independent physiotherapy clinic in Eastbourne trying to rank nationally for physiotherapy.

Even if it could compete with major healthcare websites for that term, most of the people finding the website would be of little commercial value. Someone in Manchester probably isn’t travelling to Eastbourne for their weekly physio appointment.

A phrase such as physiotherapist Eastbourne will have far fewer searches, but the people making those searches are far more likely to be potential customers.

The aim isn’t simply to attract more visitors.

It’s to attract the right visitors.

Start with what your customers actually call your service

One of the easiest keyword mistakes is choosing terminology used within your own industry rather than the language your customers use.

You may have a technically accurate description for a particular service, but that doesn’t mean anybody is searching for it.

Start by making a simple list of:

• your main services
• individual products or specialist services
• common questions customers ask
• problems you solve
• locations you serve
• alternative names people might use for the same thing

Then think about how someone who knows nothing about your industry might describe each one.

This is particularly useful for businesses with specialist or technical services. Your customers aren’t necessarily using the same terminology you use every day.

Think about search intent

A keyword tells you something about why somebody is searching.

This is known as search intent.

Someone searching for: What is WordPress? – is probably researching.

Someone searching for: WordPress vs Wix for a business website – may be considering their options. I’ve written a separate comparison of WordPress, Wix and Squarespace for business websites for exactly that sort of question.

Someone searching for: WordPress website designer Eastbourne – looks considerably closer to hiring somebody.

None of those searches is inherently better than another. They simply belong at different stages of someone’s decision-making process.

That’s why a good business website shouldn’t try to make every page rank for the same phrase.

Your main service pages can target commercially relevant searches, while useful articles can answer the informational questions people ask before they’re ready to make contact.

Over time, those articles also help search engines build a clearer picture of what your website is about.

Use more specific keywords

Longer, more specific searches are often referred to as long-tail keywords.

These generally receive fewer individual searches than broad terms, but they can be much more relevant.

For example:

website design – is extremely broad.

small business website design – narrows the audience.

WordPress website design for small businesses – is more specific again.

And:

WordPress website designer for small businesses in Eastbourne – combines the service, type of customer and location.

You shouldn’t start forcing enormous phrases like that into every other paragraph — we’re writing for humans, not trying to win Keyword Bingo.

But understanding these variations helps you create pages that answer more specific searches naturally.

Don’t overlook local keywords

For businesses serving a geographical area, location can completely change the value of a keyword.

A plumber doesn’t necessarily need to rank across the whole of the UK. Neither does a physiotherapist, accountant, restaurant, electrician or independent shop.

Combining a service with a location can help search engines understand where that business is relevant.

That might include a town: – website designer Eastbourne

A county: – website designer East Sussex

Or a wider region: – website designer Sussex

Which locations matter will depend on the business.

Influense Design is based in Eastbourne, for example, but I work with businesses throughout Sussex, the South East, London and elsewhere in the UK. My website therefore needs to communicate both the strong local connection and the fact that I’m not restricted to working with businesses on my doorstep.

I’ve looked at this in more detail in Why Local Web Design Matters for Eastbourne Businesses.

For a genuinely local business, the geographical focus might be considerably tighter.

You don’t need a separate page for every town

This is where local keyword targeting can go badly wrong.

Creating dozens of near-identical pages called things such as:

Web Design Eastbourne
Web Design Hailsham
Web Design Seaford
Web Design Lewes
Web Design Hastings

and simply swapping the town name isn’t particularly useful to anybody.

If there’s a genuine reason for a dedicated location page, create one and make it useful. Include relevant information, examples of work in that area, services, testimonials or other content that actually gives the page a reason to exist.

Otherwise, location can be incorporated naturally within your main website content, contact information, case studies and articles.

Your Google Business Profile can also play an important part in helping Google understand your business and its local relevance.

Quality beats creating 25 pages that essentially say the same thing with a different postcode.

Look at the search results

One of the simplest forms of keyword research is also free.

Google the phrase you’re considering.

Look at what appears.

Are the results:

• service pages?
• articles and guides?
• directories?
• ecommerce products?
• videos?
• large national companies?
• local businesses?

Google is effectively showing you what it believes people making that search are looking for.

If you want a service page to rank for a phrase and almost every result on page one is an informational article, there may be a mismatch between the page you’re planning and the intent behind the search.

