Effective keyword research is probably one of the most pertinent skills you should have to boost your site traffic with your target audience. And yet, it is one of the most overlooked tasks.
You could go on creating excellent content but without the right keywords or keyword phrases, your site would just float in the internet milkyway without the audience it deserves to have. Good news is that you don’t need to be a search engine marketing pro to come up with the right keywords. All you have to do is to go beyond your gut-feel and find the keywords that your preferred visitors really use.
There are several ways to do your keyword research. Below are just ten of the most frequently used methods.
1 Performing searches on search engines
Go Ask Google for Keywords
A significant number of people reach websites through search engine searches and you can’t afford to lose this amount of traffic. The key to this – you guessed it right, effective keywords or key phrases that engine spiders can crawl and index.
So how do you come up with the right hook? If you’re a budding webmaster or a newbie web writer, you may start with this simple keyword research technique. Use search engines to yield recommended words and phrases. This feature is mostly available for searches that are too broad. Search engines offer this to help you get more specific results but of course, you can take advantage of this to find fresh keywords. Keep in mind that if these words are recommended by search engines, it is highly probable that a lot of people use these keywords for their searches.
So how do you go about it? It’s quite simple. Log in to major search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN or other search engines of your choice that run this feature. Then type in your topic or term you want to explore and note the related searches that appear on one corner of your search results. But then, don’t just copy in everything. Have a thorough understanding of keywords you need and filter out the unnecessary results. These searches are particularly helpful to get more specific terms and phrases but don’t let the overflow drown you.
2 Using your server or analytics search logs/log files
Log Files Can Give You the Right Keywords
A log file is simply a list of activities that happen on your website. One important set of details it provides is your visitors’ navigation behavior. By clicking the Check Log File command on your server, you’ll know where your visitors came, particularly the keywords or phrases they used to land on your website.
Yes, your log files may be just sleeping around, lying down at your fingertips without you noticing that it is ready to help you connect with the right traffic. Now, get aboard and take a look at what people have entered on your log files and note the single words and phrases as well as the search filters visitors use. You could be amazed with gems of fresh keywords that spring from your own file. Get a good estimate of the number of times such words or phrases are used too. This will help you narrow down the best and most-often used keywords.
By looking at your log files, you are able to check what your visitors want to see in your site. The next move is to make these ‘wants’ into something visible. Go over your content and try to integrate these new words or phrases. The better if you can create new content. You may also include these keywords in your heading tags, page titles, anchor text and inbound links.
3 Using a thesaurus or dictionary
Roget and Webster to the Rescue
Remember the times you run out of words to put in your college paper? I do. Mentioning the same word in a single project over and over can be disastrous and at the least, monotonous. Now that we’re in the internet space age, this problem occurs again in a different light. While the desired effect is not merely to deviate from being repetitive but to come up with fresh, new terms associated with a word or phrase, we simply have to go back to old Roget or Webster.
When you’ve whacked up your brain to find other terms associated to a word, it’s always handy to have a thesaurus or dictionary. Not surprisingly, you’ll find these traditional books a gold mine of words for your keyword hunting. If you have stashed your paperbacks and hardbound somewhere forgotten, you could utilize the online versions as well.
The process is very easy and quite familiar. For example, if you’re running a website that deals with hiking, you can search for the root word ‘hike’ on thesaurus and come up with its synonyms trek, backpack and others. The dictionary, on the other hand, will tell you that it could mean a long walk or to march. Either way, you’ll have new words and phrases similar to your keyword that other people are using for the same content.
Using the dictionary and thesaurus as a keyword research technique is really so simple, effective and cost-free but one that many writers and webmasters often miss to do.
4 Interviews with actual people/target market
Finding New Keywords through Interviews
Keyword research may or may not cost you some money but it will surely require an ample amount of effort from you. Talking to other people, for example, is a good way to come up with keywords and phrases you never thought your target market uses to find what they want on the internet. It will require some time and resourcefulness but the result would surely be unique and helpful to your site.
You don’t interview just anyone you bump into, of course. The first thing to consider in doing this technique is to know who your desired visitors are and how to get in touch with them.
