Getting the Basics Right: Keyword Research
21:04, Monday, 04 April 2011
You wouldn't embark on any marketing campaign without first conducting some basic market research; and SEO should be no different. The tools are out there, to assist you in proving the demand for your products and services, before you need to invest any time or money.
When it comes to market share in the search engines stakes, Google still reigns supreme, and they happily share details of keyword demand with any and all their potential customers. Check out the Google Keyword Research Tool, and do some basic searches, for terms which loosely describe what you're offering. The tool will suggest some in-demand search terms, for you to optimise your content for. Here's what to look for:
- Relevance - First things first; make sure that the terms you're considering are highly-relevant to your offering. Also consider the likely proximity to a purchase decision the prospect might be, based on their terminology.
- Demand - Ensure there are a good, healthy number of daily searches for your chosen terms. Balance this with relevance, as more-generic terms will often receive a relatively large number of searches in comparison to more-targeted keywords.
- Competition - Ensure that the number of competing pages (those which are optimised towards the chosen term) is kept as low as possible. Your chances of ranking for highly-competitive terms could well make for a lengthy and expensive campaign, resulting in poor ROI in the short-to-medium term.
Whatever your line of business, there are usually a good many high-value keywords still being overlooked by the competition. Invest some time in getting this first, basic step right, and you could reap the rewards in next to no time.
Tags: SEO,keyword research