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How To Do SEO Keyword Research.

2015-10-12 | 4257 Print PDF

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Finding the best keywords via keyword research.

Before you can start to optimize your web pages, you have to find the keywords for which you want to be ranked for on search engines.
This is a very important step. The first keywords that you think of might not be the best keywords that lead to the most sales.
This is why keywords are the most important part of SEO, a number 1 listing on Google can be totally pointless if it is for the wrong keywords.
If the wrong people or too few people search for that keyword then your SEO efforts will be in vain. The keywords that you choose are the most important factor that decides whether you succeed or not.
If you target the wrong keywords, you'll waste a lot of time, energy and money. BE CAREFUL: Think twice before you start.
Many webmasters think that they already know the best keyword for their websites.
If they haven't done some research, they are usually wrong. There are several reasons for that:
•You know your business much better than anybody else. You know the special terms that are used in your branch and you know what you should search for when you're looking for products like yours.
•Your customers don't know as much as you. They don't know your terminology and they might use totally different keywords. For example, a recent study found out that many people search for the keyword "nose job". If you optimize your web page for the keyword "rhinoplasty" then these web surfers won't find your site.
•Did you consider the intention of the searcher? Just because a keyword is used very often on search engines it doesn't mean that you'll get many customers. People who find your website through a special keyword might not be interested in purchasing.
It's very important that you take some time to find the best keywords for your website. The time and efforts that you invest in finding the right keywords will pay back in no time.

 

 

Choose the right keyword type to get more conversions.

When web surfers want to purchase something online, they go through three research phases. Web surfers usually start with general keywords.
After becoming more educated about a particular product or service, they will use more specific keywords. As soon as the web surfers know what they want, they use specific keywords.

Keywords for browsing.
During the first research phase, web surfers use general keywords to find information. For example, a web surfer might be interested in an MP3 player. The keyword that the web surfer might use in search engines could be:
mp3 player, People who use keywords for browsing are usually looking for information only.
Keywords for browsing usually have a very high search volume. Getting a top 10 ranking for these general keywords is very difficult and nearly impossible.
It is unlikely that a web surfer who uses such a generic keyword will buy something.

 

Keywords for comparing.
In the second research phase, web surfers narrow their selection because they now know what type of product they want. For example, the web surfer might have found out that he is interested in a USB stick MP3 player with 1 GB flash RAM. The keywords of these web surfers are more specific:
mp3 player 8 GB
mp3 player usb stick
mp player under $100
trekstor mp3 player
samsung mp3 player
People who use keywords for comparing are more ready to buy. Comparing keywords are probably the best keywords that you can target for your search engine optimization campaign.
They often have much lower search volume than general keywords but they will lead to more sales and it is much easier to get top 10 rankings for these keywords.

 

Keywords for buying.
During the last research phase, web surfers know what they want to purchase. They are just looking for the website with the best offer. For that reason, these surfers use very specific keywords:
TrekStor i.Beat move 8 GB Video MP3 Player
TrekStor i.Beat move 8 GB free shipping
SanDisk Sansa Clip 1 GB
People who use keywords for buying are ready to buy. However, these keywords won't help you much if you offer competing products.

Does the keyword represent a solution to a problem, or some kind of pain someone might be willing to spend money resolving? 

Does the keyword mean someone is in „action mode‟ or ready to make a purchase? For example, “asthma symptoms” is likely to be made up of a lot of people looking to self-diagnose or investigate a condition further; whereas with “cure asthma”, you have people wanting to take action and do something about it. Similarly, words like “buy” in a keyword represent high value to your business for obvious reasons. 

Does the keyword represent some kind of pleasure someone is interested in attaining – e.g. a holiday, or linked to a hobby or some other leisure activity? 

