Why Keyword Research is Important

One of the most crucial parts of setting up a website and carrying out search engine optimization or SEO is identifying and selecting the proper “Long-Tail” key-phrases.  Your industry sector key-phrases must be strategically embedded into the relevant content of the text on your site.

When TEAM SES identifies the least resistant key-phrases in your industry sector and builds your site content around them, you will be 90% ahead of most of your competitors.

Business persons seeking an Internet presence are often at the mercy of “conventional wisdom”. Usually they choose a web designer without regard for search engine placement.  A good metaphor is house building.  One must create a sound architectural plan before coordinating the decor.

People spend far more time on their new site than they first anticipated.  They work in conjunction with their designer and ultimately they create and launch a “great” looking website. Unfortunately spiders do not have the same ascetic values as people.  Beauty to a spider is all about the structure and content of the site.

They then sit and wait for the visitors to come in their droves and the business to roll in. Once they realize that this is not going to happen, they then start to look for ways to generate traffic, and they some of them discover SEO.

If this sounds familiar to you, do not feel un-informed.   Even the major companies and corporations have made the very same mistake.

The right way to develop a website is to carry out extensive research in your market sector, identify and study your competitors websites and build an exhaustive “Long-Tail” key-phrase list. If done correctly the difference will be dramatic.

The Biggest Keyword Mistakes

Keywords Are Too General

The biggest mistake most people make when starting out with keyword research is that they work with words and phrases that are too general.

Trying to rank in the search engines for a term like “car parts” is like trying to climb Mount Everest in flip-flops.  It is not going to happen!

One must start on the long tail keywords first and work up.  Long tail simply means longer phrases example “steering wheel for Ford Granada”.

When you are going to try to compete with your more established competitors, you must sneak in via the back way undetected.

By putting in the effort to rank for the longer keyword phrases you will eventually start to win positions on the shorter and harder to rank for words.

Competition is too Tough

Some markets will take far more time, effort and money to rank for than they are worth.

When researching the keywords you need to consider the investment in time and money it will take to rank on the first page of the search engines, compared to the rewards (targeted traffic, leads and sales) you can expect.

Working On Too Many Keywords

Another mistake is to try to rank for too many keywords at once.  While you must search out as many related words as you can, when it comes to ranking for certain keyword terms you must be selective and work on small groups of words and phrases at a time.

Keyword Research Basics

 

Collecting Keywords

 

The first stage is to collect as many words as you can, related to your market or industry sector.

To do this first write down the purpose of your business and the main topics of the website.  Is the purpose to sell products, is the objective to sell ‘how to’ or information products about a particular subject.  Maybe you offer services to a specific industry or you want to build a brand or corporate image.  Make sure that you cover all the various aspects of your business.  Make a list of the things you want your website to portray and say about your business.

Once you have the list you can then come up with your core terms.

Using one of the many keyword tools available type in your main keyword and look for other terms that could also be classed as core keywords.

For example “car parts” could also include:-

• auto parts
• vehicle parts
• car spare parts
• car spares
• auto spares
• new car parts

These are all terms meaning the same thing and will have a list of sub or themed keywords related to these header or umbrella terms.

Add the list to a spreadsheet and then type in each of your core terms and add the resulting keyword lists to your spreadsheet.  You should also add the number of monthly, global searches next to each word.

You could, of course, use “car” as the core term but as discussed this is too general and would bring up keywords that would be totally unrelated to your business.

However, if you also serviced and repaired cars then you would need to have another set of core terms related to “car servicing” and “car repairs”

Next go to one of the major search engines and type in your main keyword phrases.  Enter your keywords in inverted commas (“keyword phrase here”).  Using inverted commas will bring back results that match the whole phrase.

Add the number of page results to your spreadsheet next to the number of searches that you entered earlier.

Then take a note of the URL’s of the top 10 domain names for each of your main phrases.

Once you have completed the list visit each site and take time to look at each of the sites, look at how they are laid out and the content that they have.  Pay attention to how the content is grouped and the way that the pages are linked.

Make a note of anything you like about the website or ideas that you might be able to use on your own site.  This is not to do with the actual keyword research but it is the worth spending the time doing this while you are in keyword research mode.

Now go to the Google keyword tool once again and add each of the domains.  This will bring up a list of the keywords that relate to them.  Add these to your spreadsheet.

Finally try to think of what your prospective customer would type into the search engines to find your products or services.  Remember, most people come to the internet for information first.

