Understanding Keyword Research

Keyword research is an essential part of SEO and the foundation of any successful SEO campaign. Selecting the right keywords that will bring targeted traffic to your site is not as straightforward as some may think and many people are guilty of making a number of mistakes.

Competition. Before you begin to consider what keywords you’d like to optimise for you need to establish your target area and where you stand in relation to your competition. If you’re based in Edinburgh and provide an outside catering service it’s unlikely that you’re going to want to pick up business from someone throwing a party in Manchester. By geo-targeting your keywords with locations not only do you reduce your online competition but you narrow down your customer base to those who are far more likely to buy from you or to use your services. The table below shows how search volumes and keyword difficulty change when the keywords become targeted to locations.

Conversions.  Let’s say you run a small business that sells laptops. You want to drive more traffic to your website to increase sales and decide that ‘laptop’ will be one of your keywords.  Although the word ‘laptop’ is clearly relevant to your website it’s far too broad a keyword to turn into a conversion, not to mention highly competitive. Instead think about those people who are actively looking at buying a particular type of laptop and not just those performing broad searches with no real intention. Your aim is simple; to sell laptops, so you should chose more specific keywords that are more likely to convert. Think of those people searching for ‘Dell Inspiron laptop’ or ‘Sony Vaio laptop’, they clearly know which laptops they’re interested in buying and now it’s your chance to turn their search into your sale.

Exact vs. Broad. On the surface this may not seem like such a big deal but it can make all the difference. According to Google’s keyword tool there are 9,900 broad match monthly searches for ‘men’s black shoes’ compared to 720 exact match searches. Failing to base your keyword research on exact match data could end up with you optimising your site around keywords which you expect to bring in a high quantity of traffic but in reality have very low search volumes.

Plural vs. Singular. When it comes to deciding whether to use plural or singular versions of a keyword many people opt for the plural version based on the fact that they’re selling more than one product. When we look at some search volumes we can see that there are 6,600 monthly searches for ‘HD TV’ and only 880 for ‘HD TVs’. It pays to take the time to examine all possibilities when conducting keyword research but most of all to consider what your customers are likely to be searching for instead of basing your keywords around what you’re selling.

SEO is a long term investment that can lead to a big return. If you’re interested in finding keywords that can increase the amount of converting traffic that your website is receiving then drop us a line.