The Basics of Keyword Research

by Ashley Lichty

Keyword research is one of the most important stages of developing a website – especially if the purpose of the site is to generate money and business. Your first step is deciding exactly what you will be selling on your site – is it a product, service or information? Next is taking the steps to find out the type of things people type into the search engines when looking for your particular product or service.

It’s the myriad of terms people use to search that will allow you to better target any search marketing you do, as well as start building content and links to help your organic rankings in the search engines (also known as search engine optimization). The wider your subject, the more in-depth your keyword research will be – sometimes ending in a list of keywords in the tens of thousands. For example, if you sell ONLY 3 brands of fishing rods, your keyword list will be noticeably shorter than if you sold fishing rods, line, bait, tackle, the whole nine.

To start your keyword research, just brainstorm a bit and get into your target audience’s head. What might they search for in the search engines to find your service? From there you can generate short list of broad terms. From there you can take your research in one of two directions.

The more traditional school uses online tools and programs. Google’s Keyword Tool will generate a list of related terms and suggested terms as well as show how often people search for them. There is also software available that utilizes several online tools in one. Whichever you choose, do a bit of research to find how to best utilize it.

If the purpose of your keyword research is for your pay per click ads in Google or Yahoo, there’s a better way to conduct your research. How is that you ask? Just a bit of experimentation involving your pay per click program.

This technique involves spending a little cash on for your research, but it often yields better results than more traditional keyword research. Just take your first general list of keywords and build your text ad campaign around them in whichever program you use. Most marketing programs allow you to chose a broad or exact keyword match for your terms – choose the broad option. This means whenever someone searches for a combination of words that include one of your keywords, your ad will show.

After letting the campaign run for a while, you can check to see which EXACT keywords send the most traffic to your website. This allows you to tell which keyword terms attract the most business for the least money. You can begin building a more detailed campaign and eventually phase out the broad keywords for exact matches, saving you many man-hours of keyword research.

Keyword research can sound daunting, especially for newcomers, but practice makes perfect, and this tip can wind up saving you a lot of trouble and time. In the long run, it should also help you target your keywords to your audience better, get you higher conversion rates and hopefully save some money. It’s always important to try something for yourself before you rule it out entirely!

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