What Are Some Good Methods For Keyword Research?

MoreVisibility - March 23, 2009

Keyword research can be quite a laborious task. Keyword research allows those attempting to optimize their site for search engines to increase their reach for multiple search terms. It may, at first, seem like a reasonably simple task to match a two to four word phrase to each of the most important pages on the website. That is not the case, however. The keywords you pick are extremely crucial as the query a searcher enters weighs very heavily. Here are some tried and true methods for making keyword research for your website a little easier:

– Brainstorm a number of keywords you would like to target for all of your most important pages on the site.
– Once you have compiled that list, research them to see which ones are the most searched and the least competitive.
– Utilize tools such as Wordtracker, Trellian and the free Google Adwords Keyword Tool to discover a keyword’s popularity and add to your list by seeing possible alternatives to your keywords.

Of course, once you have compiled the list of the most valuable keywords with the free tools, it is not the end of the process. There is no “magic bullet” that will pick the most appropriate keywords for your site. Picking the right word for a page also takes a fair amount of knowledge about the product or service your website is providing and sometimes just good common sense and experience with your field can make all of the difference.

On a final note, it is very important to not just choose words that are really popular. The higher searched a term, the more likely it is to be very competitive. This can be tricky, because if a keyword is not popular enough, what are the chances that you will be able to get that precious organic traffic to your site? Always keep the searcher in mind when researching and find the closest match. Once those keywords are selected and you are ready to make the changes to your pages, add them to all the pertinent places on the page for the most optimal results. The key areas to add your targeted primary keyphrases are in the meta data (titles, descriptions and keywords) and in the content of the page. Try to get the primary keyphrase to a keyword density (what is the total occurrence of the keyword in relation to the content) of 3-4%. Of course, the longer the keyphrase is, the harder it will be to utilize in the content and still have it make sense. For “longer-tail” keyphrases, a keyword density of around 1-3% would suffice.