Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

SEO Keyword Research

M.-J. Taylor, Cyber Key Web Design

What’s the SEO Buzz on Keywords?

Why and How to do Keyword Research

You think you know your product and your market – but do you know the mind of your buyer? What words does your typical buyer type into a search to find a product or service like yours? And why do you need to know?

Keyword research is not just about finding the most searched phrase to target your market – keyword research helps you to

How do you find what keywords searchers actually use?

Make a List and Check It Twice

Start with a list of obvious phrases – your product or service – brand names you sell – and have a look at other sites that sell your sort of product. Take that initial list and type each word, singly at first, into a keyword research tool such as Word Tracker or Keyword Discovery (both have free research tools or you can subscribe for more in depth analysis of keyword competition or longer phrases).

The free search tools:

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

Make a table or spreadsheet and record each keyword and the number of daily queries, ignoring words and phrases that clearly don’t apply. Do a search on each variation to find longer tailed phrases and other variations. Leave the list alone for a few days and then revisit it.

Second Opinion? Get a third.

When you think you have found all the relevant terms and weeded out the irrelevant research results, share your list with colleagues, associates and friends, and let them tell you what they think. Don’t stop there – go to the source: the customer. Ask people who call or email you how they found you and if they say through a search engine ask what words they typed into the search box. Don’t be shy about asking. Most people love to be helpful and you may be surprised by how much people remember. You will learn a lot about your customers and how search terms are structured, particularly for your market.

Refine Your Keywords Again – And Again

Edit your list down to 10-20 phrases (or one per page of content) that will guide your content, SEO copywriting and on site optimization initially.

Never stop refining your list and optimizing. And do arm your site with a strong traffic program (I like Google Analytics, which is free. Traffic analysis will allow you to track what keywords searchers used to land on your site – you may discover some new ones!

Next – Onsite SEO Basics

M.-J. Taylor

SEO Design Consultant
Cyber Key Web Design

           

Posted on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 11:12 am and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.