Keyword Research, The Foundation of Great SEO

November 24, 2008 by Butterfly Filed under: SEO

As far as I am concerned, keyword research is THE most important SEO step. Focus on the wrong keywords, or fail to focus on some of the right keywords, and you could be missing out on a heck of a lot of well targeted traffic – sales, and profits!

One common misconception amongst new web marketers, is that you’re limited to how many keywords you can actually select — and acting on this people go immediately for the highest volume keywords, rather than going for the most well targeted. This isn’t the case, there is no limit to the number of keywords you can focus on. There is a limit to how many you should focus on per page, but there’s no limit to how many pages you have.

So, as there is no limit to the number of keywords you can go for, don’t miss out the very well targeted keywords & phrases, which are often three or more words. You can go for the really high volume ones too, but these will usually be VERY competitive, therefore more difficult to get high ranking, and usually these high volume competitive keywords are really low conversion, which means you might work really hard & get a good position, be really pleased, get lots of traffic, but in terms of conversion to customers, you may well get more sales from a more well targeted, less competitive keyword phrase that was very easy to attain top position with.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t go for the more competitive keywords, but I am saying you will find it easier & more productive looking for more well targeted keywords phrases, so do lots of research & find as many as you can.

There are lots of good keyword tools you can use to research – Wordtracker is good, personally I use the Google AdWords keyword research tool mostly, and I always set the results to exact match, which gives a better indication of potential traffic than broad or phrase match. Look for those keywords which you think would tell you that this represents a potential buyer, the more specific the better.

So, find all of your well targeted keyword phrases, spend some time on this & make sure you have literally every possible keyword & keyword phrase – just save them all in a text document for now, the important thing is that first of all, you identify them all.

As well as using Google AdWords research tool, or word tracker.

Visit all of your competitors, look through their content, try to identify any keywords they may be focusing on which you’re not
Ask your customers what keywords they would use to search, it’s best asking them this when they’ve just bought.
Try to “get into your customers head” and try to determine how they would be likely to search for your product – don’t think like the expert that you are – think like your customers, if you have different types, try to think like all of them, you probably know them a lot more than you thought, and therefore you’ll probably be able to predict how they would search for your products or services.
Look through your web stats to find exactly what terms visitors are using to find you.
Brainstorm
Search the web for new keyword research tools, there are many available for free download, even if you only find one new keyword, it’s got to be worth your time.

These are just a few Idea’s, what I am saying is do everything you can think of to ensure you are targeting all possible keywords, overturning every stone to find great targeted keywords.

Constantly look for more to add to your list, you’ll probably find them every day if you have your eyes open.

If you do your keyword research properly, and are targeting all possible keywords, not just the obvious ones, all of your other SEO steps will bring about much more powerful results.