A Small Guide about How to Do Keyword Research Effectively

Keyword research is the most important aspect in your search engine optimization efforts. Targeting the wrong keywords might mean that search engines and users won’t find you, resulting in a pathetic page ranking and loss of effort on your behalf. All the time and energy invested are put to waste when choosing the wrong keywords, not to mention throwing tons of money out the window. If you want to be visible on the net, and stay competitive, you must know how to properly research keywords and how to use them to your advantage.

Stop Thinking Like a Business Owner!

Thinking that you already know which terms you need to target in order for clients to find you is a common mistake people make when first trying to advertise their websites. Without proper research, you won’t know how a paying customer will go about looking for something. Knowing what your site is about and how to find your site doesn’t mean that a user is likely to find it too, if you don’t target viable keywords.

In order to make your site easily accessible, you need to stop thinking like a business owner, and put yourself in the place of someone who doesn’t know anything about your domain. If customers knew what you know about your industry, they wouldn’t need you in the first place. Building your site around too technical terms would mean users never find you. Breaking away from industry talk and translating what you have to offer into common words is what you need to do in order to make your website appear in those first few results a search engine brings up.

Choosing the Right Keywords

Popular keywords search terms aren’t the most important for page ranking, not in the way you think anyway. Also, ranking for a term that has no relevance to your domain is another common mistake that people without any SEO experience make. First of all, ranking for the wrong term is highly unlikely with all the competition out there. Even if you do manage to get in the top ten and get lots of traffic, that won’t mean it will get converted to profit, as people entering your site and seeing it has absolutely no connection to what they were searching for will leave immediately and search for something else. Trying to rank for keywords that aren’t relevant to your business can also get you in trouble, as search engines might have your site penalized, or even banned.

Coming up with the perfect combination of words in order to drive customers to your site might not be easy, but starting slowly, taking small steps and patiently researching the market will get you miles ahead.

You can start the process by creating a list of potential keywords. Think of which terms a client would use when trying to find your site. Don’t just think of simple words, as combination of multiple words and expressions are often the most valuable keywords. Also, try to think of all sorts of keywords, from the most broad and popular to the super targeted ones. Then think of what your site is about, and what you want to promote.

Are those keywords relevant to what you are trying to do or offer? Try to find enough words to cover all services that your business provides. Asking friends, colleagues and former customers when brainstorming can be productive, as they may see things you are unable to see from the inside. Also, doing some competitive research about what others are targeting might also give you an idea about what you need for your own website.

Determining the Keywords’ Conversion Rate

After you are finished with your list, it is time to see the activity and value for each of the words that you have found. There are numerous keyword tools on the internet, and one of the most popular is Google AdWords Keyword Tool, a free tool that everyone should use. Use it to input the proposed keywords, and you will learn how many users are searching for that term each day, how many of them actually convert, and other important analytical information about the activity your keywords are receiving. You’re not only trying to find out if enough people are searching for a term, but also want to see how much competition exists for it in terms of rankings.

By using a keyword tool to determine the words’ conversion rate, search volume and competition rate, you’ll be able to narrow down the list to those keywords which are viable to your website.

Embedding Your Keywords into Your Contents

After obtaining a list of 10-20 highly focused key phrases, you have to see how to implement them efficiently.

Try to add those keywords in your site’s content naturally, and think of how many pages you need to create in order to support the new ones, and how you’ll use them in each page. It is recommended that you use only 3 to 5 keywords per page, and try to balance them properly. Keywords should appear natural in the content, without over-repetition and forced sounding.

Don’t think that, after you’ve successfully implemented the keywords, you’re done; you’ll still have to constantly tweak and improve your site according to shifts in keyword trends and client demands. Do this and you’ll always stay ahead of competition and move forward.