To help maximize your presence on the internet, you need to develop a list of 15-25 keywords describing your type of business, specialty, or niche. These are the words you think someone looking for your services may use in a search engine to find you. You will use these keywords when:

*Your webmaster sets up your web pages.

*Your copywriter is developing web site text and

*When you write articles, online news releases or other web copy.

Spend some time thinking about the words that someone searching for information may use to find you.

1.Brainstorm alternative terms to describe your business. For example, in addition to personal trainer, searchers might look for wellness coach, fitness expert, exercise instructor.

2.Ask friends and clients what terms they would use to look for your type of business on the internet.

3.Review association web sites and see what words they use to describe the business. The home page of the American Council on Exercise uses several words that are alternatives to personal trainer.

4.Use www.usa.gov as a resource. They have tons of information about many different subjects that may trigger your creativity. For example, the section on health and fitness leads to information about what the government is doing about health and fitness.

5.Use a keyword search tool to provide alternative words. www.wordtracker.com has a free trial of their tool. Google also has a keyword tool that is useful: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Once you have words and phrases to work with, visit a search engine and enter words from your list. See how many pages come up in response to that term. In Google, "personal trainer" has 11,000,000 pages. The term "personal trainer bay area" produces 232,000 pages. That means as a personal trainer it's probably a good idea to use the local area as part of your keyword phrase.

This is a very basic first step in Search Engine Optimization, SEO for short. The second step is to have an understanding of how many searchers are actually using that term in the search engines.

SEO has become an entire industry because so many companies want to get to the top of the search engines.

It's important for you as a business owner to have at least a basic understanding of what these terms mean and how they work as part of your online marketing strategy.