How to do KEYWORD Research
Keyword research is absolutely crucial to your SEO success. In fact, it’s the starting point and most important part of all search engine optimization. All of SEO begins with the selection of a keyword to target, so you will need to know how to do this selection properly.
The 3 Parts to Good Keyword Selection
The most important keyword selection you will do is for your homepage. Your homepage, or root domain, is the page that has the most ranking power and most represents what your site is all about. For this reason you will want to take your time and conduct proper keyword research.
These are the 3 different parts of keyword research that you will need to pay attention to:
Targeted or Not Targeted?
Before you get into any numbers or start crunching data, you need to make sure your keyword is well targeted in the first place. This means selecting a search phrase that would convert the best for visitors arriving at your site. For instance, if you sell graphic design software a bad keyword would be ‘graphic design’. It’s way too vague and not targeted. A better keyword would be ‘graphic design software’, and an even better, more targeted keyword would be ‘buy graphic design software’. The last option would convert the best if you ranked for it.
However, the last option may not be the best keyword to target because of the next part of keyword research…
Search Volume
There’s no point targeting a keyword if it doesn’t get searched for. You can simply use Google’s keyword tool in order to find out what the search volume for a keyword is. Make sure that you choose to only look at the Exact search volume the keywords receive and not the broad volume.
Another important point is to note the difference between local monthly and worldwide monthly search volume. If you are selling a product only domestically or very locally then you don’t want to expect to receive or profit from the international volume.
Competitiveness
Depending on the size of your business, you might have to pass on a keyword that will be too competitive. Single word keywords for example like ‘shoes’ or short buying keywords like ‘buy shoes’ will have very intense competition in the SERPs and might be better left to the Fortune 500 companies.
Here’s a video on how to do a quick analysis of the competition levels in the SERPs.
Overall, a good keyword is the kind that will send targeted, converting visitors, sends enough of them to provide an awesome ROI, and also isn’t too competitive to rank for after a few months or year of search engine optimization. In the end, it all comes down to proper keyword research and knowing how to do it.
