Before embarking on your SEO campaign, the first and arguably most important thing to consider is your keyword research. Taking the time to build a list of well researched and relevant keywords for the target market you’re aiming at will create a healthy ROI in terms of viewing impressions on the SERPs, traffic visiting the site, enquiry forms filled out and ultimately sales.
Failing to correctly implement keyword research, like too many small businesses do, could result in customers being unable to find your site and it’s products. You could sell the best products in the industry but if they are unable to be found then they aren’t going to sell. An epic failure in business terms if you ask me!
It will not only be economical in the near future to carry out a successful keyword research campaign but doing it as soon as possible and doing it right will bring a wide customer base and continued custom throughout your time at the top of the SERPs. The repeat custom percentage will increase and consumers will be happy with their industry leading product, therefore will continue to buy from you – and as a knock-on effect of this, Google will recognise the loyalty from customers and the increase in popularity of your products so will continue to allow you to dominate the top spots of the search engines; ensuring the cycle keeps revolving in favour of you and your business.
If you want to stay competitive and rank above your competition, you need to implement a thorough keyword campaign that will not only target the keywords with the most search volume but will also target phrases with the least competition and the ones with the highest conversion rate. All this equates to effective keywords that will target what it is your customers are really searching for.
A few do’s and don’ts…
- DO see keyword research as THE most important on-page SEO strategy on your site.
- DO take your time to ensure you get it right. You will see a rapid increase in sales when done correctly.
- DO enter the mind of the consumer. Target relevant keywords that customers will be searching for.
- DON’T assume you know what keywords you should be targeting before writing the content for your pages.
- DON’T look for volume only. Often the most searched terms are the most irrelevant to your business.
- DON’T try to get in amongst the big players of the industry immediately. Start smaller and target long-tail keywords.
#1 Brainstorm keyword categories
The thought of actually sitting down and putting together a huge list of potential keywords can be very unnerving to say the least. However, this is the most important part of keyword research. Here you simply take note of everything you think that potential customers/clientele will type into the search engines in order to bring them to a product that you’re selling. The trick here is to start with your most lucrative/important products first and do research for that particular product only. This will create relevant keywords for one product which will either have one page for the category of the keyword or have it’s own individual page in your site with it’s own relevant content containing the keyword/s which you research. Either way is well documented however we advise you create fewer pages with each ‘category’ page targeting numerous keywords. This way you will get more internal links pointing at the same page rather than the links being diluted to each individual ‘product’ page.
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It would be beneficial here to understand all the sub-categories that come with each individual product i.e. if you was selling mattresses and beds, you would include targeted keywords which really zone-in on the product you’re trying to sell. Things like ‘memory foam double mattress’ or ‘cheap four poster wooden bed’ should be included to create a really broad yet targeted number of keywords for each specific ‘category’ page.
Try to think of and include every possible variation of the keywords and phrases to ensure you have a solid, all-round list of potential keywords for your products. The more the merrier here. It could be beneficial to ask people who aren’t familiar with your products or the industry to throw a few ideas together as these people often have the ‘average Joe’ way of thinking which could be deemed as the way of thinking for the average person – or in other words; the majority of people searching for your products.
#2 Find out the volume of searches
So you have a list of potential keywords and phrases. The next step is to put them into some sort of research tool. Keyword research tools allow you to get an instant evaluation of the keywords you’ve put together and will filter out the bad ones whilst letting you know which of the list will be the most appropriate to use in terms of search volume. There are a number of tools available to find out keyword volume:
Wordtracker
is a good one for researching about certain phrases and checking their popularity amongst your competitors.
WordStream
is another site which offers results in PPC marketing and SEO. It can help with keyword organisation and profitability.
Google Suggest
is a tool that can find relevant synonyms and broad matches for your initial keywords. Good for finding terms you may have missed.
Microsoft’s AdCentre tool
is excellent for finding out other things like the average click-through-rate over time or the average cost of a PPC campaign per click etc. It allows you to fully understand which specific keywords/phrases are going to be of best value for your business.
The tool of choice by us and the majority of the more savvy SEO campaigners is the Google AdWord’s Tool. Google AdWords is a free piece of technology designed to combine all the characteristics of the other suggested tools and bring them together into one easy interface which is simple to use and highly accurate. So when searching for the keyword volume, Google AdWords should be the tool of choice.
#3 Find out the competition
Google AdWords allows you to collect together the most suitable keywords and phrases from the list and compare them to the keywords being used by your competitors. Taking a double approach to researching keywords will essentially give you the information you need to take what your competitors are using and adapt it to bolster yourself within the ranks.
