subject: Keyword Research : Uncovering What The Searchers Are Looking For [print this page] Keyword research : Revealing What The Searchers Are searching for
Keyword Research is the initial step to any online marketing system.
Researching keywords is how you discover what people are searching for online by finding out exactly what they search for on sites like Google.
If you know what folk are typing into Google, and what number of folks are searching for any special thing each day, you can concentrate on your internet selling appropriately. You won't have to waste money or time chasing not possible keywords, and instead concentrate your efforts on what will work for you.
Did you know Google will tell you what number of folks search for any specific keyword or key phrase every month?
In this article we shall explore how to find the correct keywords, and the way to include them in your selling to get rather more visitors to your internet site.
What is a Keyword?
A Keyword, or keyword phrase, is anything folk type into a search engine whenever they are on the lookout for something. Finding out which keywords are well-liked will help you spend your valuable time in the nicest spots, not trying to rank well in the search results for something no-one searches for.
You can get started by making a list of keyword phrases you suspect sum up the broad themes of your product or opportunity or web site. These are your Base Keywords. They are broad, and they are in all likelihood just 1 or 2 words long. We will use these keywords, and the free Google Keyword Tool, to come up with a catalogue of dozens and dozens of derivative keywords that may form the foundation of all of your search engine positioning campaigns.
Put your Base Keywords in the box, one per line, choose your target country and language, and click Search.
You may now be presented with a keyword list many times larger than your unique list, and you can see just how preferred each keyword is. Renown, or "search volume" is presented as a number under the Worldwide or Local Searches columns.
Work your way down the list, producing a note of all the keywords applicable to you ( because not all of them will be ) and also make a note of the monthly searches number for each keyword.
We shall now begin considering each keyword for competition levels. It'd be a waste of time to simply pick the most popular keywords and never achieve them, so we must now keep an eye out for the favored keywords that we can accomplish high placements for in search website results pages. Start little, build over time.
Ideally you want to target a keyword that has less than Fifty thousand competing pages, at least initially.
There are many hundreds of tools you can use to test the contest levels for a particular keyword but one of the simplest ( and free to use ) is the regular Google search box.
If you conduct a search for intitle:"your key-phrase" you will see ONLY pages that have your keyword in the page title. This is how it's possible for you to simply tell how many internet sites are competing for that keyword, because they have optimized their page for it.
As a rule, if you see less than Fifty thousand competing pages and you decide to out-optimise the competition, you will have an even chance of making the 1st page and getting free visitors to your site.
Just be sure the Monthly Searches number is high enough to be worth your effort!
You'll learn how to judge a bad or good keyword the longer you do this, so do not worry if you don't see serious rankings yet. Just keep at it and give attention to your effort and results.
How to Optimize a Page for a Keyword
* Include your keyword in the page title
* Include your keyword in the text of the page
* Use the keyword as an image outline and alt text
* Use the keyword in the page URL ( yourdomain.com / your-keyword )
* Put the keyword or key phrase in the page introduction in bold text
* Link to the page from other sites and use the keyword as the clickable text
Work your way though your keyword list, writing articles and blog content, improving your pages for max traffic, and you can produce a massive number of free visitors to your internet site. Your promoting can be both free and successful, but will require correct research prior to making any moves.
Spend your time on keyword analysis at the beginning and it'll pay you back multiple times over in free leads and sales.
