Top 5 keyword research tips

Keyword research is one of the most important processes for search engine optimisation. Here is a list of our top five keyword research tips:

1.  What is your website all about

The first step to keyword research has nothing to do with keywords - it’s all about your strategy. Why is your site different from any other, what have you got to offer that is special or different, what do you think your visitors are looking for?

First of all start writing down the top three or four area that you believe your website is all about. Avoid generic keywords. If you are an accountant for example, don’t just write down ”accountant”. You are very unlikely to be able to compete effectively for this keyword, and your potential customers are unlikely to search on these generic keywords anyway. In this case, you could write down the following keywords: “accoutants in Twickenham”, “affordable accountant”. You also specialise in small business and tax planning, so you also write down “small business accountants” and “tax planning”.

2. Find potential keywords from competitors

The next step is to type the keywords you just identified in Google, one at a time, and note the top 5 websites for each keyword. Obviously, if these sites rank highly they must be doing something right, so start learning what makes Google tick. Look at the keywords used by these sites, and add these keywords to your list, under the area identified in the previous step.

3. Keyword research tools

My favourite keyword research tools are:
Google suggest
Overture keyword selector tool
Wordtracker
Trellian Keyword Discovery Tool
Google AdWords Keyword Tool

Using these tools, you will have now generated huge amount of keywords under each area. These keywords include what you think the site is about, the keywords your competitors are using and a list of top keywords your potential customers are searching for.

4. Finalise your list

Select the list of final keywords by identifying the ones that are more profitable, removing rhe keywords you are unlikely to be competing on or the ones for which there is too much competition. You shouls also consider the volumes of searches performed for each keyword you wish to optimise your site for.

5. Optimise your site

The final step is to optimise your site for the keywords you have identified. For each keyword you should create a separate page, and add the keyword in the URL (domain and filename), the title, the meta keywords and meta description, the headings (H1-H6), the first sentence of first paragraph, in text links. This will give Google and other search engines a very strong indication on what your page is all about, and should rank your page higher in the search engine results (SERPS).