A Beginner’s Guide to Conducting Keyword Research for Search Engine Optimization

One of the first steps to any successful SEO campaign is determining which keywords the site wants to concentrate on. It’s extremely important that the terms users are searching to each your site relate to the products, services, and ideas that represent the site. These keywords will help influence how the site is marketed going forward.

Build a list of relevant terms

Begin jotting down terms that you feel may be related to your site. Anything that comes to mind should be added here, there’s no bad ideas. Ideally this list will be created digitally, we will be copying and pasting it later.

With this list don’t limit yourself to your main product. For instance, if you’re offering ‘business shoes’, write down some terms that could be related such as ‘business shoes for men’, ‘casual business shoes’, etc. You may find some longer tailed keywords that will fit your site very well.

Get search volume

This is the most important part of the keyword research process. Here we will determine which keywords are worth going after. There’s a number of different keyword research tools available, yet the best approach is to go directly to the source, Google. Google’s Keyword Planner tool makes getting search volume quick and easy, and they typically have the most accurate information. One issue with keyword planner is if you do not have an AdWords campaign running the results of the search volume will be a range, 1,000-2,000. This can make the research process a bit more difficult.

• Go to adwords.google.com which will bring you to their dashboard. If you have initiated the beginning of a campaign you will see the option for the tools drop down. Here we will select ‘Keyword Planner’.

• Once in the tool we will select the ‘Get search volume data and trends’. This tool will work best for getting search volume for the keyword list we built earlier. Copy and paste your list into this field and wait for your results. If you’re looking for keyword suggestions you can also use the tab above to find new keywords.
• Results will be returned with the monthly searches, competition level, and how much you should be bidding, which is only relevant to PPC.The competition level is a bit subjective, but gives the user a good idea of how many pages are competing for the term. Export the search volume and difficulty level into your document with the keywords.
• Additional data to look at is the number of pages indexed for the specific term. This is a timely process, yet is helpful when determining which keywords to go after. Plug the term into Google and under the search bar there will be a large number which shows how many results are returned related to that term. Ideally this number will be fairly low, anything over 10 million is pretty high.

• Now that we have our information it’s time to choose which keywords will be our focus. The Adficient team will pick approximately five keywords that have high search volume which will return high amounts of visitors. Next we will select 5 sub-keywords to influence the first five focused terms. The selected keywords should have high search volume, low competition level, and a low amount of indexed pages.

Plan your strategy

Once you have selected your keywords it will be time to build out your SEO campaign. Your campaign should be focused around these primary terms, with the secondary terms being used within the site.

• Plan your content around your focused keywords.Your content marketing strategy should be focused around your selected keywords. Use these keywords within the title, content, internal linking, and meta information.
• Track your keywords. Make sure to monitor your keywords as your campaign advances. Ensure the needle is being moved forward, watch your rankings change over time. As your rankings increase you will see a similar increase with your organic traffic.

Having trouble with your keyword research? Need a second look at your list of keywords? Let the Adficient SEO team review your site, keyword list, and products to help determine where your focus should be spent.