How to Find Google Keywords
The keywords you pick determine which searches find you. Wrong ones mean invisible campaigns, wasted ad spend, pages that never rank. Right ones mean consistent traffic from people already looking for what you sell.
Here is how to find them.
Google Ads Setup and Strategy: How to Start Advertising
Short version: start a Search campaign, target the queries your customers actually use, write ads that match those queries closely, send traffic to a page that answers what the ad promised, and track which clicks become conversions. That is the whole system. Everything else is optimising within that frame.
Slightly longer version: Google Ads is an auction-based pay-per-click platform where every search triggers a real-time bid on who shows up and where. The ad you see at the top of a results page is not the highest bidder, it is the highest-ranked combination of bid and Quality Score. Quality Score rewards relevance between keyword, ad, and landing page. Understanding that one mechanic makes every other decision easier. For search marketing in Calgary and beyond, the businesses that get the most from Google Ads are not always the biggest spenders.
How to Use Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is free. Runs inside Google Ads. Pulls data directly from Google’s own search index. A Google account is all it requires to access, though full search volume data means adding billing information at some point.
I have been using it with clients in Calgary and across Canada for years. Here is how the keyword planner tool actually works and what to watch out for.
How to Do Competitor Analysis in SEO
The most common mistake in SEO competitor analysis is running it against the wrong list. Business competitors and search competitors are not the same group. A local HVAC company might compete with ServiceMaster on Google even though they never compete for the same customer. Starting the analysis with the right set changes everything downstream.
Here is a five-step process for doing this systematically. Each step builds on the previous one. Skip any of them and the analysis produces gaps that turn into wasted effort later.
What Is Technical SEO? How It Works and Why It Matters
Most SEO problems I diagnose trace back to technical issues the site owner has never noticed. A page that search engines cannot crawl cannot rank, regardless of how well the content is written or how many links point at it. Technical SEO is the work that makes your website readable and rankable by search engines: the infrastructure layer that crawlability, indexation, and performance all depend on, and that every other SEO effort runs on top of.
Calgary SEO work often begins with a technical pass before touching any content, because a crawl block or a page speed failure quietly cancels the gains from everything else. It is the reason good content sometimes ranks poorly, and why a proper audit always starts below the surface of your site. If this layer feels unfamiliar, how to learn SEO builds it up from the basics.
What Are SEO Keywords? How They Drive Search Rankings
Type something into Google. Whatever words you used are keywords. On the other side of that search, websites are competing to appear for exactly those words. The ones that rank did not land there by chance. Someone chose which keywords to target, built content around them, and let the ranking process play out over several months.
SEO keywords are the specific words and phrases you deliberately optimize your pages to rank for. Choose the right ones and your website attracts visitors actively searching for what you offer. Pick the wrong ones and your content builds rankings for phrases nobody types. To-The-TOP! has been making these decisions for Calgary SEO clients since 2007, and keyword strategy still shapes results twelve months after the first choice is made.
What Is SEO
Three letters. Everyone in marketing uses them. Fewer people can explain what they actually involve, why results take months, or why two businesses with identical budgets end up in completely different places. The longer answer follows. (more…)
How Much Does SEO Cost in Calgary?
The question that comes up on every discovery call: just give me a rough range. Fair ask. Most websites quote SEO pricing in vague tiers and bury the number behind a contact form. Here is the honest answer.
Calgary SEO pricing in 2026 sits between $1,200 and $7,500 per month for the majority of small and mid-size businesses. The lower end gets you a focused local campaign with one or two services optimized. Higher up, the budget runs aggressive multi-service rankings against entrenched competitors. Hourly consultants charge $100 to $250 in this market. Project work for an audit or one-off cleanup lands between $1,500 and $15,000 depending on site size.
How to Choose Keywords
The most consequential decision in keyword research is not which tool to use. Which phrases to target in the first place is what matters. How to choose keywords well separates sites that gain traffic from ones that stay invisible.
SEO Keyword Selection: How to Choose the Right Keywords
The most common mistake in keyword research is choosing keywords by volume alone. High-volume keywords look attractive in the data. They also tend to be the most competitive, the vaguest in user intent, and the slowest to move. Targeting them without understanding what ranks and why leads to months of effort on content that never reaches page one.
Choosing the right keywords requires four assessments before any content gets written. Search intent. Traffic potential against ranking difficulty. Business relevance. Competitive landscape. Each one on its own is incomplete. All four together produce a shortlist worth building content around. Here is the process To-The-TOP! uses across every SEO campaign in Calgary and the other markets we operate in.