Keyword Research Must Dos

Writing by Nick Stamoulis

Since search engine optimization is all about creating a steady stream of inbound visitors coming into your website you will need to make sure the keyword research step is done correctly. The only way you can do this successfully is by really nailing down the very first step, keyword research. Keyword research is truly the lifeblood (besides good quality content, of course!) to your SEO campaign. So how do you effectively ensure that you have all the right keywords to make your long term search engine optimization program successful?


Here are some Keyword Research must dos:

Keyword Research Must Do – The Right Tools: Always use the right tool to make it happen. Tools like Keyword Discovery or Wordtracker are industry standard research tools that can help you compile all the information that you need. Whatever you do don’t try and sit there and come up with these words yourself, use a tool.

Keyword Research Must Do – Keyword Synonym Research: Synonyms will truly be your best friend. The most effective keyword research will pull in a variety of variations of your targeted keywords.

Example:
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Keyword Research Must Do – Think Like Your Customers!
There are all different keywords that will bring in different amounts of search volume requiring a different type of approach for each word. During this process is where your marketing hat will have to come on. You need to think like a marketer in this scenario and really step into the shoes of your audience. Your best bet is to make a giant spreadsheet by putting each keyword variation into each column of the spreadsheet. Depending on your industry you could have thousands of keywords in your spreadsheet that you will have to comb through in order to find the keywords that best fit your website and your plan of attack to reach your customers.

Even the slightest variation of a keyword could pull in an entirely different visitor. To really help visualize your approach pull each URL into a spreadsheet and pick your keywords ahead of time. This will allow you to physically visualize the keywords that you are going to be using on each of your pages prior to actually trying to squeeze them on in as part of your on site optimization.