How To Research For SEO Keywords

Posted by Madhavi on Jun 1, 2011 in Web Writing | 0 comments

SEO Keywords are an important part of ensuring that your website gets indexed by Google. And in order to do that, it is essential to properly research your SEO keywords.
In a previous article we learnt what SEO was all about, and how to integrate the SEO keywords into the website content. Today, we are going to learn how to go about researching and finding the right SEO keywords for your website.
In order to decide what SEO keywords to use to optimize your website, the first step is finding out what those keywords are in the first place.
To do that, we must look into two main aspects of your business / service:

1. What is your business? What kind of product or services do you provide?
2. What terms (words and phrases) will your ideal clients use to look for the product or service that you provide?

Naturally, both these points are equally important. If your site is not optimized for the search terms that your clients are prone to use, then it doesn’t matter if you have used the correct terms or not. Also, if the search terms do not reflect your product or service accurately, then it will result in a bunch of useless hits to your site that won’t deliver any business your way.

The best way to find your way out of this quandary is to use the 2 main tools (courtesy of Google, of course!) to do your research properly. These tools are:

1. Google’s Keyword Research Tool, and,
2. Google Insights.

With both these tools at your side it is possible to research for the right keyword-key phrase combination that aligns with both your business and your clients’ search terms.

So, lets take a brief overview of what each tool essential does that can help you achieve your goals.

Google Keyword Research Tool

Google Keyword Research Tool will tell you the different keyword-key phrase combinations that are popular and are used in conjunction with your chosen key word or phrase. It will also show you the global and local search amounts, and local search trends for each such keyword.

Part of Google’s AdWords functionality, it works even better if you sign in to your Google account to research your keywords.

(Just click on the image to enlarge it.)

For example, when I searched for the term ‘WordPress How To’, the top 5 results after this term (sorted in the order of relevance) were:

1. WordPress how to
2. How to use WordPress
3. WordPress tutorials
4. WordPress blog
5. WordPress blogs
6. Download WordPress

But if I had to re-arrange this list of 5 search terms in the order of their global monthly searches, then the list would be ordered as:

1. WordPress blog
2. WordPress how to
3. Download WordPress
4. WordPress blogs
5. How to use WordPress
6. WordPress tutorials

Now, I can decide which term I can prioritize in my blog, or which term I can let go of. For example, the term ‘Download WordPress’ need not be included in my list of keywords to consider because that is not the focus of my blog.

The other keywords, however, can be part of my list and I can use them within my site’s content and optimize my site accordingly.

Google Insights

However, search trends are fickle. One day people are searching for one thing, and the next day they are looking for something else. Besides, funnily enough, some trends can also be seasonal. For example, I wouldn’t be searching for a good online store to buy sweaters in summer, right? The term ‘sweater’ will probably start ranking higher during the onset of fall and winter.

So it becomes very important to observe the past trends of a particular search term and then arrive at a predictive forecast of what that term’s search amount will be in the future.

At this point of time, Google Insights is where you turn to.

In fact you can do that right from your Google Keyword Research site itself.

See the little magnifying glass that appears when you move your mouse over a particular term? Click on that, and you’ll be taken to the Google Insights page for that search term.

(Just click on the image to enlarge it.)

In our case, the term was ‘WordPress how to’ and the Google Insights page (if we look at the data from 2004 onwards) shows a steady increase in the amount of searches for that term. The dotted line shows the prediction and shows that while the line may dip a little here and there, it will steadily move up.

The chart also shows which categories of people most searched for this data. If you scroll down the page, you will see a regional distribution of the search amounts.

How Is This Useful?

All this information can prove very useful to you while planning your website’s content.

Depending on your market regions, you can configure and plan out your content strategy to deliver the best results. Lets take our sweater example. Sweaters will probably have more demand in the winter in countries that do get cold in the winter. However, in countries that say don’t get that cool a winter in the first place, there may not be that great a demand for sweaters. So you can plan your marketing strategy in such a manner that targets these geographical locations where your market exists.

We have already seen how we can choose the correct keyword and key phrase combinations in the beginning part of this article.

In Conclusion…

Combine both these tools, and you will be in a position to create a very strong and powerful content strategy for your company’s website. Google Keyword Research tool and Google Insights are the best way to help you take the first steps towards planning an effective content and SEO strategy for your website.

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