Keyword research is the cornerstone of any good Search engine optimisation work and something that is so often overlooked. Keywords are exactly what the user is going to type to find you so targeting the right keywords for your website is crucial. Don’t stress though because if you if you follow a few simple steps and apply an ‘end-user logic’ when identifying your keywords, then you are sure to improve your qualified traffic and increase your websites conversions. A lot of these principles of keyword research can also be utilised in your pay per click advertising campaigns so take some time to look through your website and think, ‘what would I type into the search engine if I was trying to find my product or service?’ Finding the right keywords for your website is the first step to optimising a website so start yourself off by brainstorming and writing down as many keywords that you think are relevant to your website as you can think of. Generally this will provide you a list of 10 to 20 keywords that you can chop and change as you continue along the process and start to further understand what makes a good search term. Once you have this first list it is time to start to implement some of the following parameters to narrow down your words even further until you are targeting only the best keywords for your website.
Developing your keywords:
Step 1. Recognise your industry and the type of visitors you want on your site The great misconception about keywords is to target the more general keywords and the ones that receive a higher amount of traffic as a result of their generality. This is the obvious tendency for an inexperienced optimiser as it seems logical to target the keyword with the most searches! Let me tell you why this is not entirely correct
General keywords tend to bring ‘general’ visitors to your website. By failing to qualify your industry or service and the type of visitor you want on your site then you won’t understand what they are going to type to visit your website! Targeting general keywords might bring you a lot of traffic (if you are lucky) but this traffic wont be as qualified if you were to target a more specific keyword.
Step 2. Using regional keywords to improve Targeted Traffic
Using regional keywords is a great way to improve the quality of customer that will come through to your website as you know that you any enquiry coming though you are going to be able to service them. A lot of the time we target general keywords that cover a very large geographic area when you might only be selling products in a much smaller region or vicinity. This will provide us an excellent opportunity to include that region or vicinity into your keyword phrase and therefore attract much more targeted visitors.
In addition to this by targeting a regional keyword phrase you will find there is much less competition for these keywords so getting your site in the top page results would be much easier!
The two above steps are just simple things to keep in mind when developing your keywords for your website. By making your keywords more specific and trying to include your region where possible, you will instantly have a much greater chance of getting your website to show in the top position for these particular keywords. Not only this but you will also prevent a whole lot of wasted clicks coming to your site from another that you cant even service. There are numerous Keyword Tools out there, that can help you find additional keywords that you may not have though of. The optimisation software by Apex Pacific, SEO Suite v8.0 has a keyword research tool in-built where you can add your keywords as you go. Once you have got your list it is time to implement them into your website and then you will be one step closer to getting higher rankings and generating a whole lot more website traffic.
Oliver Moran is a Senior Internet Marketing Consultant for Apex Reach. http://www.apexreach.com
