When evaluating an SEO consultant to hire for your business website there are many factors to consider. One of the most important of these is keyword research expertise. An SEO consultant must have an excellent understanding of how to choose the proper keywords to optimize for your business website. All the time and work it takes to get a site ranked on the 1st page of Google for a particular keyword will all be in vain if that keyword does not bring traffic that converts into sales and leads for your business.

There are 4 primary components to choosing the correct keywords. If you know what they are then you will be able to better screen an seo consultant that you are thinking of hiring.

1. Relevance

The keywords chosen must be relevant to the content that is on the site being optimized. When someone does a search for a particular keyword they want to find content exactly matched to that keyword. The search engines want the searcher to find this content as well. Either the keywords being chosen for your seo campaign need to match what is already on your website or the SEO consultant will need to create content that will match the keywords chosen for their relevancy to what services and products you provide.

2. Traffic

The keywords used to optimize your site need to be getting a decent amount of traffic. This might sound redundant and completely obvious, however I have heard of many an seo consultant choosing keywords that are getting zero to little traffic because they are easier to rank for. This does not include the practice of going after "long-tail" keywords. Long tail keywords get less traffic than major 1-2 word phrase keywords but they do get enough traffic to warrant going after. In general a keyword should be getting at least 100 searches per month.

3. Competition

Keywords that are relevant and that are getting decent traffic should also be chosen for the absence of a huge amount of competition. This will shorten the amount of time it takes to ranked and will lessen the overall cost of the campaign. A good SEO consultant will take this into consideration.

4. Commercial intent

Not only should keywords be relevant, get decent traffic and not have a ton of competition but they also need to have commercial intent. This means that the keyword looks like a keyword someone would use when searching to buy something. For example the keyword "seo" might be searched mostly by people who are learning about seo. The keyword "seo consultant" or "seo services" looks more like the type of keyword that someone looking to hire an seo provider would use - this is what is meant by commercial intent and your seo consultant needs to be aware of this.

There you have it, the proper way to choose keywords for an SEO campaign. Make sure any prospective seo consultant for hire knows how to choose keywords the right way.

The author of this article is a great SEO consultant who has many years of expertise in providing small business SEO ideas. Charles Preston is well known around the planet as one of the greatest SEO experts.