Part 1

I was recently asked to optimize a site that sold t-shirts in Spanish to attract a lot of traffic from search engines. Without traffic, your site will not generate any sales. On the other hand, getting a lot of traffic doesn’t guarantee sales if your web copy is lousy. There are many factors that need to be considered when optimizing your website. To optimize my example site, I chose Wild Lily Designs, a site that specializes in selling Spanish shirts.

Here are the steps I took to optimize the site:

1. Create a keyword list

Write down all the keywords related to the theme of your site. Try to include keyword phrases as well. that is, t-shirts, Spanish shirts, Spanish clothes, Spanish clothes.

There are probably millions of websites that sell t-shirts; therefore, you need to narrow your focus. This is why Spanish shirts or Spanish t-shirts would be a better niche because it would not be as competitive. If your niche is too competitive, you will have a hard time getting high rankings. Ideally, you want your site to appear on the first page of one of the major search engines… Google, MSN or Yahoo.

2. Find related keywords

These are words that are similar to the main keyword list you created earlier. You may be able to incorporate them into your site’s content as it grows. Keywords that have a very narrow focus, for example Spanish t-shirts, may not be a popular search term. If I broaden my search to include “Spanish” or “T-shirt,” I’ll find hundreds of words related to these topics.

Use a theosaurus dictionary or thesaurus.com to find similar words in addition to your main keywords. Another great free tool for brainstorming related keywords is the Google AdWords Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal).

Here is the list of similar keywords generated when I inserted “Spanish shirts” into the Google AdWords keyword tool:

madrid shirts language t-shirts spain spanish shirt shirt shirts in spanish spanish t-shirts real madrid shirt spanish english spanish sign language t-shirt language t-shirts madrid t-shirt in spanish t-shirt hispanic spain t-shirt language hispanic t-shirt sign language t-shirt madrid t-shirt real madrid language shirts sign language shirts language shirts spanish sign language shirts spanish shirt real madrid merchandise i love shirts hispanic shirts long sleeve shirts spain shirts spanish shirts madrid shirt

From this list you get the singular and plural forms of the keywords. It can also include madrid jerseys, madrid jersey, spanish jerseys.

To find out how often people search for these keywords, you need to use keyword tools. I use a mix of free and paid tools.

Part 2 of this article will discuss how I used Wordtracker, one of the most effective keyword tools on the net, to decide if I should use Spanish shirts as the main keyword phrase for Wild Lily Designs (http://www.wildlilydesigns.com ) the sample site I’m optimizing.