Beginners Guide to Keywords Research and Analysis
Keywords are a super important element of the search engine optimisation process. Although search engines no longer rely on purely 'exact match' terms to be used (as used in Boolean algorithms), however keywords still play a very dominant role in optimising websites for search engines.
3 Stages of Keyword Research
Keyword research actually involves more than digging-up a list of 1,000 keywords that you intend to target at some point to include in your sites copy and code. Instead it has three main stages:
- Finding your websites' ideal keywords (those that people use to find your products / information in your sector and those that convert).
- Analysing their competitiveness against other ranking websites, and deciding upon the necessary commitment needed to rank for them.
- Align your keywords to designated pages or sections of your site.
Keyword Research Tools
There are a wide range of keyword research tools to help you get a good idea of what people are searching for. My favourite free keyword research tools include:
It is sometimes a good idea to run queries through all these tools as they aggregate their data through different means. Also remember though that the language of search and SEO is more than a handful of tools and much more about understanding your community and tapping into your ideal visitors' language and keyphrases – makes sure you read the post for a bit more information.
Finding the ideal keywords for your website
Understanding conversions are a vital part of SEO and keyword research and analysis, Websites of all forms have a form of conversion, whether it be a sale, a newsletter sign-up, an RSS subscription, a social media vote, or providing the right type of information to the right searcher.
Can you measure your conversions?
At this stage, it's important to know of the keywords that send your website traffic via the search engines, which actually convert? It's important to know this because if you find that 'Keyword H' converts at 4% as opposed to 'Keyword K' that converts at 2% then there is much more value in trying to rank more highly for 'Keyword H' as the returns are far greater.
Understanding conversion rates alone though aren't always the best way way of selective your site's keywords, as we will go on to explain.
Competitiveness of Keywords and Your Resources
In addition to the conversion rates of keywords, there are also what we call long-tail and short-tail keywords that consider the search volume and the competitiveness of keywords. Short-tail are typically generic, high search volume and highly competitive search terms. Long-tail search terms are those terms that are used less, frequently more wordy, and more competitive. As a general rule, long-tail keywords are more easily ranked for, whereas short-tail keywords require much more obvious. Examples of each:
- Short-tail: Credit Card
- Long-tail: Fraud Protected Credit Card
Also, considering conversion rates and some basic maths, it might be seen that it is unwise to try to rank for a very competitive term that consumes a large amount of resources when you could rank for 50 terms instead that provides a greater return on investment, even though their average conversions rates are less than the other.
Ranking at 1st place in Google might sound attractive, but your time might be best spent elsewhere.
Tools and queries to help you measure the competitiveness of keywords
To help get a great understanding of what you are competing against, it is important to understand a wide variety of ranking factors, many of which SEO tools will not tell you as these depend on how well they are deemed to be relevant and popular...and it's these factors that increasingly sophisticated. Dip into the SEO Blog and read articles such as the perfect link for SEOs to get a feel for what is helping your competitors rank so well.
The competitive analysis tools. There are many excellent SEO tools available, many of which are paid-for, but there is the odd tool that is free and provides some helpful information for you to analyse. Free competitive analysis tools include:
- For analysing competitors in the results page, considering primarily inbound links, try SEO for Firefox.
- For lots of onsite information, including site age, owner, entries in authoritative directories, estimated volume of site visitors and value, try the SEO Toolbar.
- For checking your rank on an ongoing basis the Rank Checker tool is handy and you can export the data, but it is also built into the SEO Toolbar.
Also see how many pages are competing for those terms with the queries in Google:
- allintitle:"keyword A"
- allinanchor:"keyword A"
Anchor text and title tags are amongst the most important ranking factors in SEO.
Aligning Keywords to Landing Pages
Aligning your keywords to pages or sections of your website is an important part of the process as it promoted relevancy, and as searchers are going to be best served by landing on the right page first time, they are most likely to convert.
This part of working with keywords feeds heavily into the organisation of your site's content, and it's site structure. It is certainly worth reading these sections before you continue as having an understanding of these features helps build in this relevancy into the site.
You might find that you need to apply certain keywords across several pages, but make sure you target modifying terms as part of the keyphrase. That way you avoid cannabilisation of pages competing against each other. With this you can also build a sort of pyramid structure where niche pages support less niche pages (via keyword-rich links) and so on, until a highly optimised page targeting a competitive keyword is well supported at the peak of a pyramid of relevant pages.
Keywords to keymeaning
SEO is not simply about using your keywords in the h1 tag, title tag or body; it has become far more sophisticated in that it relies on a degree of planning at the website build stage, and intuition as to how the content will sit in it's context. Drop us an email for more help!
Posted By: Ben
15 February 2009