In case you missed it, post one of this series discussed SEO Optimization, including the use of H-Tags and Meta Tags, and how to choose a URL.

Keyword research. We’ve all heard it said, and I’m sure we’ve all given it some thought. But do we really understand what it means? There is more to it than meets the eye. It is not just looking at numbers and statistics, or worse – picking keywords out of thin air. It is the meticulous planning and mapping of your SEO strategy. Remember, the goal of Search Engine Optimization is to move your site up in the rankings to drive targeted, relevant and converting traffic to your website. In order to do this, your entire site planning all begins with keyword research. This is what will make or break your site in the long run, and it’s not something you should take lightly. Are you intimidated now? Don’t be. This post will guide you through all the steps necessary for studying keywords and choosing which of those will work best for you.

Keyword research can be preformed through tools such as Google Adwords, Word Tracker and many other systems, or you can also research it by hand. To be most beneficial, you will probably want to use both.

1. Start off by asking yourself this question: What is my site about? Try and narrow it down to the main topic, with a few subtopics as well. You don’t need to list every category your site will have, only those that are directly relevant to your main subject. For example, you might have a site about cars. Instead of listing everything relating to cars, narrow it down to three or four things, like cars, parts, repairs, and auto listings.
2. Now that you have the direction you want to go with your site, think like the average web user. If you were going to try and look for information in your sites’ subject, what keywords would you use? Write these down as well. They may be similar to the above, or somewhat different. That’s okay for now. We’re still in the beginning stages of keyword research, so any and all thoughts are welcome.
3. Using the list that you’ve created, go to Google Adwords or a similar keyword research tool and look up the statistics of the words you’ve chosen. Here is a good rule of thumb to remember: the smaller the phrase, the bigger the amount of traffic but the tougher the competition.

Pay attention to the perimeters you can set on your research. To give you an example, the word “cars” has over 151,000,000 searches a month. Or does it? 151,000,000 is actually the broad match number, meaning it includes any and all searched phrases that include that word. We want to look at traffic results that are a little more specific, so set the search to only view exact results. Now if we search for “cars” we get 11,100,000.

4. Next, don’t start with the keyword you want to be ranked for. You might say, “This sounds like bypassing SEO. Why would we want to ignore the very thing we want to be ranked for?” Well, like the example above, the keyword you want to be ranked for may have too tough of competition for you to compete with. So where do you start? With long tail key word phrases. Instead of optimizing your site for “cars”, you might try “custom cars for sale”, or another keyword with less traffic and less competition. This way, you have your major keyword in the phrase (cars), while still seeing some return and some movement on your rankings.
5. Checklist: you have your site demographic. You know what keyword you’d like to go after and you’ve picked a few smaller key words to target first. You’re done right? Wrong. One last and very important thing to do is to research your keywords by hand. The research tools may tell you the amount of traffic the word gets, but it doesn’t tell you anything about the sites that are ranked for that. Do a few simple searches for that keyword in Google, Yahoo and Bing. Look at the competition, their page rank, the age of the domain, the number of cashed pages and the number of backlinks the domain has. This can be a huge determining factor for if you should go after that keyword or not.

One major mistake people make when choosing keywords is they optimize for their own brand name. Now, if you have a huge brand, this isn’t a big deal, but chances are you have a little known brand. You want to optimize for what people will search for, so if your brand isn’t known, it’s not going to get searched for. This doesn’t mean that your brand won’t get out there if you didn’t optimize for it. There won’t be any competition for your brand name, so you will get ranked for it with little to no effort. Spend time chipping away at the smaller keywords and work your way up from there.

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Tags: Google Adwords, Key Word Research, Long Tail Key Words, SEO

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 5:18 pm and is filed under SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.