Keyword Research for SEO
Keyword research is the ‘key’ for successful SEO. This is the logical step after extensive website analysis. This is the most important element that drives SEO campaigns. It is of utmost importance that these words are chosen after ample research because the quality selection will determine SEO effectiveness. Apart from our own research, we also keep a close watch on what your competitor’s strategy regarding them is.
Keywords generally pertain to a word or set of words that are searched and show up as search results and are indicative of the information of on a particular web page. The choice of these words will describe your business the best and will be different from your competitors. SEO begins only after these selected words have been optimized.
Our team of SEO experts select keywords to be optimized for search engines not only after research of various sites but also understanding what your business is all about and what web goals we have set out to reach in the long run.
Optimize RIGHT
At the outset, choosing keywords may appear like a simple task, but is certainly more complex than what it sounds. The web population is dense with millions of sites striving for attention. In such a scenario choosing simple words or phrases may not work in your favor. To start with we pick words that describe your business and its features that make it exclusive. There are several tools available that help in deciding these words. Using specific words that bear relevance to your site will help in getting quality and genuine visitors to your site. This is how we go about the process:
- Random brainstorming of words related to your trade or business:
This is a random exercise and can start by picking words from thin air though we keep business in mind. We involve more members of our team for maximum ideas, words and phrases. Ideas trickling in from various sources also give an idea of search queries by visitors.
- Picking words from the list that closely describe your business:
After we have a primary list in hand, we check for the ones that come closest to the business and shortlist them accordingly. These may not be actual words to that describe the services or products, but could be the subject of searches for your demographic group. To this we allow you to add your inputs.
- Understand whether we need a keyword research tool:
Keyword research tools can be of great help to start off. If we are unable to zero down to the precise words, we use any of these tools that are freely available to help us with research.
- Expand the list after research:
Additions to the list can keep happening at every stage because there are thousands out there who are using various keywords to avail the kind of service you provide. The more the better and such a list can never be enough which is important for an effective SEO.
- Add more to the list after competitor’s research and analysis:
We explore the competitors’ space and figure out their strategy and their keywords. This will helps us ramp up our research and help you compete with the rest.
- Sort and categorize keywords:
We finally group the final list of words based on priority, popularity, location, language, etc. This helps to understand and cater to different levels of searches.
- Long Tail Keywords:
These are a group of words put together to form a keyword phrase, where in all of it is optimized. This allows us to be specific and help to provide precise content to the right people at the right time.
Two optimization strategies are most commonly practiced the first being optimizing for small but high quality words and the other being optimizing for large number of popular words. A combination of both yields best results. This step is the most crucial and requires quality time investment for effective implementation.
Optimum Density
After we have shortlisted your keywords and optimized them, we infuse them into your website through content. Though there is no hard and fast rule for their density, we need to understand what would be the ideal density for your site that ought to be reasonable. Too less or too much is bound to have unfavorable results. In case of low density you will hardly be visible on searches while excessive keyword stuffing could lead to penalizing by leading search engines.
There are tools or checkers that shall helps us find out the concentration of these important words. Content can accordingly be altered to meet the need.
Where to Place Them
Different places in the website have varied levels of importance. For e.g. the banners, URLs, page titles, headings, etc. are much more crucial because they are strategically positioned and including keywords in these parts is very beneficial. However, this in no means suggests that these pockets have to be stuffed with keywords. Inclusion of these words has to look natural making them appear as a part of genuine content.
Having these words as a part of URLs is probably the most effective. However, we keep in mind not to create a very long URL in the process as that would hamper usability making it tough to remember it.
These words or phrases can also be a part of Page Titles or Headings especially on the home page. This helps them appear higher up in the searches. At the same time it is important to maintain an optimal length of these as too long will end up looking like small paragraphs.
Find Number of Monthly Searches
It is very important to know how many people are looking for what we are providing or are looking for the kind of words that have been optimized. There are tools like Google Keyword Planner that will tell us exactly how many times a particular keyword or keyword phrase was looked up in Google. This will help us to identify the demand and accordingly optimize with the exact search words.
Create a Keyword Evaluation Model
Delving into the online space to find out keywords and figuring out how and which to optimize is actually a never ending task with millions of words out there. But with limited resources it is wise to focus on words that already rank. So this makes it important to create a model that gives us insights into viable opportunities and work around them to maximize returns.
In simple terms this is a yardstick for measuring how our chosen words are faring and what steps we need to do to modify our approach for more SEO effectiveness.