The Language of Search
Keyword research is the most important thing that somebody looking to optimise their website should consider. Keyword research is what defines for you the competitiveness of the online industry and provides structure, relevancy and goals in the form of a target market. It really does need to become your new best friend, although this does not mean just becoming friendly with a keyword research tool...
The Limited Nature of Keyword Tools
Keyword research is massively important to optimising your site, but simply using the top 100 keywords that pass through the search engines query boxes for your sector may be quite limited as part of your SEO strategy. Consider using other tools and methods to build target-worthy keywords.
Your site (I hope!) is totally unique. The information that is provided, the way it is delivered and the people behind the website can all leave an impression with the visitor, and influence how they use the website and interact with information from that specific sector. A classic example is building you brand online.
Keyword-building
Your brand is 'Overworked Buckaroo'. These are not terms that will appear in keyword tools, but through on- and off-site keyword-building / marketing these could essentially become terms that create search volume, in which you could dominate.
Targeting keywords for YOUR website
People may use keywords to find your site, but then often use other keywords to find products or information whilst on your site via your search box. Consider using a search tool on your website that allows you to log the queries that run through it.
Anticipate and Extrapolate Keywords from your Ideal Neighbourhood
Learning about the your website's neighbourhood generates a whole host of ideas for keywords, topics of interest, product terminology, etc.
- Blog and forum comments help you gain an insight into the terminology, sentence structure and grammar usage in your ideal neighbourhood. This can also provide an insight into long-tail keywords, or upcoming keywords in their infancy.
- Language used in emails, or other forms of correspondence teach you what people are looking for, what people are needing, so consider building a FAQ question's section using the terminology in the correspondence.
- Build content that reflects other areas of strength, e.g. offline marketing materials, press releases – ensure that you rank for the terms that you use in the press release as this is designed to generate interest.
Competing for your Ideal Keywords
Finding keywords is a fascinating part of optimising a site because it teaches you so much about the market, the consumers of this market, and the flow and integration of the information used to represent this market. More often than not though, ranking for your ideal keywords inorder to capture your perfect audience is a hard task, which requires a great number of considerations.
It's the search engine algorithms that influence who ranks where and for which keywords. However understanding the metrics that influence rankings is possible to a degree, and can thus aid analysis of keyword competitiveness...but that will have to wait for another day!
Posted By: Ben
04 November 2008