Keywords
- key for all doors
Keywords - key for all doors
Keyword research is certainly the most important phase in Search
Engine Optimization process. Whether you hire a SEO company to do
the job or you are doing the SEO process in-house, take your time
during this process. You should not be a spectator, but you should
be an active part of the decision making process.
Try to think as a customer
Before to start the keywords analysis & research process, be
sure that you know how you should perform this process. Try to think
about your keywords as a customer. How would you search for your
product or service? Which keyword or key phrase would you use? Think
about which words or phrases describe best your product or service.
Generic keywords vs. highly targeted key phrases
Surprisingly many companies still believe that increased traffic
will necessary lead to increased sales. Unfortunately this is very
far from the truth. If traffic is not well targeted, visitors will
not found what they are looking for, and they won’t order
anything.
Many companies still make the mistake to attempt to get ranked
for generic keywords. This is often costly mistake. You will simply
loose your time, money and resources to get ranked for generic keyword.
Chances are that if you are in competitive industry you won’t
succeed to achieve top ranking. In many cases, even if you succeed
to get high ranking for generic keyword you won’t benefit
much from that. Let’s elaborate this with an example.
Key phrase “shoes manufacturers” will return worldwide
results, and your competition will be very strong. Even if you manage
to rank high, “conversion to sales rate” will be fairly
low. Some of the people would actually search for “shoes manufacturers”
which are located in Asia. They might enter on your site, and they
will leave without to order anything. You will get more traffic,
and you want increase your sales or establish new business contacts.
None of your goals will be achieved.
That is because your product or service is not exactly what the
people are searching for. Key phrases like “UK shoes manufacturers”
or “EU shoes manufacturers” will have better conversion
and you will get high ranking faster. Why? It’s easier to
get ranked for these key phrases because of smaller number of competitors.
From the other side, because of better targeting your conversion
rate would be higher, because your traffic is better targeted.
Best approach to do find right keywords and key phrases is to get
your generic keyword, and add a specific word to it. Using this
approach you will be able to find yours most important key phrases,
and target your traffic much better. Key phrases are usually two
to five words long.
Think global
In different countries people use different terminology for same
product or service. Be sure that you check your terminology for
your main keywords. Different terminology for your keyword might
be used in Canada, or in Australia. Follow your site statistic,
and if some country is missing, something might be wrong with your
terminology.
How many keywords do you need
Number of the key phrases for which you will optimize your pages
will depend from your budget of course. But be sure to create long
list to select from. Initial keyword research should end with at
least 70 -100 keywords or key phrases.
Your first thought here might be how you will find so many keywords.
Creativity and well knowing your industry will do half of the work.
The tools will do the other half. Wordtracker has free trial which
will tell you how many times the key phrase was searched for last
month. Full version (you can pay for one day only if you want to
use this tool once) is much more powerful tool of course. Overture
has also free tool for keyword research which will give you useful
suggestions. These tools will give you suggestions which you might
not come to your mind, and tell you how many competitors you have
for every keyword.
Next phase should be customizing some of these suggestions and
make the re-check after that. After establishing the main list,
start the elimination. Have in mind that your chances are bigger
if you select bigger number of keywords. It is always best strategy
to optimize each page for one primary and one secondary keyword.
Optimize your main page for your most important key phrase.
Final selection will depend from your budget. You can always optimize
more pages later, so keep the initial keyword list. Best option
is to start to optimize your pages for less competitive key phrases
first. When you achieve high ranking for these key phrases, then
go after more competitive key phrases.
About the Author Zoran Makrevski Search
Engine Positioning Firm SEO.Goto.gr
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