I am always changing my key words.  I usually check the top few pages under: "Key West", "Key West Real Estate", "Florida Keys Real Estate" and "Florida Real Estate".  Then I do a google check to see what key words they have and duplicate them.

have you ever used Google Analytics to see the words people have searched to get to your site?  If you don't have it give a shout and I'll tell you where to go......in a nice way that is!  :)

Eleanor - how about "VA Loans"?  Just had to throw that one out...  Or even "Raleigh VA Loans"...

Gary - I didn't know you could do a google check on someone else's keywords.  Will have to look into that!

E,

Great question, looks like you'll get some good ideas, unfortunately not from me, I'll be peeking at what others say to learn too.

Jim

Hi Eleanore,

Keywords, as you know, are critical for success on the internet.  If you go to google Ad Words you can find out which mortgage terms are most popular in our area and provide the most exposure.  From there you use those words to key in on your posts. 

look mi amiga when you have this all figured out send me the correct tags so i can redo mine

Guys!  Thanks for the input!  Actually a post that Tracy did is what made me think about it  I didnt think about going to the adwords - that's a great suggestion!  And I use Analytics - but didn't know I could see how people found me! WOW! 

Penny!  I do have VA loans, and USDA and 100% financing as words that people can search for me with.  My concern is that maybe I've used TOO MANY!

Top keywords do change a little but not enough to focus on IMO, for our blogs.

I did notice on Lenn Harley's blog that she has active rain really strong in her tag cloud. Just going around looking at top bloggers' tag clouds is very enlightening.

Eleanor~ try a search on "long tail", you may want to put in some unusual or different key words

I am still new to all of this too.  I have been focused on mai keywords MD Commercial Mortgages with a lot of what I do and have been getting those rankings up.   I am going to start expanding this with some fo the other best keyword searches. I would love to know some of the best places to find out what searches are occurring for what I am selling.  Any help here would be appreciated.   Thanks and have a great week.

Hi Eleanor, I almost died about the comment with your son :)  Well I hope I can help you here.  Yes having a strong key set of tags associated with your contents is key.  Now as far as what Tags to use there are a variety of factors that come into play, hows the competition fighting over the words in your area, is it high is it low?  Try searching on Google for the Keywords you would like to use and see how many legit sites pop up and results, if there are alot of fluff or non-related sites then you have a strong chance of getting 1st page results.  I have some presents for you.

Check www.seodigger.com to input your link and find out what keywords you have now ranked in the first page results.

Use Keyword Suggestion Tools these help you with choosing which tags are best for your business.  I found a great list here http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/

Cheers!

Eleanor,

I'm parked to learn.  Justin was pretty helpful, wasn't he?

Mike in Tucson

Thanks for the comments!  What I've found so far (that was worked to me) was how to go into google analytics and look at how people searched and found me (thanks Leesa!).  You go to Google Analytics and look at Traffic Sources and then Keywords.

I thought it was pretty interesting that I was found with:

• VA + Divorce
• co-signor FHA
• Window Insulation Reqauirements FHA
• Disputing Bad Credit
• Are FHA Loans Negotiable

Since I have 3 sites - it differed - but very few people who found my site were looking for me under the words I THOUGHT they would be looking for me under!  I had few mortgage rates (for instance) - it seems much more program and product specific.  On one of my sites - 60% of the referring traffic was from AR.  On another site it 40% and on the branded site it was less - but I think that's because we uniquely direct so much of our traffic to the site ourselves.