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Effective keyword research is one of the fundamental foundations of ethical SEO, and for a good reason.
A keyword is what drives traffic for businesses and by conducting research into the subject it gives you a better understanding about how customers find your site and what terms they are searching for. Becoming aware of keywords and their popularity will enable your business to track changing market conditions and shifts in demand, which in turn will allow you to improve the ranking of your business.
Here’s our guide on understanding how to perform effective keyword research:
Step 1 – Is the keyword relevant to your website?
You first have to ask yourself whether people use the keyword to find your website. If they do and the traffic translates into financial rewards then getting the business you’re promoting onto the first page of the search engines for that keyword is absolutely vital.
Step 2 – Search for the term/phrase in the major search engines
What do the search results show? Are there are lot of advertisements running above and to the right of the organic search results? If so, then it means your potential competitors have paid to appear prominently for the term and if you can rank in the natural search results for that particular keyword, then it could result in a lot of extra revenue.
Step 3 – Consider the competition
If a keyword is too competitive, it becomes very difficult for the page you want to rank on a search engine.
The best way of figuring out how competitive a keyword is to use a keyword search tool, such as Google Adwords’ External Keyword Tool. By using the exact search option, it’s possible to see how many searches people are performing with specific keywords. If you find a keyword with low competition and a lot of local monthly searches, then it’s definitely worth trying to rank your business for that term.
Step 4 – Have an understanding of ‘long-tail’ keywords
70% of all searches are performed using long-tail keywords, so it’s definitely something anyone aiming to improve SEO should target.
A long-tail keyword is a phrase rather consists of several words, rather than a single word. For example, you could have a keyword for ‘laptop’. A long-tail keyword, by comparison, could be something like ‘Buy red Dell laptops’. Long-tail keywords are targeted terms and although such a search term might be less popular, it will likely have a higher conversion rate, meaning that people are more likely to purchase a product from your website.
Learning the basics of keyword research will give any business an advantage over its competition, but to maximise revenue it’s always best to enlist the support of professional SEO services.
