There are so many different opinions on which strategies work the best for SEO, but in reality, all SEO efforts should start with extensive keyword research. Whether you agree this is the most important aspect or not, if you don’t do keyword research, you’re bound for failure. Let’s review the reasons behind this being the more important SEO aspect.
Getting the Right People to Your Site
All successful businesses have to have a way of getting the right audience to notice them, and with all of the competition on the internet, our best chance is to get them through SEO. Researching what your target audience types in the search bar can highly increase the amount of quality traffic to your site because you know that the majority of your target demographic types that specific search term.
You can also understand that even though some search terms might be within your niche, can work against you. Let’s say that you own an online hat store that offers great hats at a low price. You will get much better results and conversion rates by targeting phrases like “Beautiful hats for cheap”. If you try and target something that just says “Good looking hats”, you will only attract people that are only interested in looking at the hats, not buying them.
Each industry is different, so you will have to do your own keyword research to figure out what works best for your business, but trying to just guess which ones are good to target will only end in money and time being spent for nothing.
Trend Changes
Doing keyword research helps with keeping on top of your niche because you will also get insight on what your target audience is interested in next. If you notice that people are becoming more interested in another aspect of your niche, you will have a head start on your competition to meet the needs of your consumers.
People also change the way they search for things, so even if they are not interested in a different product or service, they might just be typing in the keyword or phrase a bit differently. Don’t let your competition start targeting those phrases before you do because then it takes a lot more resources to get ahead of them.
Phrase Difficulty and Popularity
A big problem with not doing keyword research before you decide to focus on phrases is not understanding what exactly it is going to take to make that phrase profitable. Some phrases and keyword are much more popular than others and the popular ones tend to be extremely hard to rank because so many other people are trying to do the same thing as you. Another thing would be the complete opposite, spending your resources on a keyword that isn’t used to much. It doesn’t matter which route you took, in the end you have spent your limited resources on keywords and phrases that won’t bring your company any profits.
If you would have invested some time and effort into understanding those keyword, you could have understood that you would have never made any money from them and could continue on to other, more profitable choices. An ideal phrase is one that people use, but isn’t too popular. This is because the competition is usually much less and you have a much higher chance of seeing profits and traffic from those types.
Keyword Research is Really Important for PPC
If you are running a pay per click campaign and haven’t done any keyword research, you are probably either paying way to much or are targeting keywords that are useless. Since these pay per click programs are all based off of what terms you want to bid on, you should know exactly what type of people will be coming to your site, your chance of conversion, and also be paying a reasonable price. No point in spending 2 dollars a click for the same conversion rate on a different phrase that only costs 40 cents.
Bottom line is, no matter what SEO efforts you are working on, you should have already completed keyword research on the phrases and continue to do research within your niche.
Ness is a contributor for make-a-web-site.com – a site dedicated for beginners and aspiring web developers. Head on to their site for valuable tips and information on how you can get started on your first website project.
Original Content by SEO Andy @ Best SEO Strategy? Start with Keyword Research
