Keyword Analysis Research : Finding the Best Keywords For Your
Website Marketing Campaign
For this article, we'll be using just the free options. There are
great websites/tools you can use, but if you're just looking to do a
small keyword analysis, then this can help you along your way.
An important part of your
marketing campaign is choosing the best
keyword phrases for your website. A natural place for people to
start usually is seeing what their competitors are targeting on
their site. This is a good place to start to build a preliminary
list that you use to start your research, but it doesn't end here.
The reason is that your competitors may not be targeting the best
keyword phrases on their site, so it is necessary to do the research
and make sure you have the best keywords.
Just a quick note, I've found using
Google Keyword Tool with Internet Explorer a bit sluggish, so
try Google Chrome, or FireFox when doing your searches.
You will want to start to build a preliminary list of keywords. You
can check out your top competitors, see what keywords they may be
optimized for, and you can also use
SEMrush, to get
a sample of 10 keyword phrases with this. Research as much as
possible to get a good starting list ready. You can also check out
Alexa.com for some related competitors and see the data they have on
file with their domain listing.
Next, open
Google Keyword Tool, and for
organic Seo purposes, you will want
to use the Exact option. This shows up after you've made your first
search. Using the Exact match option is good for finding out the
exact number that Google has recorded. I've found the Google's
numbers here tend to be lower than what I have seen from Analytics
and other sources, but its a good starting point for current
available data.
- Broad match: The sum of the search volumes
for the keyword idea, related grammatical forms, synonyms and
related words
- Phrase match: The sum of the search volumes
for all terms that include that whole phrase
- Exact match: The search volume for that
keyword idea
With your keyword research here, you can try starting with some
topic general phrases to get an idea of what keywords are coming
back and their values, and then further research more longtail
keyword phrases. You can used negative keywords to block out any
that are showing that you are not looking to target. Start off with
general keywords to help get some ideas, and then further refine. The more
related keywords you can collect for your research is ideal.
You will want to download the keywords you selected, I tend to use
CSV to Excel.
Getting The Competition Numbers
Once you have the search data, now you want to find some information
on each of the keywords regarding the competitiveness of each of the
keywords. This part will be time consuming on your end depending on
how many keyword phrases you have in your list.
You could start off with something such as the following.
Google Competition number is obtained by searching for the exact
phrase within double quotes. With AllInUrl Competition, the search
function is allinurl:"keyword analysis research". This is just
another option to get some ideas on the competitive levels. You can
explore this more with Google's Advanced Search features and get
more data. (http://www.google.com/advanced_search)
|
Keyphrase |
Global Monthly Searches |
Google Competition |
AllInUrl Competition |
|
free keyword research |
390 |
1,360,000 |
31,900 |
|
google keyword research |
1,900 |
1,780,000 |
22,300 |
|
keyword analysis |
3,600 |
4,580,000 |
45,500 |
|
keyword analysis research |
210 |
170,000 |
3,440 |
|
keyword research |
74,000 |
12,400,000 |
753,000 |
|
keyword research and analysis |
170 |
518,000 |
4,370 |
|
website keyword analysis |
390 |
108,000 |
5,960 |
Comparing the Data
By now you will have a list of keywords from both sources and its
good to compare the data/numbers in a table. I find using excel and
also incorporate the competiting number of websites for the exact
phrases a great help as well. The more sites that are competiting
for a certain keyword phrase, you can get somewhat of an idea of how
hard it will be to achieve rankings.
Using PPC Campaigns to Test Your Findings
For this article, we'll use Google Adwords. You can use all the
keyword phrases (or which ones you want) and test them out in Google
to see what keyword phrases actually are getting searched for more.
The great thing is that over a period of time, you can see the
searches, and you can also see what is working best for your site
with the click thrus from your ads. Writing proper ads leads into a
different topic that we will touch on later, but for now, you are
able to see what people are searching for, and you can include this
into your findings along with the data you have already found.
Conclusion
With an approach such as this (or something on a similar level) you
will be better equipped to make a better educated decision on
choosing the best keyword phrases for your site. Also, if something
ends up not working, it is as simple as changing the keywords on
your content/copy and waiting for the results in the search engines.
Gerard Manning
Search Engine Placement Specialist
Search Engine Marketing Agency :: Manning
Search Marketing
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