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Keyword Research
and Analysis
Keyword research and analysis is the foundation for all basic
and advanced SEO services.
Fundamentally, search engine optimization consists of only
four parts including keyword research, on-page optimization,
off-page optimization and results tracking.
Keyword research (and of course application) is arguably
the most important aspect of SEO on a customer's website.
If one does not pick the correct keywords to optimize a website
around, then either little traffic will come to the website
or worse yet, the wrong type of traffic will hit the website.
And, by the wrong type of traffic, I mean, traffic that does
not convert into sales. When doing keyword research it is
important to target keywords that will bring in potential
buyers as opposed to information gatherers (if the website
is geared towards sales and not an information site).
Keyword research itself can be broken up into two important
parts including the analysis of targeted keyword phrases and
competition analysis. Programs like Wordtracker, Overture,
Keyword Discovery, Google AdWords Keyword Tool and many others
can be used to come up with a list of targeted keyword phrases
to optimize a customer's website around.
Many of these keyword tools can be used as standalone programs
and offer excellent results. There are times, however, when
it will be wise for the SEO to cross-reference the results
of these tools to check out the strength of the keyword phrases
across many different search engines and time-frames on the
search engines.
Once a list of keyword phrases has been generated for a particular
customer website, it is time to do the competition analysis
of these keywords. This is a step that some SEOs and self-taught
SEOs will fail to do, which will get them into hot water as
the competition may be too stiff for their particular phrases.
For instance, a naïve self-taught business owner may
want to get into the top 10 rankings for a term such as "home
loans," but fail to do the competition analysis in order
to see how many highly optimized web pages are competing for
this phrase. They may work hours upon hours tirelessly to
try to get their pages into the top rankings for this word
only to discover their results are on page 30.
Competition analysis gives an SEO a ballpark estimate of
how many web pages compete for a particular phrase. There
are many tools on the market that will help with this analysis
including a simple command or two in the Google search box.
But, even though an SEO may have an idea of how many web
pages are competing for a particular keyword phrase, they
many not have an accurate assessment of the strength or Page
Rank of those pages.
One some occasions there may be little relative competition
for a particular keyword phrase, but the top 10 or 20 results
may be dominated by authority sites such as EDU, GOV, ORG
or even dot COM sites with plenty of back links and PR that
will mean that displacing these sites in the rankings will
be nearly impossible for smaller, less authoritative websites.
So, as you can see, keyword research and analysis can become
quite complex very quickly. Picking the right keywords is
essential as well as doing comprehensive competition analysis
that include number of competing web pages and authority of
those pages.
Once, this is completed, however, coming up with a new and
revised keyword list that reflects a high number of searches
with low competition will yield optimal results for most customer
websites.
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