What I say about my business may not be the keywords my clients are searching for …

Why do I care about keywords? My interest in digital marketing is personal. It is about my business. I hadn’t thought that I would need to know as much about keyword gap analysis as I apparently need to! As a “solopreneur” I have built my business of seven years entirely as a result of relationships and word of mouth. My questions for digital marketing were: How can digital marketing impact/grow my business? What is different about it than what I have already done and continue to do, build relationships by doing good work? What I learned almost immediately is the power of keywords. I thought I knew about keywords. I have used them in my own Google searches. What I had not understood was keyword gap – the difference between what I am saying about my business and what my clients and potential clients are looking for when they are looking for me. The difference between these two is the keyword gap. A short analysis with the keyword planner on Google for my website (www.mapthemind.org) revealed a huge gap! I thought I was differentiating and clarifying my work by calling myself a visual facilitator. I was, within my community of practice, which largely referred to themselves as graphic facilitators. I started using “visual facilitator” five years ago, and in that time, this term has been more widely adopted among my colleagues, however, when I do a keyword analysis, it is clear that “graphic facilitator” is the keyword that my clients and potential clients are using far more. So my decision to commit to visual facilitator as my title, is fine, but the result of not using “graphic facilitator” on my website is one that is keeping me from being found by the majority of people looking for someone like me. The plan? For starters, based on the recommendations from Krista LaRiviere, I should put a strategy in place to address this keyword gap. First of all I need to start using “graphic facilitation” at least one to three times per page on my website. Second, I need to be more intentional about building up my unbranded keyword – visual facilitation. In addition I need to do a competitive analysis to see how my colleagues are doing in their use of keywords for our profession. After the analysis, the keyword gap should begin to close once I build a bridge between myself and my clients that is beyond word of mouth. This is my hope … Will this help?