You can do this casually, through light talks but make sure the other party welcomes it. Or you can do it by setting actual interviews or focus group discussions. Start with your family and friends as they will probably be most accommodating to lend you their time.
If you’re selling consumer goods on your website, try visiting shopping centers to meet people interested on your particular type of product. If it’s service you’re rendering, contact past customers or people on your mailing list. Your customer service or support team would also be the best people to interview since they are familiar with your client’s terminology.
Prepare your questions, if needed and take down notes or record your conversations. Observe your interviewees’ lingo and be open-minded enough to welcome new terms and ideas. You’ll be surprised that these interviews will not just deliver fresh keywords for your site but you’ll also gain a lot of knowledge about your customers’ preferences.
5 Offline methods
Keyword Hunting Tip: Watch out for Offline Media
So you have strained your eyes searching online for the best fitting keywords? It’s time to switch off your computer and take a look in the offline world. You’ll realize that the offline media greatly affects the online media and vice-versa.
Traditional print materials like magazines and yellow pages are great sources of keywords. Here you can find new terms from product reviews, customer raves and rants and yellow pages tags. To maximize this keyword research technique, simply browse your latest yellow pages for section that fits your product/service/topic best and find categories, headings, taglines and descriptions associated with it. Note down the ones you don’t have on your keyword list and go over it again to determine if it would be helpful to add to your site’s content.
Magazines are quite up-to-date and should give you a lot of names and terms that consumers use to talk about specific products and services. Additionally, magazine article titles are good inspirations for link baiting, another SEM technique to boost site traffic.
Don’t miss the print ads, billboards, TV and radio commercials too. You’ll pick tons of lingo there that people use every day. Offline advertisements have a way of conditioning people’s mind to associate a word with a product so be ready to see those keywords or phrases in online searches.
If you’re one of the web writers and site owners who realize the connection between offline and online world, you know that the rewards are endless.
6 Wordplay
Dressing Up your Old Keyword
Sometimes keyword research can be tedious that you either hire someone to do it or stick your head trying to figure out new terms to put in your site. But who says that you need an entirely fresh keyword to enhance your website traffic? You may not realize it but you may have all the keywords you need. All you have to do is tweak it a bit and you’ll have new sets of keywords to accommodate more searches.
How to do this technique? One way is to look for adjectives that searchers type in with your keyword. Bag, for example is such a broad keyword. You can add in adjective like native bag if it’s one of your products. Take another step and be a little more specific by placing the word ‘discount’ or ‘cheap’ to make your keyword ‘cheap native bag.’ Many people actually use adjectives to narrow down their searches and adjectives like ‘discount’ or ‘cheap’ are the most frequently used.
Aside from being more descriptive, you can also consider including misspelled words. Admittedly, many people misspell words during searches that cyberspace already has a list of most common misspelled words in the internet. Be careful though when using misspelled words as keywords because they might affect your site’s credibility. You can probably place a ‘did you mean’ phrase to acknowledge that you know it is, in fact misspelled.
7 Discussion forums and blogs
Keywords are Found where your Market Talks
Blogs, groups and forums are often up-to-date and are good sources of keywords. By visiting these talks, you’ll know how your desired market calls a product and other terms they use with it. In fact, it is not just an effective keyword research tool but also a great way to have a good grasp at your target market.
You can benefit from this method by being specific with your topic first. Are you selling make-ups? Don’t just look for sites that talk about make-ups because you’ll find tons and could easily get lost. Ask yourself what kind of make-ups you are zeroing in. Be as specific as possible and also look at regions where you intend to sell your product. Another way to narrow your search is to determine the problem your product can solve. Let’s say you are selling mineral make-up and you address problems such as skin irritation and use of harsh chemical components. Use these tags and be ready to meet people who will most likely buy your product.
Finding these talks are easy. To search for blogs relevant to your search, you may use Technorati (http://technorati.com/) or Google blog search (http://blogsearch.google.com/). Type in your topic or keywords and sift the result to comments that talk specifically about those problems. For groups, you may write the same search words in Google Groups (http://groups.google.com/) or Yahoo Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com/) homepage. These search engines have vast number of groups that talk about almost everything. As for online forums, just type in your keyword and a (+) plus sign then the word ‘forums’ on Google or Yahoo search bars.
