Keyword Research: Critical Step In SEO

Keyword research is the practice used by SEO professionals to find actual “search terms” people tend to enter into the search engines when conducting a search for a specific thing. Keyword research is a very vital procedure in SEO. It’s where search engine optimization starts. The success or failure of search engine optimization depends on how good or bad your keyword research for your website. If your website is selling products or rendering services and you made choose the appropriate keywords for your website, search engines will see its relativity when a user (who is your potential customer, too) hit a search query with your keywords on it.

The first thing to do when conducting a keyword research is brainstorming. List down all the potential keywords your customer might type in in search box. Mix up 3 to 4 single keyword to come up with with keyphrase (phrase composed of keywords) your customers might tend to use as search query. You can do it either with your self alone or with a group.

After the brainstorming, you need to filter your listed keywords / keyphrases using keywords suggestion tools. These tools will help you find out how often a keyword or keyphrase searched for (and get suggestions). There are lots of  keyword suggestion tools to choose from. Here is the list of keywords suggestion tools I’m recommending for you to use in your keyword research:

Keyword Discovery Keyword Suggestion Tool – this tool show how many users search for a specific keyword based on monthly search query. It also identify common spellings and misspellings, and discover which terms are impacted by seasonal trends (mostly useful for PPC).

Google Insights Geo-Targeted Suggestion Tool – this tool provided by Google will help you know which keywords are commonly used based on your targeted period within a given period (i.e., the HOT KEYWORDS for the past 3 months). Very useful in geo targeted optimization / marketing.

Free Word Tracker – like Keyword Discovery Keyword Suggestion Tool, this tool show how many users search for a specific keyword; it can also identify common spellings and misspellings. The only difference is that it show search query volume on daily basis. (not monthly search query)

Google Search Engine – Google itself can suggest related search term on your given keywords / keyphrases.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool – a keyword suggestion tools used for PPC program; webmasters can create their own ads and choose keywords.

Keep in mind that you’re not only checking to see if enough people are searching for a particular word, you’re also trying to determine how competitive that phrase is in terms of rankings. There are two things to pay attention to when making this decision: how many other sites are competing for the same word and how strong are those sites’ rankings. Yes, keyword suggestion tools might give you keywords or keyphrases with high search query volume, but if you are about to compete for more than hundred millions of competitors, you better think twice before using such keywords like that.

Next after filtering your keywords using keyword suggestion tools is polishing more the list of keywords. You need to filter out your filtered keywords so that you’ll know which is the best among the rest. To do this, make a spreadsheet listing all your keywords on the first column, their corresponding search query volume on the second column, and the number of competitors on the third column. Start by highlight the terms that most closely target the subject and theme of your web site. Take into consideartion also the search query volume over the number of competitors. Those keywords that are far related about your website and you think is hard to compete with is need to be deleted. Then, from these remaining keywords, create a mix of both broad and targeted keywords. You’ll need both to rank well. Yes, broad terms are important because they describe what your web site is all about; however, they won’t increase the level of qualified traffic coming into your site.

Let’s make this blog as an example. This blog is about SEO, right? I might tend to rank in “SEO” and/or “search engine optimization” keywords. Targeting these keywords alone might give me high traffic but not from my targeted audience. By only targeting broad terms, customers won’t know what my blog is all about not until they land on my site. So, what I need to do now is that I need to rank also in much specific keywords like “search engine optimization tutorials” or “search engine optimization tips” (something like that). Targeted terms are often easier to rank for and help bring qualified traffic.Targeted terms strengthen the theme created with the broader phrases.

Keyword research is very important; pay enough time and effort studying which keywords is best to use. These keywords will play a big role in your whole search engine optimization process.