If you have an online business or website then you have most likely already heard this many times, doing keyword research is essential. A well planned and carried out keyword research process can help to achieve higher search engine rankings in the future by targeting specific search phrases. Even if you are using PPC marketing, keyword research can help save you money as you can target more effective keywords.

The basis for good keyword research is first knowing what you are trying to achieve, e.g. sell mp3 speakers, then thinking about how your customers are going to try to find you. So for the example given above, ‘mp3 speakers’ as your keyword is going to much less effective than ‘buy mp3 speakers’. This is because someone searching with the keyword ‘mp3 speakers’ could be looking for repairs or reviews and not to buy. By targeting the ‘buy mp3 speakers’  keyword you can pull in more effective traffic from the search engines that is more likely to convert into a sale as the user is already looking to buy speakers.

The most important aspect of keyword research is to be specific, I have come across many businesses who have selected keywords that are far to broad, the problem with selecting broad keywords is that there is usually more competition for them. If you select more specific keywords you can reduce the amount of competition for rankings as well as driving targeted traffic to your site.

When I first meet new clients one of the most common problems is that they do not know their keywords, some have been running sites for several years and are not targeting a specific audience. The first hurdle is to convince them that they are trying to attract a far to broad audience, when I look at their websites their main keywords are usually 1-2 word phrases rather than 3-5 word phrases which are more effective. I should point out at this point that big companies with larger reputations in a field can rank highly for 1-2 word phrases, but generally the small/medium-sized businesses that I work for do not have the resources in order to compete with these companies so they have to focus on the longer keyword phrases.

The process of selecting keywords is not easy, but I look to break it down into three steps:

1. Analyze your business goals (Are you looking to sell a product/service, provide information)
2. Analyze your target audience (Who will be searching for your business?)
3. Analyze search engine trends and competition (How much competition is there for keywords)

Following these steps should lead to more specific longer keyword phrases by combining elements from each stage, if you are looking to sell products then you should consider adding words such as “buy” and “purchase” to your keyword. If your target audience is local then you should add your town/city/region to your keyword.

Hopefully you now understand that being more specific with your keywords can lead to better rankings and traffic from search engines that should convert into more business from your website.

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