Oct 07 2010

5 Ways to Pick the Right Keywords for Your SEO Campaign

Keyword research is the crucial step in website development and SEO process.

There are some basic points to stick to while doing keyword research for your SEO campaign.

Research Your Target Market

The product/service you offer might be suitable for a particular age group, or you may be targeting a particular geographic region, or a particular industry. It is important to understand who is actually searching for your products or service – so that you can understand the behavioral pattern of your prospective customers and streamline your keyword selection strategies accordingly.

Example: if you are targeting UK market for [lawyer], you should choose a more commonly-used term ‘solicitor’, instead of ‘lawyer’ which is widely used in the United States.

Analyze Your Competition

Spend some time to research your competitors: what keywords and key phrases they are using; how big their sites are; which geographic regions they cover; what are the related services they offer additionally. This analysis will give an idea about their strength.

Here are a few helpful articles to get you started:

Be More Specific

Don’t pick a keyword just because it is popular (i.e. has high search volume). Popular keywords are more generic and bring high competition along with. Avoid such one or two-word keywords. Rather choose keywords that are less competitive but have considerable search volume. Be more specific with 3 to 4 words key phrases.

Start by targeting long-tail keywords.

Target Your Local Areas

Small business entrepreneurs should be realistic with their internet marketing goals. Initially you can set your goal small by targeting the local market instead of going global. Adding your location to the key phrase gives an instant exposure to local market where competition is much lower.

Some Important Points to Note

Wordtracker and Google AdWords are most popular tools for keywords research. Make sure you optimize their usage by utilizing the advanced search options available.

For example, while using Word Tracker do not forget to use additional metrics such as ‘In Anchor and Title’ And ‘KEI’. It will give you some insight into the competition and a comparative analysis of competition against keyword’s popularity.

Similarly in AdWords, make sure you extract the ‘Exact’ analysis of keyword research (not ‘Broad’).

Be it WordTracker or AdWords or any other search engine tool, be specific about the language and target!

Moon Roy is an SEO professional working for an Indian SEO Company, Softz Solutions Pvt. Ltd. She writes on search engine optimization, SEO copy writing, social media marketing and blogging. For more on SEO she recommends you to visit www.softzsolutions.com.

12 Responses to “5 Ways to Pick the Right Keywords for Your SEO Campaign”

  1. Thomas says:
    October 7, 2010 at 9:28 pm

    A great way to analyze the amount of competitors for a keyword is to type this special search into Google

    allintitle:keyword

    This will return in its results the amount of webpages that are targeting your keyword in their page title. You can then make a decision on whether the level of competition is low, high, or just right!

  2. pinkmoonpeeps (Moon Roy) says:
    October 8, 2010 at 6:25 am

    5 Ways to Pick the Right #Keywords for Your #SEO Campaign http://bit.ly/9m0XAC

  3. Indramanidas (Indramani Das) says:
    October 8, 2010 at 10:05 am

    5 Ways to Pick the Right Keywords for Your SEO Campaign.http://dailyseotip.com/5-ways-to-pick-the-right-keywords-for-your-seo-campaign/1113/

  4. funpages says:
    October 10, 2010 at 9:30 pm

    popular keywords are there because these are what people think of. a keyword that is seldom thought of by people as a search term is called “esoteric”. i think it is best to have a combination of popular keywords to use to describe your site.

  5. J_T_Anderson (Jeff Anderson) says:
    December 11, 2010 at 6:06 pm

    RT @Carbon_Copy_PRO: 5 Ways to Pick the Right Keywords for Your SEO Campaign http://bit.ly/9m0XAC

  6. Elvis Tribute The King says:
    March 22, 2011 at 7:07 pm

    Great article, I looked up broad until I found this. Many thanks

  7. Desentupidora says:
    April 14, 2011 at 2:46 pm

    Great!

    I mean, when we search for “desentupimento” the result back is not that we expect, but when we search for “Desentupidora” the results back is much better. My conclusion is that we should research for a better keyword to return good results.

    Thanks for sharing.

  8. Y8 says:
    September 4, 2011 at 9:27 pm

    I think it’s better to compete in long phrase keyword compared to one word keyword competitions are low and keyword will rank well in many variation of keywords as long as it is in the phrase…

  9. knev says:
    September 6, 2011 at 1:25 pm

    How do we find which keyword they are using to get there back links?

  10. Dinesh says:
    September 28, 2011 at 11:57 am

    GO to google keywords tool and select the right keywords..

  11. kizi says:
    October 4, 2011 at 10:30 pm

    thank you for the work you have put into this post, it helps clear up some questions I had.I will bookmark your blog because your posts are very informative.We appreciate your posts and look forward to coming back

  12. restaurantes barcelona says:
    October 29, 2011 at 10:16 pm

    Good advise. Definetely analyzing competion and targeting the local area is working for me.