Choosing Your Keywords Wisely
Getting found by search engines all starts with your keywords. If you have the right ones it can help move you ahead of your competition. If you have the wrong ones, you can be lost in obscurity. So when it comes to the all important decision of what to target and where, is your process for selection thorough enough? Here are only a few of the important steps in choosing keywords wisely.
Research
You may think you know your best keywords, but without doing some research, you may be wrong. The best way to get a decent snapshot of what’s being searched for in your market are keyword tools. Some really smart people have made some impressive tools to help figure out keyword volume and competition. If you have a sizable budget to invest in tools like Keyword Discovery or Spy-fu, that’s great. But if you don’t then you can get the same kinds of information for free, just without all of the bells and whistles. The Google Keywords tool is extremely useful for generating most of the same indicators. Just make sure to use numbers as more of a gauge than a certainty. By spending some time looking at different phrases and numbers you’ll be able to get an idea of what people are searching for in your market and target the most popular combinations.
Analysis
Once you’ve got a good list of core phrases, based on what’s popular you need to break it down into what’s practical. Take the competitive numbers from your research and combine it with a simple Google search of your own. Take a few major keywords and look at:
- Your competition, who are they?
- What strengths do they have and how difficult will it be to beat them?
- Are there a lot of PPC ads in that space?
You may find one or 2 target terms are a little more reachable than others. Look at long-tail phases, questions and informational queries that incorporate those main words. Also if you are tied to a geographical area, look at all possibilities associated with your location. Finally, take into account your own inside knowledge of what adds the most to the bottom line. If one product or service sells better than another, or if something is significantly more profitable, focus in on that.
Testing
Getting the best results means on-going tracking of your work. Study analytics; look at the words bringing visitors in, check bounce rates and how people are responding to your content. Together all of this information is will paint a picture of which keywords are bringing traffic and meeting user intent and which ones are not. Take that information and test different things until you find your best combinations of words and pages.
Choosing the right keywords is one of the most important aspects of getting search engine traffic. So many sites fail to target the right terms in the right way. Or they optimize for certain phrases and then forget to measure their success. In either case it’s a missed opportunity. The potential traffic search engines can bring is immeasurable, and failing to capture any of it because of poor keyword targeting is just unfortunate. When you go through all of the steps of the process with attention to detail you can find the right keywords and hopefully a unique angle that gets you ahead of the competition.
This is a guest post by Jessica. Jessica writes for seosoftware.net a site providing reviews SEO software. Jessica has been writing frequently in recent year. Her work experience includes primarily SEO consulting and link building.
Category: SEO
About the Author (Author Profile)
Shiva Chettri is the editor and owner of Netchunks, a premier blog about Webmaster and Blogging Tips. He intends to make the web a friendlier place by sharing stuffs and articles which will help other webmasters and bloggers to becomes successful. His other interests includes Web Designing, Wordpress and Music of almost every genre. Send +Shiva an email at admin@netchunks.comSubscribe
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Keywords are definitely important, and knowing which ones to aim for is even better. I just wanted to point out that long-tail keywords can be just as important and effective as regular, single keywords. Especially the “how-to” phrases that are often searched.
Delena
Delena Silverfox recently posted..epc Lisburn
You are so right Shiva about choosing your keywords wisely. I just pulled a list for a few keywords for a niche site the other day that seems like it would be profitable. Will have to drill down a bit more and do a test run to see which ones I need to go after and which ones that are just not worthwhile. Thanks
I would pay special attention to testing your keywords. You have to analyse the traffic with some sets of keywords ans choose the most popular ones. Never stumble on one choice. research, find, compare.
I do a lot of testing of keyword phrases before going on extended campaigns.
It pays of in the long run.
Selecting the right keywords is not difficult, but achieving rankings for those may be a challenge depending on competition. That’s why competitor research and analysis are very important.
Twitter: techcrates
says:
Keywords are very very important…. I am realizing the power of keyword research on my blog
Salman recently posted..Samsung Galaxy Ace – Android Smartphone
Unique keywords are the base of our SEO work to upgrade our site in search engines. How to find effective keywords there are so many strategies, your suggested links are effective too. Thanks.
GRE Test recently posted..GRE Verbal Test 2 Anwers
Good tips. With extensive research and analysis, we should be able to choose our targeted keywords wisely and make our campaigns success!
Jasmine recently posted..How much Web Hosting Bandwidth do you need
Choosing the best keyword is a delicate task. I agree with you that you need to be wise in selecting your keyword. You can have the best keyword in just a snap. You need to put in your mind that you need to choose the keyword that can compete to others and gain be in rank 1 in the future. You need to set your goal always.
I wish more people stressed this in the SEO community. In the end, if you choose the wrong keywords to target than you are putting your site at risk of losing a ton of valuable traffic.
Tread carefully, friends!
Andrew
A. Hagan recently posted..The Importance of Keyword Research in Search Engine Optimization
Keywords in business can be a complete paradox. On the one hand, they’re so easy to understand that even explaining them almost seems redundant. On the other hand, though, they’re so dependent on search trends and usage that learning how to correctly use them can be a very long and drawn out process. The fundamental way in choosing keywords wisely and making them work for you is to always be relevant to your business and to leave the market alone. What that means, is to use keywords that relate to your specific site and your specific product within the market rather than using the most popular search terms in the market for your product.