What Is SEO: What Is Keyword Research?

January 15, 2010

Part three of this six part SEO series talks about what is involved when creating a plan for your search engine optimisation.

Keyword Research

Targeting the right term is a vitally important part of SEO. This is more than just measuring the level of searches a keyword gets and going for the one with the most. Proper keyword analysis will look at the keywords and phrases that are likely to convert (whatever your conversion is – be it a sale or the completion of a Contact Us form), the predicted traffic levels for various relevant terms, how much value the conversion on one keyword is worth compared to the conversion of other keywords (i.e a term such as ‘dining room table’ maybe convert into a higher value sale than ‘coffee table’). Finally, the analysis should look at the competition levels of each term – is it worth competing on a term that is extremely popular, or is it better to compete on a term that has a lower volume of searches, but is less competitive?

It’s important to take into consideration all the above elements. Unless you know the information surrounding a chosen keyword, how can you tell if it’s likely to be profitable for you? A big mistake in SEO is to go straight in, optimising your site and your link building strategy for a keyword that either won’t convert or is so competitive you don’t have a chance of doing well in the search engine result pages. A small independent bookshop shouldn’t try competing on a term like ‘books’ because Amazon and Waterstones and WH Smith have that market pretty closed!

What is a Long Tail Keyphrase?
The ‘long tail’ was a concept developed by Chris Anderson in his book and blog (The Long Tail). He explains it very well here:

“The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of “hits” (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.”

So taking the example of ‘books’ again. The term ‘books’ is at the head of the keyword search, and will produce a great number of searches. However, there is a large amount of value within the other longer, unique searches, known as the ‘tail’. These would be terms such as ‘books on the history of Hampshire’ – the value of these searches lie in the fact that they will be less competitive, and more likely to convert. The person searching for history books in Hampshire is more likely to buy from you if you present him with a page on your Hampshire history books. Whereas if the same searcher searched for ‘books’, he’d probably have to crawl through a few different sites before he came across what he was looking for.

Stay tuned for the next installment in this series. Part four will be posted on Monday morning and will dicuss how you can optimise your site. If you want to find out more about SMEketing and our SEO work, you can get in touch with us in a variety of ways:

• Phone: 023 8083 7271
• Email: info@SMEketing.com
• Twitter: @SMEketing
• Facebook: SMEketing Business Page

Filed under: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Tags: (SEO), search engine optimisation, Website ranking