SEO | Keyword Research-Where do I begin

SEO | Keyword Research and Search

Keyword Research is the practice of finding actual search terms people enter into the search engines when conducting a search. Is this practice only limited to professionals? No.

Though, keyword research is directed to professionals, you can learn how to use keyword research. In fact, you should take the time to at least get an idea of what keyword research is all about. Why? In my opinion, the process is the foundation for web page optimization, which will benefit your website as a whole.

Keyword Research-Benefits

Keyword Research is important in many areas of Internet Marketing. Such as:

Product Research

Branding

Competitive Intelligence

New Product and Market Opportunities

And as you probably have figured out all ready, keywords is at the heart of anything that you do with your content online.

Keywords, Are They Important?

Anyone who has a blog or website, should realize that keywords is one of the most important elements to driving traffic and the search engines to your web pages/website or blog.

In fact, keywords are also important in other phases of your online business. If you dabble in PPC, Adsense or SEO/SEM, you know you need keywords..

So how do you get the right keywords for your content?

Choosing the Wrong Keywords

What's a right keyword, and what's a wrong keyword? The right keywords will
determine your search engine position (SEO-SEM), the quality of your Google Adsense Ads, other third party ads and most importantly, your ROI.

But the wrong keyword can give you traffic with no results. As a webmaster, and a beginning SEO person, you may be making these mistakes:

1. Sometimes, you may think that you know which terms a customer is using to find your site. But to your surprise, you're off the mark.

2. Webmasters have a tendency to have a narrow focus on their keywords. This is the biggest problem webmasters, I included, have in their thinking. Why? Sometimes, it's because we use "industry jargon" to describe a product. This "industry jardon" usually isn't what the customer uses to find the content on your site.

3. Webmaster's do not direct their keywords to their topic. If your keywords do not match your web page content, you've just wasted your time and your customers time. And if you're seeing a lot of traffic because of your "Useless Keyword" you may be using up your bandwidth, with no sales.

4. Many people make the mistake of going with just the popular words and the common generic words. You will quickly find out that the competition can be really stiff for these words. Why? You're competing with the big boys. And more times than not, you're not going to see much of a return for your trouble because you will not get the ranking you need for people to see your website or web page.

Choosing the Right Keywords

How do you get the right keywords for your content? That's the $100 question that many ask. And, as you will learn, it will be the area in which you will spend a lot of time.
The beginning of finding the right keywords is through:

1. brainstorming keywords
2. researching the keywords

Brainstorming Keywords

There are many ways to compile your list. The first way, is the old pen to paper routine.

1. Write down as many keywords and keyword phases as possible. But again, this is limited by your own frame of reference. This is just your beginning.

2. Once you have your list compiled, you will need to learn the activity level (cost per word) on each of the keywords you want to use.

3. Look for the keywords that can give you a good ROI, while fitting into your content. If the keyword does not fit into your content, then it doesn't belong. Either you will have to rewrite your content to have the keyword fit without your content or use another keyword.

Keyword Research List

Creating a keyword research list is time consuming-you can use helpful online tools, or you can purchase stand-alone tools to gather a list of keywords. But here are some things to remember:

Choose the words that closely target your web content

Relevancy of the keywords-if there no relevancy, get rid of them

Keywords should be both general and targeted. General keywords, though broad in nature, will give the search engines an idea of what your web page or website is all about. The targeted keywords are your "buyer keywords". These keywords help you to maximize your conversion.

Like I said above, choosing keywords is time-consuming, in fact, it's wise to put your keywords into a spreadsheet and do some analysis on the chosen keywords. What should your analysis include?

Conversion rate
Search Volume
Competition

Analysis of your keywords and keyword phases are important. First and foremost, the analysis will determine if the keywords you are using are working. When you look at your stats you need to ask one important question.

Are the keywords helping visitors and search engines find you?

By analyzing your stats you can determine if the keywords or keyword phases you are using are giving you the results you want. If not, you need to tweak your copy, or get rid of the keyword.

In addition, by keeping an eye on your stats, you may find a phrase that you did not optimize for, but showing you some positive results. Maybe, that phase may be worth optimizing within an article on your site or used in a PPC program.

In additional, you should utilize both long-tail and short-tail keywords. I'll explain why below.

Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are really keyword phases that are usually 3 words or more long, and that are more descriptive in nature.

I think it's probably best to give an example. Let say you are selling widgets. Some of your keywords are: widget, wooden widgets, steel widgets. The long tail phrase would be: green wooden widgets; blue steel widgets.

The long-tail keywords are really phases used by people who know exactly what they want. And you will be surprised how the clicks can grow, if you are distinctively descriptive.

If you don't want to fight the big boys for the top keywords, look at the long tail phases. You may find that you have better conversion rate on the terms.

Short-Tail Keywords

Short-Tail keywords are one to two keywords long. They do bring in more traffic than the long-tail keywords, but....you have stiffer competition.

My advice, utilize both a wide range of keywords, long-tail and short-tail to gain a full range of traffic. Or, incorporate short-tail keywords within your long-tail keyword phases.

Keyword Suggestion Tools-That are Free

After you have a starting list of keywords, you will need to learn how many people are researching those keywords (identifies the competitiveness of the words), as well as, adding additional new keywords to your list. (Brainstorming is great to get you started, but remember, it is only based around your circle of knowledge).

To expand your keyword list, look to the following keyword suggestion tools to increase and/or tweak your keyword list or keyword phases:

1) Overture Keyword Search -- Overture gives you related searches that include your keyword; keywords and phases; estimate of the number of times that the term was searched on within the last month. Just put in a single keyword and it will give you the keywords and keyword phases.
2) Keyword Tool by Google -- Google gives you a listing of the different keywords phases-but it doesn't break it down numerically, but within a bar graph format.
3) Thesaurus- Another great way to find synonyms.
4) Wordtracker - gives you a smaller sampling of keywords
5) Google-based search keyword Tool - This tool is based on actual Google Search queries. It matches to the specific pages of your website . You can check out by categories, competition, suggested bid and the number of monthly searches.
6) Google Traffic Estimator - This tool gives you an estimated traffic clicks and cost for the given term in Google Adwords.
7) Insights for Search - What can you do with it? Look at geographic usage, compare multiple terms, term popularity.

Yahoo and Google Search Engines-Differences

Google- Google places greater emphasis on inbound links to your website. The higher the PR of your inbound links the higher your search results will be in the Google's search engine.

Yahoo- There emphasis is on website URLs, meta tags, and keyword density. Keyword Density for Yahoo is between 6 and 8%.

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