Before building a new site and/or bringing it online, it is imperative to do keyword research in order to optimize your search rankings. In addition, good keyword research can help you find a new angle for the information on your site in order to differentiate yourself from the potentially thousands or even millions of websites that have similar subjects. That’s all well and good, but how do you get started?
The first thing to know when you’re doing keyword research is what you’re looking for. While this is obviously a very fundamental part of your research, many people still end up charging off blindly into the world of keyword statistics without having any idea what those numbers or ranges mean. Namely, you want to find keywords that have search traffic sufficient for your goals, but have minimal competition. Alternatively, many people choose a single keyword that is extremely popular, but has a lot of competition, and then combine it with less-competitive keywords in order to broaden the possibilities for that site being found. Additionally, the traffic that comes in for those less-popular keywords can help boost the page rank of the site, allowing it to also rank higher in the very popular keyword’s search results.
There are hundreds of tools available for doing keyword research that will show how often a keyword is searched for, as well as how many other sites already exist that use that particular keyword, or how many high-quality results that search already gets. Some of these tools are hosted by actual search engines and may only show search result numbers from their own search engine. Try to use the tool that is the closest to your target as possible. For instance, if you think that most of your traffic will be coming through Google, then using the keyword tool through Google AdWords will likely give you the most accurate information for your goals.
Now you have to actually find potential keywords for your website. While most of these tools will give suggestions for a given word or phrase, there are literally millions of different ways people phrase searches and so there may be a lot of missed opportunities if you don’t go in with as many items to look up as possible. Consider the purpose of your site. Is it to sell a particular product, or promote a particular interest? List some of the things you think people would type into a search if they were looking for your site. Brainstorm…use bad grammar, common misspellings, awkward phrasing, anything you can think of that might point to your site. Think of your own search behavior…do you always type in a clear phrase, or simply a handful of words that are relevant to what you’re looking for?
Next, go to your selected research tool and start typing in the words and phrases you came up with in the brainstorming session. Make a list of all of the ones that look promising, along with relevant suggested keywords that also look like they could work for your site, and cross out anything that just isn’t searched for. For each term, make detailed notes on the kind of traffic and competition each already has.
With your list of possible keywords, start thinking about the layout of your site. How many pages will it be? How much content do you intend to put into it? Pick your popular, high-competition keyword that will go into the main page, and possibly every page, of your site. Next, select secondary keywords with little competition to go into each page; these will likely be different on every page, even if it’s only a slight difference in wording. The more of these less-popular keywords you can work into your site’s various pages, the more chances your site has of bringing in traffic from that untapped search, and consequently the more likely you’ll get significant traffic that can help boost your rank for the popular term that could earn you excellent revenue if it hits the first page of search results.