Keyword StrategiesKeyword research
If a keyword is strong in all criteria, then it's almost certainly a keyword you want to optimise for and implement throughout your site.
At this point, create a keyword research spreadsheet with one column for the keyword, a column for each keyword research tool, and a column that lists the average count of each tool's search estimate for that term.
You might think of this as the hardest step in the keyword research process because it requires you to provide numbers independent of keyword research tools.
Estimating keyword relevancy not only eliminates the least relevant terms from your keyword campaign, but also highlights opportunities for expanding your services in order to capitalise on less relevant, highly trafficked terms.
Engage the reader immediately with questions that feature major keywords – because if they have framed a question on a search engine you can echo their search and the keywords they’ve used with a similar question.
Keyword Cannibalisation
It’s important to be conscious of keyword cannibalization, which is inadvertently targeting the same keyword on multiple pages.
Do not worry about keyword density, which is making sure that a particular keyword appears a certain amount of times on one page.
The practice of keyword research seems straightforward at first – type a few relevant terms into a tool, get some results, target the good ones on your site, and watch the traffic roll in. In practice, however, the intricacies of every portion of this process make it invaluable to know the ins and outs of keyword search marketing.
Keyword Tools Provide Relative Numbers, not Accurate Predictions
Be wary of using the keyword tools to forecast exactly how much traffic will come to your website.
The keyword tools can be great sources of brainstorming material, and will provide a solid starting point, and it's up to you to know enough about your industry to determine what keyword niches will provide value.
Keyword Estimate and List Generation Sources
The following is a list of resources that provide keyword suggestions and search estimates. Keyword suggestions are any terms and phrases a tool provides that are related to your site's services and to your existing list of keywords. Search estimates are the number of searches for a keyword in a given amount of time (one day, thirty days, ninety days, a year; the time frame varies with each tool). Don't think of these counts as accurate—each tool pulls data from different sources, so it's impossible to say which has the “most accurate” count; rather, you should think of search estimate figures as a relative way to see which keyword is searched for more often than others.
Google's AdWords Keyword Tool Estimator provides related terms, search volume estimates, search trends, and ad cost estimates for any keyword or URL that you enter.
What the Traffic Estimator providesWhen you enter one or more keywords in the Traffic Estimator, the tool will return estimates of the search volume for each term, their average cost per click, their ad positions, the clicks per day, and the cost per day.