To get the best from this method, consider talks that have recent and numerous activities. Join the discussion and ask questions. Note down the key terms people use and incorporate these on your site.
8 Check your competitor’s site
The Art of War in Keywords
Know your competitors and the keywords they are using. The first step is to find your direct competitors, the websites that are doing well in page ranks and visitor hits. To do this, you can type in a search that fits your website and note the top results. For example, if you are rendering a limousine service, don’t just type in limousine. Be more specific and always enter the location where your business concentrates. Say for example, limousine service California. This will narrow down result and lead you to the websites of your direct competitors.
Now that you have a good list, check each site and click on the View tab. Then go to Page Source and you will see a notepad that bears title, description and keywords used by your competitor. Study the keywords well and don’t just copy in everything. Alternately, you may visit Whois.sc, a domain tool to check your competitors’ meta descriptions.
Aside from this, you can browse your competitors’ websites thoroughly and review page titles and content. Here you’ll surely discover keywords you hadn’t put in your website and also gain knowledge on how other companies solve their customers’ problems.
9 free tools
Free Tools for your Keyword Research
When doing keyword research, it’s best to consult tools because these can guide you to a whole lot of relevant keywords you may not have thought about. You may find some results strange but keep in mind that people really have different ways to search for things on the internet.
If you are new to this keyword research technique, I strongly suggest you go for free tools and then decide if you really need upgraded services. How do you find these tools? There’s nothing like a search but if you need a little coaching, here are some sites that offer free keyword research help:
Perhaps the most common is the Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com/). Just log in to their site and be sure to go for the free trial. It will require some information, including credit card details in case you opt to upgrade after a week of free use. Wordtracker can be easy to use but has lots of information that might confuse you if you are new to SEO. I suggest you browse a bit about KEI and other terms to maximize this tool.
There’s also Overture from Yahoo! and Google AdWords (http://adwords.google.com/) from Google that base their results from their own traffic.
Aside from these popular names in keyword research, there are other lesser know sites as well that have gained good user feedback. Among these are Keyword Discovery (http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html), Keyword Spy (http://www.keywordspy.com/) and many others. The best part about these tools is that most of which do not focus on results of one search engine alone. Although free tools are said to have limited features than their paid counterparts, they’re still useful and definitely worth a try.
10 paid tools
Feeling like a Keyword Research Pro? Try These Paid Tools
Free tools are great but when you need thorough and frequent searches and have some bucks to spare for your website, you may want to subscribe to paid keyword research tools. Paid tools definitely have an edge when it comes to result because you don’t only see keywords and a set of stats but other helpful features as well.
Here are some of the most popular paid keyword research tools:
Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com/)
Most users say the free version is very limiting so opt for the paid version if you can. There are several pricing plans so check it out first before making a decision. With Wordtracker, you will not only find a list of keywords actual user type in but also the level of competitiveness of each keyword. Say one keyword can be frequently used but not many pages have it. Exactly the keyword you are looking for!
Hitwise (http://www.hitwise.com/)
Hitwise acts like a spy to your competitors’ keyword base. Not just a useful keyword research tool, it can help you know what keywords they are using in paid searches, as well as what keywords users type in to land on their site. Likewise, if you want a keyword report for top ways searchers found a site, you can always rely on Hitwise with an interesting base of millions of subscribers worldwide.
qSearch (http://www.comscore.com/metrix/search.asp)
Another effective keyword research tool is QSearch. It has a rather complete service to help you understand user search behaviors. If you’re running a site that focuses on selling, you may want to go for QSearch since it does not only provide effective keywords but reveals connection between these keywords and the customers’ buying attitude.
These paid tools have amazing features and if you think your website seriously needs these results, go ahead and decide which premiere subscription fits best.
Keywords are like seeds that eventually run the field. By learning how to come up with quality keywords, you don’t have to join the black hat team and ruin your content with keyword spamming.
