The importance of keywords and research advice
Keywords can be defined as words or phrases (consisting of 2-3, or more, words) which the users type into the search engine in order to find information or visit sites.
Everything starts from keywords. First of all, what you should do is to conduct research and find keywords which your target audience searches for. Search for as many keywords as you can and put them on a list. After that, you need to analyze them and make a choice of keywords and expressions you want to optimize your site for. The best practice would be to choose 3-5 of the most important or primary words or phrases which are going to be dominant on your website’s pages, and then choose 20-30 varieties of those keywords which are to be used on the rest of the website.
What is keyword research?
According to a Wikipedia definition:
Keyword research is a standard SEO practice. SEO experts employ it in order to find and research current keywords the users type into the search engine in pursuit for information.
SEO experts research keywords in order to obtain the best possible position for their website on search engines.
It can be even said that keyword research is the most important marketing activity. The future of a website practically depends upon it, as well as the results of visits and online sales. Keyword research not only helps you understand which keywords to target, but also to learn more about your shoppers as well. This practice can help you predict the changes that may happen in market demand, prepare for changes on the market, and create/launch products, services and content the users are already actively searching for. Having the ‘right’ keyword positioned high on SERP can bring you numerous advantages. It is not enough to bring visitors to your site only; what is more important is to attract quality and targeted visits which can later become conversions.
Keyword analysis is a process in which you check which words or phrases the visitors of your website are (or will be) using in order to find a website (preferably yours). This phase is very important for professional SEO. If an internet user searches for an ‘XY’ keyword and your website is ranked good for it (i.e. optimized), it will appear at the top of the search engine’s results page (SERP).
Different pages on your website contain different information (thus giving information about different products, services, etc.). Not all pages are (or should be) optimized for the same keywords. It is important that a page is optimized for the exact keyword it was written about in the first place.
Analyzing and choosing keywords
How valuable can a keyword be for your site? If you have an online shop for, say, shoes, are brown or black boots selling better? Using different tools, such as Google’s Keyword Planner, webmasters can obtain information about keywords which the visitors search for the most.
The basic criteria for choosing keywords are the following:
Relevance
When you are choosing keywords, you need to bear in mind that they should to represent what you are offering, as well as the content which is on your website. Ask these questions: “Does this keyword describe content on my website? Will the users get what they are searching for using these words? Are they going to be happy about what they read? Will this visit be financially beneficial or contribute to our business goals?” If the answer to all of these questions is ‘YES’, then keep reading.
Popularity
Keyword popularity is actually a degree of its demand on the market, which means that the demand itself needs to be researched for as well. It is not enough to know the words and phrases people use; it is more important to find out what phrases are more popular than others, that is which are searched for more frequently. The bigger the popularity of a keyword, the more people/websites will want to rank better for it on the search engines. Keyword popularity depends upon numerous factors and it varies from search engine to search engine, from region to region, and even from language to language. Often times, it can be seasonal.
Competitiveness
General words, such as ‘computers’ or ‘mobile phones’ are very competitive and it is very difficult to position them high on the results page. These words are very popular, and the greater their popularity, the bigger the competition will be.
Keyword reach
If we take shoe shop as an example once more, it would be good if it were positioned first for the keyword ‘shoes’, wouldn’t it?
However, sometimes it is almost impossible or very difficult to achieve this because it would demand investing a bigger budget and a lot of time. This is why it is much more profitable to find keywords consisting of more words, the so-called long tail keywords. Choosing this type of keywords is better if you want to be ranked better and get quality visits, because competition will be weaker for them and you will be able to get more target users.
In order to exemplify this, we can use long-tail keywords: ‘brown shoes size 44 price’. The keyword itself shows that the user’s intention is – to shop. If your web page is optimized for this keyword, the chances are it is going to be ranked better and obtain more conversions (profit) on your website.
Competition research and analysis can also give you valuable information about how hard it is to rank for certain keywords. It is up to you to analyze them properly, optimize them better than your competition, and leave the rest to time and Google.
