Before writing any content for your website it’s very important to research the keywords people enter into the search engines to find information. If you don’t do this first your content won’t attract the search engines which means you’ll receive little or no search engine traffic.
What is keyword research and what will it tell you?
Search engines will find your content based on the keywords contained within it. If that keyword receives a large number of search counts each month and your web page ranks on the first page of Google there’s a high probability you’ll receive some of that monthly traffic.
Let’s look at an example
If you enter “camping in New York” using the Google AdWords Tool it displays 60,500 local searches (within the USA) and 74,000 global monthly searches(from around the world). If you write a page with the keyword phrase containing “camping in New York” within your title, meta tags and content Google and other search engines will index and rank the page accordingly. If it ranks on the first page of Google it will generate a constant stream of traffic to your website. If you repeat this process for 100s of pages you’ll create a river of traffic to your site.
What are some good keyword research tools to use and is one better that the other?
Google AdWords Tool
This free keyword tool provided by Google is what most marketers use because it’s freely available and easy to use. The cons of using this tool is that its search counts are not very accurate. For instance it’s results only come from Google and include searches generated from automated software. Only use this tool to get a rough estimate of search counts.
Wordtracker
This keyword research tool was around before any other tools were created. It’s results are more accurate than the Google AdWords Tool because it gets it results from multiple search engines and doesn’t include searches from automated software. The free WordTracker tool generates 100 related keywords, however if you want even a larger list of keywords and use its advanced tools you can purchase a yearly subscription.
Market Samurai
This keyword tool also gets it’s results from Google however it also provides a host of other tools that help you find quality keywords to use in your content. This software will quickly generate a list of hundreds of related keywords (much more than the tools mentioned above)then analyze them for their profitability (commercial intent). The beauty of this software is that it can analyze a potential keyword using all the tools in one location. I highly recommend purchasing the full version of the software so you can use all the advanced tools plus receive ongoing updates to the software for life.
Video: Understanding The Importance Of Keyword Research
Should you avoid keywords that are too popular or ones that aren’t popular enough?
A popular keyword means it receives a high number of search counts each month. The problem is that there will be a lot of competition. For instance if you Google a specific keyword and there are 80 million competing websites you will be wasting your time trying to outrank your competition.
On the other hand if a keyword only generates a small number of searches it (ie a few each month) it also will waste your time because it won’t generate sufficient traffic to make sales.
What strategy should you use to generate an effective list of keywords?
If you plan on getting web traffic from the search engines using content marketing (optimizing your web pages or blog posts for specific keywords), create a list of long tail keywords. These are keyword phrases of 2 or more keywords that receive a low number of search counts but have little competition. Even though you’ll only receive a trickle of traffic by optimizing your content for one keyword phrase, repeating this process for multiple pages will create a large stream of visitors to your site.
Keyword research is just the first step for creating effective web copy for the search engines and visitors. Other factors that determine the profitability of your website include…web page design, usability, readabilty and conversion rates.
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