In order to find out the individual competition that each keyword possesses and to find out how difficult it will be to rank, you need to check out the SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Tool. The name is pretty self-explanitory; the tool shows you how difficult it is for a specific keyword to rank.
#4 How “strong” are your competitors?
Another added benefit of the SEOmoz keyword difficulty tool is it’s ability to assess your competitors. It’s as simple as typing in the URL of your most relevant competitors and it gives you a hugely detailed analysis of where they’re excelling, where they’re not putting as much emphasis and everything in-between. Knowing how your competitors tick will ensure you stay in the lead and ensure they remain in your shadow.
#5 Know what makes a great keyword
The secret formula for the “perfect keyword/phrase” can be found within these 3 main principles:
High Search Volume - Well, I say high volume but what I mean is highest volume. And what I mean by that is medium-small volume. The reason I say this is because the high volume searches are the most competitive. Google AdWords is the best for this purpose. The trick is to find the highest volume of searches twinned with the lowest competition. This way you’re giving yourself a chance to rank in a competitive yet achievable market which allows access to significant amounts of traffic as a result.
Low Competition - This is where the SEOmoz keyword difficulty tool is at it’s best. Finding out the keywords which have the least competition will ensure that you appear higher within the searches and will result in the majority of impressions which converts to higher click-through rates from the SERPs. A higher percentage of low volume searches is definitely better than no percentage of high volume searches.
High Conversion Rate - Google Analytics is a good piece of software which allows you to run PPC campaigns. You can test your keywords to see if the click-through rate is worth pursuing for your content. The ones that lead to conversions are the best ones and should be the phrases that you go for. PPC campaigns can give you a good idea about leads and conversions and they allow you to target multiple keyword groups and gives you the opportunity to set up goals.
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A good way to judge what keywords or phrases are going to have a high click-through rate and ultimately conversion rate is by looking at the cost per click (CPC). As a guide, the higher the CPC, the more competitive the keyword. However for a more accurate campaign we advise you create a PPC campaign and test it yourself but this is just a quick tip that may be beneficial to businesses operating on a tighter budget.
#6 Put your research to good use
So now you have a good list of maybe 10 or 20 strong keywords that are less competitive and have a good search volume. They should be phrases that you would query if you was the customer with no knowledge of the industry and if done correctly, you should notice that you may already have some of the phrases scattered around your existing copy already as these are the terms that industry voices are echoing already.
You need to put your keywords into categories that all point towards a similar product. e.g. So ‘cheap football boots’ and ‘women’s Adidas football boots’ and ‘men’s black studded football boots’ should all be in the same category titled ‘Football Boots’. It is recommended that you relate three or four keywords to each category page for the best effects.
This should simply be a case of amending your current content by changing a few words to incorporate the new keywords you’ve researched. If you haven’t created your content yet and were simply doing research to find out the topics to write about then your topics are your keywords. Your copywriting shouldn’t be loaded with the keywords as ‘keyword stuffing’ is frowned upon and the search engines and users alike will see this as a spammy tactic and degrade your site and it’s pages accordingly. Instead you should seamlessly incorporate the words into the text to keep it readable to the human visitors who are ultimately the people you are aiming your content at first and foremost.
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You’ll need to incorporate keywords into other areas of your site other than your copywriting to gain maximum effect. You can add keywords to your page titles, permalinks, meta titles, meta descriptions, alt text and anchor text. Front loading the keywords in the titles i.e. “KEYWORD Can Help To Change Your Life” has been proven to make a bigger impact than putting the keyword anywhere else within the title.
There’s a great post (it’s a little dated now but is still extremely useful) by SEOmoz‘s CEO and co-founder Rand Fishkin about the perfectly optimised page. In the post he explains how keyword density is so important, why keyword prominence should not be overlooked and explains everything you need to know about ways of improving your on-page optimisation. It’s well worth a read!
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One thing to note is that algorithms, websites and customer’s needs are constantly evolving. Keep up to date with your keyword research to stay ahead of the competition and cement your place at the top of the search engines.
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I saved this vital piece of information for last as I feel it’s the most important! It is just a simple piece of information that you should keep in the back of your mind and should stop you from cutting corners when carrying out your keyword research. In the search results, ranking #1 gets more traffic than ranking #2, #3 and #4 combined!
Congratulations, you’re now ready to put your newly created/amended content live! Now it’s time to sit back and analyse what’s working and what’s not and act accordingly.
What has worked for you? Leave a comment below, I’d be happy to carry on the conversation.
Adam.
