SEO Tips: 4 Cardinal Rules for Keyword Research

December 8th, 2009 | by BillEgan |

A previous article contains seo tips for using social media to boost your keyword rankings. Here we deal with the starting point for any seo project and that is Keyword Research.

What Are Keywords?

Keywords or key phrases are the terms that Google researchers type in when looking for information on the internet.

You will want your website to show in the search results for these key phrases indicating that someone has an interest in your product or service.

Therefore it’s critical that your website is optimised for relevant search terms used when looking for whatever it is that you are promoting on your website.

Why Is Research So Important?

There will be thousands of possible key search phrases that are relevant for your website.

However the question is what are the keywords that you should you optimise each page for.

Choosing the right keywords is critical since if you build your web pages using the wrong keywords there is a real risk that your online business could fail to get off the ground.

These tips are taken from the hard earned experience of the old school direct marketers. Every campaign had to be profitable or they were out of business fast.

In direct mail, marketers had to pay up-front for paper, stamps, envelopes, printing, package and post.

The delivery of the information is different (post in place of online marketing or email), but the concept is identical.

The basic principle is to:

“Always look for a large market full of motivated buyers who are prepared to spend a lot to get what they want and seek out niches in that market with low or moderate competition.”

In search marketing this translates into looking for signs of high traffic levels and high visitor value with low competition.

Cardinal Rule #1

Always be on the look out for markets full of people willing to spend money and searching for something with a high value.

In all online markets the profitability of players in that market is directly related to the overall value of the market.

And it doesn’t matter what industry they’re in, businesses around keywords with higher market values tend to make more than businesses around keywords with lower market values.

Here is a list of top online markets that would have these large volumes of people looking for products and services:

Financial Services (Banking and Personal Loans)
Cars
Hotels
Real Estate
Insurance
Home Mortgages
Travel
Computer
General Shopping
Education
Gambling

Each broad market will have dozens or even hundreds of smaller market niches defined by different key phrases. Your research should carefully analyse these to find out the best ones for your seo campaign.

As a rule of thumb, I would suggest looking for market niches (or keywords) with at least 70 searches per day. This means that the number 1 position on that page should generate around 30 visitors to the relevant landing page on your website that is optimised for that keyword. Otherwise its not really worthwhile putting in the effort to optimise that page.

Cardinal Rule #2

The problem with only using traffic volume alone as a measure of a market opportunity is that it ignores how much is being spent in that market. That can be measured in relative terms by the highest price being paid for ad words in each market niche.

So you need to spend time in advance of choosing what keywords to focus on by researching what market niches are profitable and eliminating those that are not.

You need to spend time looking for spenders rather than browsers.

This knowledge will without question save you a lot of wasted time, effort and

Expense by targeting the wrong market niches.

Cardinal Rule #3

Before making any final choice you need to look at the competition for each keyword.

As a rule of thumb I suggest not selecting any keyword with >100,000 competitors.

Competitors are the number of web pages that are indexed by Google for a specific keyword.

Another measure is the % of web pages with the keyword in the title compared to the total number of competing web pages.

Cardinal Rule #4

Before making any final choice you need to look at the competition for each keyword.

Doesn’t this take a lot of time?

You can use Google’s keyword search tool to help.

Local search volume = monthly search traffic

CPC = cost per click for no. 1 position

Total Visitor value = Total searches x CPC

The seo visitor value is 42% of the above figure and the Adwords visitor value = 6% of total visitor value.

This gives a measure of the total value of the market for a #1 keyword ranking position.

The important thing to remember is that these are indicators of comparative value of each market niche. The keywords with the highest visitor value have the highest potential value to your business.

If you are serious about keyword research, take a look at Market Sumurai – a keyword tool that can save lots of time in doing this keyword research.

What Should Be Your Next Step:

If you have an existing website here are some seo tips on how to do a website audit for the keywords you have selected.

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