subject: The Keyword Research Process [print this page] The Keyword Research Process The Keyword Research Process
One of the major steps in search engine optimization is performing keyword research before publishing articles. Choosing wrong keyword would increase number of visitors to your web site.
The keyword research process is important and has a few steps to follow.
1. Free up your mind: You have a site and know the details about its content. However, as a website owner, never try to impose your thinking to the customers. You know which keywords are in your site, but have no idea of keywords that customers will use to search the information. So, wash out your thoughts as a website owner and start thinking as a visitor who does not know anything about your business and content. Feel free to think which keyword you should use to find the desired content.
2. Make a list of possible keywords: In this step, make a list of all possible keywords that a user may input in the search box. The list should contain as many as possible keywords. Use single word, multiple words, phase, misspelled word, local terms, and brand names.
3. Working with keywords: Start working with your keyword list. Definitely, you should not optimize your site with every keyword in your list. You have to choose the most appropriate ones. Take help from the online keyword research tools such as Google Adsence and Yahoo. Many tools are available and most of them are free of cost. These tools also help in taking look at the popularity, search volume, click rate, and number of search results for a particular keyword. The decision regarding selection of keywords should be done by thorough research.
4. Finalize your list: Now make a final list of keywords from the trial keyword list. After collecting the data from keyword research tools, make an excel spreadsheet. This will help you in comparing and analyzing the data, based on the factor such as popularity, search volume, click rate, and number of results at once. It is a nice way to finalizing your keywords. Narrow down the keywords to specific ones that are very closely related to your business and the theme of your site. Use both targeted and less targeted general keywords. General keywords will help in increasing the page rank of your site and targeted keywords will reward you with valuable customers.
5. Plan of attack: Now it is time to plan your attack strategy. Look at the final keyword list. It is normal that all the keywords are not currently in your list, but try to add them as well. Select the appropriate position to place them. You may create extra pages for those extra keywords or just add them somehow to your existing pages. The maximum number of keyword per page should not be five or more. This will help to manage the keywords easily. Try to insert keywords as title tag, Meta tag, anchor text, or alt text.
6. Update and Repeat: Update your keywords frequently and repeat them as much as possible. Customers mind keep on changing with time. Hence, customer tomorrow would not search today's hot keyword in same way. You have to plan your content in a way that more and almost every keyword is added to the articles. Following the keyword research process, every single person might bring huge traffic to the web site.
