How To Do Keyword Research

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Getting started with Keyword Research

Keyword research is the cornerstone of getting noticed in the digital age. Consumers and clients are searching at an outstanding rate to find everything from “Best kids toys 2011” to “Rhinoplasty Dallas,” and these searches are taking place on popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, not to mention social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Therefore, as a business owner or marketing professional, it is imperative that you position your company to become highly visible for search terms relating to your products or services. Conducting thorough keyword research is the first step in distinguishing your business from your competitors and ultimately gaining marketing share.

To get started, you’ll need at least one of the following keyword tools:

1. Google Keyword Tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

2. Wordtracker Keywords: http://www.wordtracker.com/

Google Keyword Tool is a great option for SEO novices as it is free and provides a respectable level of analysis given the price. Wordtracker Keywords is more robust and offers a free 7-day trial, with a $69/month charge thereafter. Wordtracker provides greater keyword search depth and also provides more data on the competitiveness of keywords that are being searched. The one drawback is that Wordtracker’s data only represents 1% of searches conducted in USA and Canada.

Once you’ve become somewhat acquainted with the tools, it’s time to begin your research. Follow these simple steps:

1. Identify and list all of the products and/or services that your company offers. Write them down because you’ll need to reference this list going forward.

2. Next, choose one product/service on your list and conduct a search using the aforementioned tool(s). For instance, you may sell shoes. Conducting a search on “shoes” will identify similar keywords such as tennis shoes, women’s shoes, baby shoes, dress shoes, etc.

3. Looking at the search results, also referred to as Related Keywords, drill down (i.e. conduct a search on Related Keywords to get more granular) into the phrases that match your product most. Again, if you sell “shoes” and “baby shoes” comes up as a Related Keyword (and if you actually sell baby shoes) you’ll want to now do a search on “baby shoes”.

4. Does this for about 5 phrases that are descriptive of your product/service. You’ll get anywhere from 100 to 1000+ keywords that are derivates of your Related Keywords. Here is where you want to focus. It’s called the “Long Tail”. The Long Tail is where most internet searches reside. In fact, 95% of searches are long tail searches. What is the Long Tail you ask? The long tail consists of keywords that are specific and not generic. Think of the Long Tail as a Keyword Phrase as oppose to a Keyword word. For instance, most people typically search for phrases like “women’s black tie heels” instead of simply “shoes”. The former belongs to the long tail while the latter does not. Make sure your keywords focus almost entirely on the long tail! As you become a more advanced SEO professional and your rankings grow, you can add single or double word Keywords to your SEO strategy.

5. At this point, it’s time to start choosing the keywords that you will ultimately use for your business, your website, your social networks, and other mediums. Take a look at the keywords displayed in the tool and try to narrow your results to the phrases with the highest competitiveness-to-#searches ratio. In other words, choose keyword phrases that have minimal competitiveness and a respectable amount of searches. There is no rule on what this ratio should be as it differs by industry. Both tools listed give intuitive statistics on the competitiveness of keywords as well as the number of searches conducted on that keyword.

6. Identify and write down 5 to 20 Related Keyword phrases.

7.  Replicate steps 2-6 until you have at least of 50-100 keyword phrases. Again, your list should be Keyword Phrases that are not very competitive and still have a respectable amount of searches (Remember the long tail!).

You just conducted keyword research for your business! Your keywords should now be used constantly when branding your company or organization. Add them to pages on your website, to your profiles on Facebook, YouTube, and Linkedin, as well as to blog posts and emails.