Keyword Research 101

When it comes to anything online, Keyword Research should be your foundation.

Keyword Research is by far the most critical part of your online marketing plane, no matter what kind of traffic you are trying to attract.

Don’t get me wrong, everyone does some level of Keyword Research, but the quality of the results are usually less than useful. It just so happens that business owners do not think of their business the same way their clients do. I have never had a client bring me relevant keywords, even though some clients have invested years and thousands of dollars into the research and marketing based on those keywords.

One example is a client that had about 36 keywords variations. They had 65% exposure online for those terms (which is really good). However, all of those words combined had a total search of 79 times per month in the entire US!

During the time that I have worked with this client (just over a year) we have moved contact traffic to the map listing, and replaced it with relevant keyword based traffic. You just have to have good keywords to start with.

So, Keyword Research 101:

1. Start with what you think your keywords should be.

2. Find the variations of those keywords that Google will suggest to people as they begin to search. There is specialized software available for this, but you probably will not be able to find it (not for sale to general public). So just start typing variations of your keywords into Google and take note of the suggestions.

3. Sift through for the relevant keyword phrases, and run these through Google’s keyword tool (you may need an Adwords account to access this) to find the search traffic and competition for these keywords. Make sure that you select exact match.

4. Select your keywords now, based on; The higher the traffic the better, the lower the competition the better.

Now you have good relevant keywords to work with. If this does not sound like the kind of work you are comfortable with, we offer this Keyword Research as a service.