Likewise, if Google predominantly shows local businesses and Google Maps results, location is clearly important to that particular search.

Check what you’re already appearing for

Before chasing dozens of new keywords, it’s worth finding out what Google already associates with your website.

Google Search Console can show the actual search queries that caused your website to appear in Google’s results, along with impressions, clicks, click-through rate and average position.

This can reveal some useful opportunities.

You might discover a page appearing in position 12 or 15 for a highly relevant phrase you hadn’t deliberately targeted.

Rather than creating another page, improving the existing one may be enough to push it further up the results.

You can also see variations in the terminology people use, which can help shape future content.

Real search data from your own website is generally more useful than guessing.

Give each important page a clear subject

One of the reasons I favour a structured website with individual service pages is that each page can have a clear purpose.

If one page attempts to cover:

website design, WordPress development, hosting, maintenance, logo design, graphic design, SEO, brochures and presentation design

Google has to work considerably harder to determine what that page should rank for.

Separate, useful pages allow each subject to be explored properly.

A WordPress website design page can concentrate on WordPress website design.

A logo design page can concentrate on logo design.

A website care page can discuss hosting, maintenance, security and ongoing support.

Articles can then explore individual questions surrounding those broader subjects and link back to the appropriate service.

This creates a logical structure for visitors and search engines.

Don’t target the same keyword everywhere

Another common mistake is trying to optimise multiple pages for exactly the same keyword.

If you have five pages all targeting website designer Eastbourne, which one should Google show?

You can end up with your own pages competing against one another.

Instead, give important pages distinct purposes while allowing related terminology to occur naturally.

One page might primarily concern website design in Eastbourne, another WordPress website design, while an article might discuss choosing a local website designer.

They’re related topics without being copies of one another.

Keywords should fit the writing – not control it

Once you’ve chosen a target phrase, resist the urge to stuff it everywhere.

You don’t need to repeat the exact keyword in every heading, every paragraph and every image description.

Use it where it makes sense:

• the page URL
• the page title
• main heading
• introductory copy
• an appropriate subheading
• title tag and meta description
• image information where genuinely relevant
• naturally throughout the content

Then use normal language and related terminology around it.

Google has become considerably better at understanding context and relationships between words. Your page should read as though it was written for a potential customer, because ultimately it was.

If it sounds strange when you read it aloud, you’ve probably gone too far.

For more on what genuinely matters – and some of the things that don’t – see SEO Myths: What Actually Helps a Website Rank?.

Keywords aren’t a guarantee

Choosing good keywords doesn’t guarantee a number-one position on Google.

Search rankings depend on far more than putting a particular phrase onto a page.

Competition, content quality, website structure and build quality, links, local relevance, your Google Business Profile, reviews, website performance and the authority your site develops over time can all play a part.

SEO is therefore better viewed as an ongoing process than a box you tick when the website launches.

I’ve been doing exactly that with the Influense Design website: improving existing pages, creating useful supporting articles, strengthening internal links and watching what happens in Google Search Console.

No magic switch. No secret list of keywords. And certainly no credible guarantee of being number one in Google by next Tuesday.

A simple keyword strategy for a small business

You don’t necessarily need expensive software or a spreadsheet containing thousands of keywords.

For many small businesses, a sensible starting point is:

1. Identify your most important services.
2. Write down how customers are likely to describe them.
3. Add relevant geographical terms if you serve a local market.
4. Look at the actual Google results for those searches.
5. Decide which page on your website should answer each search.
6. Create useful supporting content around the questions customers ask.
7. Use Google Search Console to see what you’re actually being found for.
8. Improve and refine the website as real search data becomes available.

That’s considerably more useful than choosing 100 keywords and trying to squeeze all of them onto your homepage.

Choosing the right keywords is really about choosing the right audience

Keyword research can become unnecessarily complicated.

At its heart, it’s about understanding what your potential customers want, the words they use to describe it and whether your website provides the right answer.

For a small local business, a handful of highly relevant searches can be worth considerably more than thousands of visitors who were never likely to become customers.

So don’t become obsessed with finding the keyword with the biggest number beside it.

Find the searches that describe what you actually do, who you do it for and, where relevant, where you do it.

Then build genuinely useful pages around them.

That’s a much stronger foundation for being found in search — locally or otherwise.