Why is effective keyword research important?

Why is effective keyword research important for SEO

If you choose the wrong keywords for your website SEO campaign, then the search engines will struggle to rank you and your customers will be unable to find you. You’ll be wasting money trying to rank for ineffective keywords.

Therefore the first step of a successful SEO campaign is effective keyword research. I have put together some information below on how to choose the right keywords for your website.

Steps for effective keyword research:

1. Put yourself in your customers shoes – what would they search for to find your website? Rather than industry jargon, move away from the industry speak and come up with viable keywords related to your product / service.
2. Choose keywords that are relevant to your site. If you are a clothes company, there is no point trying to rank for the term ‘Google’ because you may see lots of traffic but your visitors would not stay on your site as it is not relevant. Potential visitors would be searching for Google not for a clothes company.
3. Create a list of potential keywords and ask your staff, colleagues, friends and family to see what they would search for to find your site.
4. Carry out competitor analysis to see which keywords they are targeting
5. Use a keyword research tool to see how popular your chosen keywords are. There are many tools out there which aim to help you choose the right keywords. However in my opinion Google Adwords Keyword tool is the most effective; you can use the keyword tool here:

   https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

6. Understand how competitive a term is, you need to determine how many other sites are also ranking for that keyword and how strong the sites are, for example check the number of Pages Google has indexed and check the number of links. If it is too competitive choose a different keyword.
7. Ensure you have content on the site that reflects the keywords you are wanting to target, if you don’t have the content you will need to create new pages which support your keywords.
8. Add your keywords into the most effective places on your site such as title, meta information, headings, alt text and anchor text.

OK so that is your keyword research completed. However that is not the end! Your industry, your competitors, your customers and your website will change over time, people will search for different things and your focus may change. Therefore it is important to monitor and amend your keywords in line with the changes in the industry.

Choosing the right keywords ultimately gives you a competitive advantage so make sure you get it right!

You can find more advice on how to improve your rankings by clicking on the following link: Improve Ranking