Keyword Research and Analysis: The Backbone of Successful SEO and Internet Marketing
SEO strategies and online marketing campaigns are only as good as the keyword research behind them. I often relate skipping keyword research to shooting at a target with a blindfold on. As a company or organization, NOT doing keyword research is the equivalent of putting on a blindfold before you shoot at your target audience? Why would you do this? Isn’t it better to know what people type in online? This allows you to take off the “blindfold” and have a clearer vision of what you can achieve and be more effective. Keyword research must also consist of more than just a business owner’s opinion or staff ideas. The first step of keyword research and analysis is to become the customer. Think about the words and phrases your best client might use to find services or products like yours. Ask customers how they found your business online and what keywords they entered. Invite clients to give you feedback on how they perceive your industry, products, or services.
Keyword Research Helps Increase Organic Traffic and Authority
The team at Creative Original, Inc. uses keywords and phrases to improve web site visibility and search engine rankings. Proper SEO programming and keyword rich content development practices can mean the difference between a mediocre and a high performance web site. When keyword research is combined with monthly link building efforts clients can expect to see a valuable increase in organic search traffic and qualified web site visitors. Relevancy is one of the top criteria necessary to achieve higher search engine rankings. Comprehensive keyword studies ensure a web site is built with target and niche markets in mind.
How to Apply Keywords to Your Website
Keyword terms and phrases can be used in a variety of ways on your website. They can be very helpful when you are working on the site content and navigation. Using keywords in site content and navigation creates what we call “keyword architecture”. Clear, targeted, user-focused keyword architecture can help make a website great. Here are some basic places where keyword terms or phrases can be used to increase your website’s keyword architecture and overall authority:
- Menu Items
- Website Page URLs/SEF URLs/Keyword Permalinks
- H1 tags/Heading 1’s/Page and Blog Post Titles
- H2 tags/Heading 2’s/Subheads
- H3 tags/Heading 3’s/Subheads
- Bold Text/Subheads
- Internal Text Links
- Blog Categories
- Blog Tags
- Website Meta Data (Meta Titles and Descriptions)
- Photo and Image File Names/Captions/ALT Fields (only when relevant)
- Video Titles and Descriptions (only when relevant)
Keyword Consistency in SEO, Social Media, Online PR, Blogging, E-newsletters, and More
Keyword research is not only beneficial for SEO strategies. It can also help your business or organization represent the brand, products, and services more consistently and clearly. Just like any other kind of market research, once you understand how the consumers/clients/donors/customers behave and what they understand verbally and textually about your industry, products, or services you can design content everywhere that attracts those audiences. The more the keywords used to optimize your website are reflected on your social media, blog posts, and e-newsletters the more marketing consistency you show in the digital world, which is always a plus. Here are some tips for how to use keyword terms intelligently:
1. Choose your top 5 – 10 keyword phrases or terms that you will use when writing social media About and Bio sections.
2. Use keyword terms to develop great blog post titles that are really searchable.
3. Use keyword terms and phrases to create relevant updates, posts, and tweets.
4. Use relevant keyword phrases and terms to create e-newsletter headlines and link back to relevant blog posts and website pages.
5. You may find that some keyword terms and phrases are actual questions people commonly ask. Use these keyword questions to develop content on your blog, social media, and in your e-newsletter.
Online Keyword Research Tools We Recommend
Google Keyword Planner – The number one tool we recommend for Keyword research is the Google Adwords Keyword Planner. You will need to sign up for Adwords and enter your credit card. Once you are signed up you can turn off all campaigns and you will not be charged any money, but you will still have access to the Keyword Planner under Tools.
UberSuggest.org – Uber Suggest is a free tool that does not provide data on the number of searches per month for specific terms and phrases but will help you learn more about all the varying ways people search for different products and services.
Keyword Discovery – Keyword Discovery is a paid system that collects keyword data from many different search engines world wide and compiles a range of search related statistics. You can sign up for a free trial. Keyword Discovery collects search term data from over 200 search engines world wide and has the largest keyword database that contains nearly 38 billion searches. KeywordDiscovery also offers many language specific keyword databases sourced from regional search engines and users from those regions, including: Australian, Canadian, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, UK and US with plans to offer many others.