Researching your website’s keywords can be a daunting task. You may be asking, “How do I successfully research keywords that will produce results for my website?” This can be a smooth process once you know some of the key elements of website keyword research success.
For starters, you’ll need to determine your specific niche. What product or service sets you apart from your competitors? Let’s say your website features an online book club for children. The goal from your website keyword research is to determine which specific keywords your target audience is typing into Google or the other search engines when they are searching for what you have to offer. For the sake of our example, you’d want to find the converting keywords for “children’s book club”.
In order to do this research, you’ll need to use a keyword research tool. A recommended tool is the keyword tool for Google. Simply type in your website name or the keywords or phrases you wish to research. This will produce a keyword list, sorted by either global or local views per month.
An important keyword tip to note: when doing your keyword research, don’t focus your SEO efforts on keywords with the highest total searches per month. Although this seems logical, the longer-tail keywords, or more specific phrases, often get fewer searches, but have higher conversions because the prospective customer tends to be looking for exactly what they are going to buy. If you think about it, the higher searches are more general searches, or casual Internet users.
When you look at our example of “children’s book club” with this keyword tool, you’ll find that the highest searched keyword globally is “short kids stories.” This would be a general search, simply finding stories online and definitely not what this example would want to target. But, as you scroll down the list you find more targeted, longer-tail keywords of “children’s book of the month” and “buy children’s book.” These both have significantly less searches, but are more targeted and will likely have higher conversion rates. Although longer-tail keywords are often the less popular keywords, they are responsible for quality online traffic!
You’ll also want to ensure you aren’t focusing your efforts on highly-competitive keywords. These keywords are usually quite obvious and will have too much competition. They will also take longer to get better rankings. Remember, quality search engine optimization efforts take time and are labor-intensive. You’ll want to make sure you are focusing your efforts on high-quality keywords.