• What questions would they ask?
• What would you type in if you were looking for your product or website?

Most people will type in a phrase or sentence, not just one or two words.

If your service or product is area related then consider that most people would more than likely enter the town or region into the search box too “car servicing in Cambridge” for example.  Keep adding these to your spreadsheet list.

The next thing is to sort the keyword phrases and remove any duplicates, you can do this in your spreadsheet alternatively there are software programs that can do this for you.

Also remove keywords that have very few searches for them.

There is no hard and fast number here, it will depend on the market you are trying to target and the total number of searches for all of your keywords.

Organizing Your Keywords For The Best Effect

Once you have your keyword list sorted, the next step is to break them into categories.

Set out your main headings or core terms and then decide which heading they belong to.

This is a time consuming and very boring job to do but it is so very important.

At this time it is not important how many searches or results that there are for each term, just put them into the various core groups.

Finding the Golden Nuggets

Just because a keyword phrase has a lot of searches does not necessarily mean that is commercially viable or that ranking for this term will bring you more sales.

You also have to take into consideration that while a particular search term has fewer searches, generally the more specific the phrase is that they enter into the search engine box, the higher the commercial value will be.  It also follows that the longer the keyword phrase the lower the number of searches will be made.

It is far easier to rank for 10 different, long tail keyword phrases than a one or two word keyword phrase

Ratio Calculations

We are now going to look at the ratio of searches to results to see which keywords we are going to try and work on first.

Take the number of searches and divide it by the search results.  This will give you the search to results ratio.

Number of searches/Search results = % Ratio 600 searches with 10,000 results is better than 3,500 searches with 95,000 results (600/10,000=6% whereas 3,500/95,000=3.68%)

The higher the number of searches and the lower the number of results the easier it will be for SES to rank for a given key phrase.

You should now have a long list of keywords in their relevant groups or themes all based on your core terms and then sorted by the SRR (search results ratio)

Expanding Your Keyword List

The next step is also time consuming but once again it is imperative to get this stage right.

You now need to take each core search term and come up with ‘expansion’ keywords to build the list out – Keyword + expansion or expansion + keyword

If you were selling car parts then the list of expansion words could include:-

• Ford
• GM
• Mercedes
• Porsche
• VW
• Volvo
• Cheap
• Supplier
• Dealer
• Stockist
• Cambridge
• Second hand

Misspellings Mis-spellings

Quite often there are common misspellings and you should not forget these, especially with difficult to spell words like vehicle.  Try typing these into the keyword tool and see the number of searches that are done.  This is often missed by website owners and you can sometimes find words with a good number of searches but little or no competing page results.

This trick can also be used with highly competitive keywords with a large number of searches.  People can often hit the ‘wrong’ key or spell the word ‘backwards’

I quite often trying to type too fast one makes mistakes like the few I have made here.

It is not worth using this technique for low search volume words.

Do not over use this technique either as spelling mistakes do not look good on a website.  When using this strategy, it is better to put these misspellings in your blog.  Sometimes we have added the list of misspellings to the bottom of a page you can see a good example of this technique here http://www.portraitpaintinggallery.com/  Click on the link and scroll to the bottom of the page.

Variations Of The Phrase

You now need to take the list starting with the highest ratio first and add as many variations as possible to the list:-

• Spare parts for Mercedes Benz
• Mercedes Benz spare parts
• Mercedes spare parts
• Spare parts for Mercedes
• Spares for Mercedes benz
• Mercedes spares

You are now ready to get started on the structure or restructure of your website.

By using the themes it will be an easy process to determine which heading and sub headings your site will need.

You also need to create unique and quality content based on a variety of your keywords.

Ranking for keywords that are relevant and profitable for your business is the aim of the game and by starting with the high ratio long tail keyword phrases and mixing them in with the harder to rank for, but highly searched terms you will have a well rounded website that will be seen as an authority site and you will begin your journey to the top of the SERPS.

Summary

 

1. Decide on the main theme or topic of your website
2. Search for keywords related to your main core topics
3. 3. Research these Keywords
4. Research the competition
5. Calculate the SRR
6. Expand your Keywords
7. Create or edit the structure of your website
8. Choose 5 or 10 keyword phrases plus variations
9. Assess where you rank for these phrases today on the 3 main search engines Google, Yahoo and Bing.
10. 10. Add unique content
11. Repeat steps 7, 8 and 9