When you do your research – and we‟ll look at how to do that in more depth shortly – you will generally want to find between 5 and 10 of these main keywords. With the right keyword research you can find your site ranking on different search engines; mind you the keyword popularity may vary from one search engine to another. Eg. A keyword like “seo web analyst” may generate 150,000 monthly search query on Google and 10,000 on Bing. But has stated previously that Google has the lion share of the search engines does not mean that other search engines out there are not performing but the combination of their resources to the current one will incredibly boost your site traffic and help you to stack up among competitors 

 

Long Tail Keywords.
These are keywords that are usually 3 to 8 words long, with less potential traffic (less people searching for the keywords), and consequently less competition … and therefore easier for you to get ranked for these keywords using individual articles optimized for the keyword in question. 
Effectively, what you are doing here is discovering the information that people are searching for (e.g. how to do something), and then meeting that need with an article, attracting people with an interest in your niche to you, your website and your business. 
Over time, although the potential traffic from each article alone will not be great, via a consistent article marketing campaign you can over time effectively create blanket coverage of all applicable keywords, all attracting and directing visitors to your site … the traffic from all the articles combined starts to add up. 
Of course, your articles do not all have to be determined by specific long-tail keywords, but it’s a good idea to keep keywords in mind, as firstly it helps you determine what to write about, and secondly you might as well take advantage of the traffic available for long-tail keywords if you’re creating the content anyway. 
Sometimes a minor tweak in a keyword in an article you were going to write about anyway can make all the difference … for example, tens of searches a month versus hundreds of searches a month, and with similar competition levels. 
In doing your research for long-tail keywords, you are generally looking to find at least 20 such keywords. 
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Before we look at how to use each set of keywords, let’s firstly go into how to actually do keyword research. 

 

How To Do Keyword Research.
In doing keyword research there are two main figures you are looking for: 

The demand for a keyword – the number of people conducting a search using the keyword; 
The amount of supply for a keyword – the number of websites that exist to supply that demand, i.e. websites that contain the keyword. 
To help you understand how this works, we’ll use Google’s own keyword research tool, along with data from their SERPs. 

https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner - or search for “keyword tool” on Google 
Google’s keyword tool allows you to assess the first figure above, the number of people searching for a specific keyword. 
In the example here, you can see over 30,000 people every month are searching for information on dog training: 

Listed below that keyword are numerous other related keywords that you could add to your main keywords or long-tail keywords lists, each with differing numbers of searches per month, and so on. 
To assess the second figure above, the supply of websites that meet the keyword requirement, you need to search for the same keyword on Google, wrapping it in quotation marks, so “dog training” rather than dog training. 
By using quotation marks, you are telling Google to only bring back results containing that exact phrase, so you can find out exactly how many pages contain the same keyword. 

You can see here that it brought back nearly 19 million competing pages: 
So for the keyword, “dog training”, the demand is 40,500(August 2015) and the supply, 18,600,000. 
Due to the relatively high level of competition, but the very high potential traffic levels, you could have this as a main keyword that you were looking to rank high for. 
If the demand was low, it wouldn’t be worth trying to compete against the millions of other pages vying for that keyword term … but in this case the traffic levels make it potentially worthwhile. 
There’s a lot more to keyword research than space allows for in this report, but hopefully you get the general idea. 
Let’s now run through an example of a long-tail keyword – often using a phrase like “how to” together with one of your main keywords can help you discover suitable long-tail phrases, which can form suitable article titles too … ideal for article marketing purposes, as the title’s ready made for you, and is already optimized for the keyword in question! 
For this example base on illustrations, Let's say we searched for “how to train dog” on Google’s keyword tool, and came up with the following: 
So, for the keyword, “how to house train a dog”, the number of people searching each month is 5,400 … now to assess the supply: 
Only 44,400 competing pages … probably at the upper end in terms of competition levels for a long-tail keyword phrase, but a properly optimized article could easily compete with this and could well end up appearing within the first couple pages of search results. 
This keyword has decent traffic levels too … in fact, this could be used as a main keyword phrase too if you’re in that niche, but in this case it’s just as valid as a long-tail keyword. 
Further research revealed other long-tail keyword possibilities, which would all form the basis of some great content: 

“house training older dogs” – 1,900 searches, 9,140 competing web pages 

“leash training dogs” – 8,100 searches, 29,100 competing web pages 

“training boxer dogs” – 2,400 searches, 10,900 competing web pages 

Hopefully you get the idea of how to pursue this in your own niche. 
Let’s do an example of a keyword phrase that might not be so suitable as a long-term keyword phrase – “training dogs not to bite” has only 260 searches a month, but nearly 20,000 competing web pages. 
It could work, but the traffic levels are very low in proportion to the level of competition, and you’ll likely find better examples of long-tail keyword phrases that would be more valuable to you longer term.

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