Keyword Research

1. Figure out what keywords are being searched.

Use a tool to find out what words are the most searched on. You can do this in a lot of places.

Overture: Choose ‘keyword selector tool’ on the right side and type in what you think people are using to find you.

WebCEO: You can download a free version of their software and use it to do keyword research. It is an EXCELLENT tool and I highly recommend it.

 



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 Web CEO

There are a ton of other tools out there, these 2 just happen to be my favorites.

2. Find out what WORKS!

That’s right, find your competition and look at their site closely. Start by checking out their metatags. You can do this by opening their home page, go to VIEW - VIEW SOURCE. The metatags *should* be at the very top of the page.

Of course, just because they’re using certain terms does NOT mean they’re working for them. But it does give you a good place to start.

Start making your list. Track the number of daily searches the word/term gets because that will come in handy when we’re analyzing them later.

Next Step

Ok, you’ve checked out the competition and did your research. You know what keywords are being searched on and how many sites out there are currently optimizing for those words (KEI).

KEI - explained

The KEI is a ratio of the number of searches for a keyword with the number of search results.

So, if the keyword ‘web design‘ is searched 4000 times per day, and there are 1 million results for that keyword, the KEI is .004. The lower the KEI, the harder it will be to become well placed with that term - there is EXTREME competition for that keyword.

Ideally, you want a high KEI, which will mean it is easier to rank high on that keyword. But unfortunately, it isn’t that simple; there are a lot of things to consider:

1. Where did you start? It’s much easier to get from number 50,000 to number 200 than it is to get from number 25 to number 1.

2. Comparision shopping? Not all keywords are created equally, but the KEI compares them as if they are. Also, the competition may be extremely skilled at SEO and may be tough to knock down from their high positions.

Get your keyword list together

After you’ve checked out and considered the KEI of your keyword list, there are some other things to consider.

1. Market saturation: some terms are very general (such as HOSTING, WEB DESIGN, etc.). With more sophisticated users, it is possible to focus in closer on keywords, making it easier to achieve good results and quite possibly improving your ROI.

For example, let’s say you optimize for the keyword ‘web design’ and reach the lofty #1 position. Whenever a user types in ‘web design’ your web site comes up and they click on it. This results in over 2000 unique visitors per day, but rarely a sale. Why? Because it’s possible that when someone was searching for ‘web design’ they were looking for:

Need I go on?

The key to a good ROI is targeting your keywords just enough so that the visitor finds what they are looking for - YOU!

Some suggestions:

1. Think regional: Are you marketing a service to a local area? Put those words into your keywords. Example: web design in washington, web design in spokane. These are both regionally specific keywords that will narrow the focus of your search and most likely, bring in visitors that are looking for your services.

2. Think detailed: Go a little bit deeper into the mind of the search engine user and try to determine what they would type in to find your web site. If they’re looking for a hosting company, would they type in just ‘hosting’? Unlikely. Probably they would tag on an adjective that would reflect exactly what they’re looking for:

Research research research - did I mention research?

Figuring out the right keywords isn’t a quick process. Once you focus in a bit from your first list of words, you’ll need to check the KEI on the new, targeted words, as well. From there, you should get a list of keywords that are on their way to working for your web site!

Finishing Up

Put the final touches on your keyword list by checking the KEI of your new terms and looking to see who is currently ranking well for those terms.

You will want to put in a little bit of time on research so that you can be certain that your keywords are targeted. It won’t make any difference if you’re ranking well on terms that don’t bring in the type of visitors that you want - the kind that buy the products, services or other that the web site has to offer.

At this point, it’s a good idea to take this list to the client and make sure he/she fully understands and signs off on it. Many times I’ve moved forward with selected keywords only to have the client say - this isn’t an appropriate term, what are you doing! It’s best to always double check and get a final approval before moving forward.

What now?

Good question. If you have access to some kind of stats reporting, I would suggest taking a baseline report, just to get an idea of any kind of progress that is made with your SEO efforts. This is especially important if you’re being paid to do basic SEO - I’ve found that clients LOVE reports!

Some basic terms you’ll want to understand include:

Ok, enough of the basics of keywords. 

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