Wouldn’t it be great if you could just read one article that concisely describes how to properly perform a keyword research? Let’s try and do just that here. Even if you are employing an SEO company to perform all your search engine optimisation work, it pays to know what keywords they will be ranking your website for and why.
Keyword research is truly the biggest part of market research. Why? If there is enough people searching for a particular product or service online using Google, that must mean that the product or service is in demand out there in the market and it is worth investing time in that niche.
So what exactly are the 4 keyword research rules that you must follow every time you are deciding what key phrases to rank for in major search engines?
- Relevancy – whenever you are using a seed key word to begin your research, no matter what software you are using, it is paramount that you pick a phrase that is relevant to your business or website
- Volume or traffic – you must pick a keyword that has enough people searching for it. There is no point in trying to rank for a phrase that doesn’t attract enough search volume. It may be easy to rank for a particular and normally a specific name of the product for example, however if nobody is actually typing that phrase in their search engine box, you will not attract any visitors to your website
- Moderate competition – once your phrase passes the first 2 steps, you will want to make sure that it does not have a huge competition as it may take you years to rank for it which is not a good idea at the beginning. Most software will help you examine the strength of the competition, however you only need to perform a search for your phrase and see who the top 10 results are. If they include some of the big names, it may be the good idea to pick another keyword
- Commercial intent – the phrase that satisfies previous 3 points will also have to have a commercial intent. This means that the searcher is at a final stage of their purchasing cycle i.e. ready to buy. An example here is someone searching for an internet marketing blog is most likely looking for some information whereas a person searching for ‘internet marketing company’ is clearly looking for a contractor to help them with their web marketing needs.
Your author has used these 4 simple techniques to successfully rank websites and we would love to hear your thought on this subject, is it possible that there are more steps to it?