SEM/SEO

Keyword Research: Are You Streaming Your SEO the Wrong Way?

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  • June 8, 2009

Keyword research is the starting point and the cornerstone of every successful Search Engine Optimization campaign. Before you can actually start doing everything possible to bring your website to the top of search results you need to identify the keywords you want to rank high for. Pick the wrong keywords and even the top search engine rankings won’t bring you convertible traffic. Choose the right ones, invest into optimizing for them and your traffic and sales will go through the roof.

The secret to finding the right keywords lies in the focus. You should clearly understand that the ultimate goal of your SEO is not top search engine placement as such, and not even the traffic it brings, but the conversions you can turn that traffic into. People who click through to your website from search results on Google or any other search engine should be genuinely interested in what you have to offer. That’s why it is called targeted traffic. The more focused you stay when choosing your keywords, the more targeted traffic you get. Now let’s see how exactly you can pick the bets keywords that will help you reach your prospective customers, dedicated readers, subscribers and long-term partners.

Brainstorming Keywords

This is the first stage of keyword research. You simply sit down and make up a list of keywords that describe your business. Think about the words your prospects might type into the search box when looking for products, services or information you offer. It’s a good idea to ask your friends, family and colleagues to help you expand your list. People don’t think the same and the ways they search for something on the web differ greatly. For example while some users look for solution to their problems (e.g. ‘plumber services’) others will search for the problem (e.g. ‘leaky pipes’). Think abut the problems your business helps to solve and add them to your keyword list.

Using Keyword Suggestion Tools

There are a lot of keyword research tools out there that will help you develop your keyword list. They work pretty much the same the difference being the size of their database and the way they gather keyword suggestions and traffic stats. Some of the most popular keyword research tools are Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, Google Search Based Keyword Tool, Google AdWords External Keyword Tool and Yahoo! Search Assist.

There’s also special SEO software that allows you to gather keyword suggestions from all the most popular keyword tools. This way you can take advantage of multiple data sources and come up with a more thoroughly developed keyword list.

Prioritizing Keywords

Once you have your list of keywords you need to see how many people actually search for them and how many pages you’ll have to outrank. This number-of-searches-to-competition ratio is known as Keyword Efficiency Index or KEI for short. KEI is the indicator used by SEOs to identify the best keywords and prioritize the search terms on the keyword list. Most of the keyword tools mentioned above provide traffic stats on the keywords. These are often quite rough estimates but they can give you at least a basic idea of the traffic behind each search term. To see how many pages are competing for each keyword go to the search engine you want to rank high in and run a search for your terms. Obviously the keywords that are often searched for and have low competition are the best, but you also need to analyze how targeted the traffic for them will be. Select the most relevant keywords that indicate that the searcher is highly interested in your offer.

Follow these simple guidelines and you’ll be able to select the most effective keywords for your SEO campaign.

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