For anyone starting a website, keyword research is the most important step to take before creating a site or even before purchasing a domain because you want to include keywords in the domain.
Many new bloggers (and webmasters) either neglect keyword research altogether or perform the most basic research of guessing what keyword to rank for and checking how many searches per month are performed for it. This approach is NOT enough if you want to succeed. Most likely, you will target the wrong keyword and end up wondering why you have no traffic.
So you need to know How to do keyword research effectively
If you want to know how to do keyword research effectively I recommend Google’s keyword tool at adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. Don’t worry, despite being created to help advertisers choose keywords to target in adwords, it also provides an excellent resource for people performing keyword research for their own sites. I recommend this tool since the statistics are specific to google… the undisputed search engine leader.
Create a spreadsheet for your research. Label your columns: Searches, Keyword, Competition, Allintitle and Allinurl
Here is an explanation of each heading:
1. Searches: Monthly searches for the specified keyword/keyphrase
2. Keyword: The actual keyword or keyphrase
3. Competition: The number of pages targeting that exact keyword
4. Allintitle: The number of pages targeting the keyword in their title.
5. Allinurl: The number of sites with the keyword in their domain name
The first two columns of data come directly from the Google tool. The other three columns can be researched at Google by performing the following searches.
To determine competition perform a search for your keyword with quotes (“) around it (example. “Weight loss”). Google then returns results from websites targeting the exact keyword/keyphrase. This filters out sites targeting ‘weight’ or ‘loss’ alone. Enter the number of results generated in the competition column beside the keyword. The number of results is found at the top right hand side of the browser window.
To discover how many websites contain a specific keyword in their titles perform an allintitle search. The format for this is allintitle:your keyword. Simply replace ‘your keyword’ with the keyword/phrase that you want data for. Enter the number of results returned into the allintitle column beside the keyword.
To perform an allinurl search use the format ‘allinurl:your keyword’ and enter the corresponding number of results in the allinurl column
Why search allintitle and allinurl? Because using primary keywords in the title and URL is an extremely important factor in gaining good rankings with search engines for those keywords. Ultimately, the plan is to use primary keywords in both. If our targeted keyword appears in the URL of 4000 sites then that is the maximum number of competitors we have to compete with. Including the keyword in both URL and title puts a site ahead of most other sites in terms of on-page SEO.
How To Know Which Keywords To Target
It depends on how much SEO experience you have which keywords you should target. It’s easier to rank for low competition keywords. In general, inexperienced marketers should target keywords with less than 20,000 results in the allinurl column. This makes it easier to outrank the other sites. This may seem like a cop-out. However, a site that ranks well for lower competition keywords will find it easier to rank for related high competition keywords.
The main thing to remember is that the more laser focused your traffic is, the better your conversion will be. For example: A site selling GPS systems shouldn’t try ranking for the keyword ‘GPS systems’ because it is too general and has massive amount competition making it difficult to rank for. Congratulations if you can rank for that term, but a person searching for ‘GPS system’ isn’t very likely to buy. Most likely that searcher is in research phase. But a person searching for ‘Tom Tom GPS system’ is a much more targeted prospect. And ‘Tom Tom GO 930 prices’ is even more targeted since it indicates that they are looking to buy. Yes, far less people will search for that term, but those who do are in buying phase. It’s better to grab them in buying phase than in research phase!
Don’t target keywords that are too general simply because they have more searches. What you need is traffic that converts to sales. As you gain SEO experience and your site gains reputation (i.e. Google pagerank) you can target keywords with more competition. This way, you slowly build up the amount of traffic your site receives from search engines. Of course, you can purchase traffic from search engines by running PPC (pay per click) campaigns. But again it’s important to target converting keywords.
Ideally, each page of a website should target one primary keyword and a couple of secondary related keywords. It’s great if those keywords are composite keywords. Composite keywords being keyphrases containing more than one keyword such as ‘online marketing techniques’ because it contains three keywords
including; online marketing techniques, online marketing and marketing techniques. While two word keyphrases will have higher competition making them more difficult to rank for, having them in place will mean you won’t have to add them later when you want to build your ranking for them… and yes, you will want to rank for them in the future. SEO is an ongoing process.
Note the statement that ‘each PAGE of a website should target one primary keyword and a couple of secondary related keywords’. Subpages will target different keywords. Ultimately, a site containing 50 individual pages can target 50 main keywords and around 100 secondary keywords or more.
So what determines the best keywords to target? Two factors:
1. The number of searches (the higher the better)
2. The amount of competition (the lower the better – under 20,000 for inexperienced marketers.)
These factors should be combined. Don’t target a keyword simply because it has a lot of searches. The more general a search term is the more competition there will be to rank for it. Try to find keywords with both factors.
So know you know how to do keyword research effectively. Go out and do it, find those profitable keywords and good luck with your online endeavors.
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