Keyword Research Strategies
| Target
the wrong keywords and your just another website on the Internet.
Target the right keyword phrases and salivate in your search engine
victory.
|
Keyword Research is by far the most important
aspect in any Search Engine Optimization initiative. This
article shall discuss the important aspects of the keyword research
process.
Keyword Phrase Research is a process of selecting
the most “optimum performance” keyword phrases
that can help visitors find your site. You may have spent
days and months on fine-tuning your web pages for a better
ranking with the major search engines, yet it will all amount
to a big waste if the right keyword phrases are not targeted.
It’s like not being able to reach your destination
even after running your best race because you started out
on the wrong road.
Even if you achieve high search engine
rankings, you may not get relevant traffic if you select
the wrong keywords. Therefore, the foremost step in any
SEO campaign is identifying your target audience and researching what
keyword phrases they might be searching in the search
engines to locate a site like yours.
For any marketing strategy to succeed, it
is critical to know your audience and the means to reach
them. A certain focus is required which could be location
specific, region specific or country specific; it could
be business, trade, service, product specific, since we
are talking specific audience. For instance, a dentist practicing
in a particular town would most likely target people living
in the same region, instead of targeting the entire country.
Just as a patient searching for a dentist would search for
one in his own area. Focus on region would help her get
targeted visitors, not just wasted traffic.
Facts, Not Gut Feel
A common pitfall is to start the website
optimization exercise with a set of “gut-feel”
keyword phrases. Site owners often come up with ‘common
sense looking’ key phrases, which though look obvious,
may not match with the ones your buyers are using as their
search term. Very often, being from within the trade narrows
the vision and you tend to assume that trade-specific terms
are easily understood and popularly used. Not so. You need
to think out of the box.
Doing Keyword
Research invariably means departing from one’s
gut-feel and going by the facts. ‘Facts are sacred’
in website
optimization as they provide the exact data of what
people are actually searching for, thus saving you from
starting on a wild goose chase. As mentioned earlier, targeting
the wrong key phrases might get you a good ranking for keywords
that have few or no search requests or just get you irrelevant
junk traffic. So, how does one get the facts and the data
regarding a particular search term? There are several online
keyword research tools like Wordtracker
and Overture,
which offer data pertaining to your search term. Relying on
search tools to analyze keyword phrase data helps you to get
a grip on your target audience.
Keyword Research Process
Keyword Research process involves the following important
steps. These steps can be described as:
The Discovering phase should focus on
identifying as many keywords as possible that are related to
your website and target audience.
The Analysis phase involves adding information
about existing competition; PageRank based limitations and
potential for ranking.
The Selection process involves objective
measurement based shortlisting of keywords keeping the site
focus and target audience within the limitations analyzed.
The Deploying phase is about making optimum use
of your selected keywords on your website copy , HTML code and
tags.
Keyword Research
Strategies part II
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