In order to be successful in your search engine marketing campaign, you need to do SEO keyword research. Knowing the best keywords to use in your internet marketing campaigns is crucial if you want to rank well for search terms that will drive traffic to your website. Fortunately, learning how to research keywords is not difficult at all.
To save your results for later use and stay organized, you will want to record your keywords in a spreadsheet program. A notebook works too. Use whatever tools you are comfortable with and that will allow you to add to the list as you generate phrases.
Begin your research by brainstorming all of the keywords related to your project that you customers might use to find information about it. For instance, say your website was about training dogs. Some possible keywords that searchers would use are ‘train a dog’ or ‘dog potty training’.
When your brainstorming session is over, it’s time to do some research on the internet. Go to your favorite search engine and type in one of the keywords on your list. Select websites that are similar to your topic. Copy down keywords they appear to be trying to rank for.
You may have to do a little digging to get at their keywords. A good place to look is at the keyword meta tag which is usually located in the site’s header. You will have to look at the site’s source code in order to see them. If you are using Firefox, click ‘View’ and select ‘Page Source’. For Internet Explorer users, click ‘Page’ and then ‘View Source’.
Next, go to a keyword phrase tool like WordTracker or Google’s Keyword Tool. These research tools will provide you with a list of terms web searchers have entered into the search engines to find the products and information they needed. They will also show you how many times the phrase or word is used per day.
Once you have your keywords, you need to analyze them to determine if they will work well for your project. Google Keyword Tool will tell how competitive a keyword is. Don’t automatically assume you want keywords with the lowest competition. Sometimes low competition is because of low search volume for that particular keyword. Use keywords that have a good balance of competition and search volume.
The Estimated Average CPC will tell you how much advertisers are paying per click. If you are using Google Adsense to monetize your content, you can estimate that you will earn about 30-50% of that amount. If you multiply that by the number of visits and then divide that total by four, you’ll get an estimate of how much income you can expect to generate using that keyword.
Proper SEO keyword research cannot be ignored if you want your project to do well in the search engines. Take the time to find the right words and phrases and you enjoy the success you deserve.
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