SEO Keyword Research

The purpose of keyword research is to find the best keywords for the site you're optimising. There are several ways you can approach this...

Pick keywords that generate the most searches
Pick mid-level keywords that aren't heavily contested
Pick keywords that are expensive to bid for in pay-per-click advertising (i.e. because expensive keywords justify the time and/or expense of SEO work)

Keyword research begins with a discovery period, the purpose of which is to get a better idea of the different terms people use to find the type of site you're optimising.

Google's own keyword analysis tool will display a number of alternative terms. It's my tool of choice when doing SEO keyword research.

I find this keyword discovery tool is more useful when trying to get a feel for alternative terms people might enter in search engines (i.e. this tool is more focused and the results are easier to understand).

The goal of keyword research, is to create a short-list of keywords, and apply them to your site so it indexes effectively in search engines (i.e. search engine optimisation).

Note the 'short' in short-list. It won't be easy to optimise your site effectively if your list is too long. My view is that most business web sites would be much more likely to get to page one if they focused their efforts on a single popular keyword phrase, and 2-3 less popular terms (e.g. less than 5,000 searches/month).

You can include brand and product names in your keyword list if you wish, but it's useful to understand the difference between well-known names (e.g. Coke) and relatively unknown ones.

If your company, brand or product name isn't well known, there won't be many searches for it. As a result, it will be fairly easy to get to page one of the major search engines (you may even be #1 already). While that's great, there's no SEO advantage if nobody is typing the company, brand or product name into a search engine.

Your keyword research short-list ought to contain search terms that people are actually entering into search engines. The way to find out is to use a keyword analysis tool.

Once you've completed your short-list, it's time to rank the importance of each term. I use Google's own Keyword Analysis tool. This offers a number of useful features...

Displays the local search volume (e.g. # searches in the UK)
Provides variations on the keyword
Ability to examine data for multiple keywords at once
Graphs advertising interest in each keyword
Graphs monthly search volume over the last 12 months
Estimates the cost to purchase a top 3 position in AdWords

These features are enormously useful in ranking your keyword phrases. For example, you might decide it's more realistic to get to page one for a term that attracts 30,000 searches per month, and so rank it higher than one that gets 300,000.

In other words, search volume can tell you where your SEO efforts are most likely to work. That's a major benefit of SEO keyword research, and it's not the only one.

The estimated cost per click can tell you whether or not you're better off investing in AdWords or SEO. For example, why pay for SEO if the cost per click is less than $1?

Likewise, if you're paying $10 for a click on a particular term, you're probably better off investing in SEO. It may even be better to split your budget in half, and invest in both. This alone makes keyword research worth doing. It can save you thousands of pounds.

You may find your company, product or brand name doesn't attract many searches. In which case, you can shift the focus of your SEO research to keywords that your target market is using.

The Google Keyword Analysis Tool displays many more terms than the specific phrase you enter.

If you enter your company name, it may also display generic terms people enter when they're looking for a company like yours. You might also see some of your competitors appear in the list.

If you don't like the SEO keyword research tool supplied by Google, there are numerous third-party keyword tools dotted around the web.

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