When you rank for the right keywords you open up your business to, not only, a whole new range of customers, but to the right kind of customers. By conducting effective keyword research you can predict changes in the market and in turn, learn more about your customers search habits. It is one of the most accessible and most effective ways to gather insights into the motivations of customers in any marketplace.
The effectiveness of any keyword comes down to its value to your website. The more likely a customer is to convert after typing in a specific keyword determines the value of that word. Luckily, there are many tools available to see how a customer arrives at your site and what they do once they get there.
Having a bank of words and phrases relevant to your website and the goods or services you offer is vital to creating relevant content, on all platforms. Creating your keyword bank and finding those high value keywords may seem daunting, but it needn’t be.
As always, the process follows the usual steps of trial, evaluate, adjust and repeat.
The process of keyword research
Start with yourself. Think of a few keywords or phrases you think your customers would search for. If you’re an online electronics store you might consider keywords such as “electronics store” or “gadgets”. If you’re offering goods, think of product specific terms, “flatscreen TVs” or “mp3 players” perhaps.
Now consider if your website offers the goods and information a browsing, or shopping, customer may want to see if that keyword search brings them to your page. If it does, type the keyword into the popular search engines and see what results are returned. This will give you some insight into the competition you’re up against for that particular keyword. Also, take a look at the surrounding adverts. Paid advertising is become more and more popular and for keyword research it can offer insight into what are the most valuable keywords. A lot of adverts equals a high value keyword.
Repeat the process with varying terms, long and short, until you feel you have a good list of potential keywords.
Now you want to go over to a planner tool, such as Google’s Adwords Keyword planner. This is a great tool that offers alternatives to your list of keywords, recommends an estimated search volume, competition and the potential cost of running that keyword in a paid ad campaign.
Next you want to use a traffic tracking service and Google’s webmaster tools to see what keywords your site is currently ranking for and where. Regularly checking these services is a great way to track the impact of your keyword strategy. When you start to generate content using your new list of keywords these tools will help to show you your performance and highlight your strengths and weaknesses.
By following these simple steps you’ll be on your way to developing a keyword strategy that works. You’ll have a guide for your content too and you’ll be creating engaging content in no time; boosting your websites performance and improving your online presence.
Keyword marketing has many different layers and we’re experts in the field. If you want to start to get your website ranking, contact us today!