Keyword research is a vital part of any SEO campaign. Thorough keyword research should not be overlooked – that’s SEO 1O1. You can look up all the tricks in the book, but if you haven’t done your research, you could be wasting your time altogether.
Not only is it important to carefully select phrases to target for SEO, but you could also discover the fluctuating trends of shoppers and by looking at what they type into search engines.
The bottom line is, you can’t start a campaign without keyword research, and here we provide you with a beginner’s guide.
1. Keyword Research
Ok, so where do you start? The first thing you need to do is analyse each page of your site, or all the pages you are trying to optimise. With each page, you need to ask yourself:
• What are you offering? (Products / information / services)
• What would you type into Google if you wanted to find the information on this page?
• Are there any secondary key phrases that relate to this page?
Once you’ve jotted down a list of possible key phrases, it’s time to do the research. There are many free or paid keyword research tools available on the World Wide Web (some ready for download and some external), and running phrases through these tools can help you generate more ideas and other keyword variations.
2. Using Keyword Tools
Keyword tools not only help to generate keyword variations, but they can also help you analyse the competitiveness of different words. This is a very important part o your keyword strategy and it’s important to weigh up key phrase search volume against key phrase competitiveness. But don’t just stick to keyword tools when you’re looking at competitors – generate real searches and see who’s on page 1. If major organisations are taking up all the spotlight, you could struggle to compete with them if you’ve just launched.
Sometimes, it’s important to look at other phrases, not just the ones with the most searches if you really want to get value out of your keyword optimisation.
3. Free Online Resources
Here is a list of keyword tools which will be useful for your research:
• Google Keyword Estimator – this free keyword generator is easy to use and can be accessed without setting up a user account. What you can also do with Google Keywords is enter a URL to see what keyword suggestions come back. It could widen your target area or it could indicate that your current on page optimisation is way off the mark!
• SEOBook Keyword Tool – this tool is free of charge to anyone who has an account with SEOBook and it doesn’t cost a thing to join. The tool provides a rough suggestion of daily search volumes for Google, Yahoo! and MSN.
• SEOBook Competitive Research Tool – what another fantastic freebie from SEOBook. This time, you can conduct your research competitively and see what other websites in your industry / sector are ranking for.
• Wordstream – Wordstream Keywords is a just one part of a whole stream of internet marketing tools, and works by aggregating over a trillion searches to bring you back a reliable estimate of search volumes.
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