Keyword Research Tips To Help You
Writing by Nick Stamoulis
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Keyword research is probably one of the most important steps you will take when you start your on site optimization for your website. Keyword research when done right can have your website operating like a well oiled inbound marketing machine. When done incorrectly it could cause you to miss out on very valuable web traffic leading to a loss in sales and revenues. In this post, I will recommend several helpful tips that could help you research relevant keywords to optimize every page of your website, after you have written your content.
Here are some keyword research tips to help you isolate only the cream of the crop keywords:
1. Thesaurus – A major point in keyword research is the ability to find a variety of keywords that your audience might use in order to find the same exact thing. A thesaurus can help you eliminate the guessing game from sitting there and trying to come up with variations of a certain keyword in your head. Don’t guess just use an online thesaurus and cut through the frustration.
2. Competitors – Take a look at your competition and see what they are doing and what keywords they might be targeting to give you a starting point if you feel stuck in any way. I never recommend anyone copying someone else’s approach but you can look at keywords to get a better understanding of what your audience and competition is using on the internet to attract attention.
3. Keyword Research Tools – Always use a keyword research tool, such as Keyword Discovery. Don’t ever assume you already know all your industry keywords because you have been working in a specific industry for some time. Chances are there are many long tail keywords in your industry that are being used on a daily basis that you are unaware of. Some of these long tailed keywords could be great for conversions because typically the end user knows exactly what they are looking for.
4. Be Strategic with your Keyword Research – When you start putting your lists together be realistic. Take a look at who is sitting around in the search results for the keywords you are picking and truly analyze whether you compete against them or not.
Remember that keyword research is going to be the foundation for almost everything you do online as business in the future. Pick the wrong keywords and you will get the wrong web traffic which could cause you to operate at only half capacity.
20 Responses to “Keyword Research Tips To Help You”
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Very useful article, thank you for sharing. I never thought to use a thesaurus to find relevant keywords. My husband and I have a new online business. As it seems, we are doing a good job on SEO but we need some more google traffic!
I have a rather common question: how many keywords do I have to use? What is the golden rule of this? I believe that “the more – the better” rule is not helpful here.
Another question for the greek keywords is that some greek words are written with different way in a manner of spelling. Shall I use all (which I think is not correct) or shall I change and decide later depending on the feedback that I have?
Thank you in advance for your feedback
Efi
Hi Efi,
Thanks for reading and for leaving your comment!
Once you have written your content for each page of your website, I then recommend hand picking between 2 and 5 unique keywords to target on each page of your website.
Even though, I am Greek, I do not know the Greek language as well as I do English, so I don’t know how to answer your question, but I would say having generally speaking, it would make sense to target different versions of the same keywords.
Thanks again for reading!
Nick
Years ago, while I was working for a local home center, people were having trouble with gypsy moths. So, a manufacturer of bug killer changed the label on one of it’s chemicals and sold it as “Gypsy Moth Killer”.
My point is, when looking for keywords, go where your potential visitors are looking. If you only go where you want, they will not come looking for you.
Hi Joseph,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
You are right on the money! Many times I see companies that want to rank for keywords that they think are good for their business. Sometimes they are not the best based on how people are searching…
Anyway, thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts!
Nick
Keyword Research is more than essential before getting your campaign under way. This is the beginning process of SEO. Likewise, looking at your competitors will allow you to get an idea of what they have done to get their campaign right and you will learn a greater idea of what it is that you may have done wrong.
Hi Fresco Creative SEO,
Looking at your competitors websites and looking at what types of keywords they have targeted on their sites is very important…Thanks for your comments!
I have read that if you use keywords more than twice it negatively impacts your ranking and I have also read that you should use all variations of keywords that someone may type in to find your site. For example is you had a website promoting SEO training you may want to use keywords: SEO training, SEO courses, SEO classes, SEO school, SEO class…. Which is the proper method? Also, if you use a singular tense keyword do you still need to use the plural tense for example: SEO class, and SEO classes?
Hi Jason,
Thanks for reading and your question!
My thought is to optimize content naturally based on the keywords that are the most relevant. If there are different variations, I recommend picking the best keywords.
Nice post Nick. Very simple, straightforward and easy for even beginners to understand the importance of keywords, and keyword research. Personally, I think content development should start with well researched keywords and variations of those keywords should be used in preparing important areas of SEO real estate such as title tags, description tags, heading tags, on page copy, anchor text links, etc. I really appreciate your no nonsense approach in your blog. Please let me know if I can help in any way as you deliver useful and interesting content to your readers. Thank you!
Keyword research was something that really didn’t hit home for me until last year. It’s now something that I teach my clients about first thing to impress upon them how important it is to learn and apply. Thanks for the tips, Nick.
Thanks for your tips nick, this is one thing that I struggle on is using the right keywords and maybe thats why my sites are taking so long to generate traffic.
Hi Nick
Another great article! My question was the same as Jason. Keyword research can drive me a tad crazy because of all the million and one variations on every single phrase. I personally decided to not put much effort into those kinds of variations. My guess is that as the algorythms evolve, those variations will be taken more into account. When writing my articles, I try to use as many as is naturally comfortable. I never go overboard with it because then the copy is not fit for human consumption. Maybe I am all wet but that is what I do. Thanks Nick, always a pleasure.
Lorraine
Hi Nick.
Thanks for providing us wonderful clues.
I am totally new to this game. By visiting some site how can we locate what keywords they have used?
Tempguest.
Keyword Research is too essential. This is the beginning process of SEO. Likewise, looking at your competitors will allow you to get an idea of what they have done to get their campaign right and you will learn a greater idea of what it is that you may have done wrong.
Thanks everyone for reading the kind words! I am happy you found value and my article helped you with your keyword research efforts!
Take Care!
Nick
Concerning the keyword research tool, you recommended Keyword Discovery. Is there any other tools (free or paid) would you suggest?
@ Efi …
I assume that you have different pages of your website that are actually written in Greek? (as opposed to “Greeklish”).
You can include a languarge meta tag so that Google/screen readers (etc) can pick up the language of the content on the page…
So Greek would be:
Otherwise, I would suggest that you include both the english word, and the greeklish spelling options (as I would type it into a search engine (eg: Notis Sfakianakis, Noth Sfakianakh, Sfakianakhs etc) as keywords for that particular page…. but don’t go too crazy with all the variations, just use the most common…
Geia!
Hmm, that didn’t copy my code…
The Greek meta tag would be:
open pointy bracket
meta http-equiv=”content-language” content=”en”
close point bracket
And a typo – can you tell it’s Friday?! (Sorry Nick!)
EL is the content language code for Greek.
Hi Jimmy,
Thanks for reading!
For keyword research I recommend: Wordtracker and Wordstream, but I find Keyword Discovery to be the most accurate and useful keyword research tool.
Thanks Cindy for helping answer Efi’s question!