Introduction to Keyword Research

What is keyword research?
Keyword research refers to te practice of discovering the best keywords and phrases to target within the pages of your website. You want to find the keywords and phrases that your potential site visitor would type into the search box at one of the search engines to find your product or service.

Why should you do keyword research?
Keyword research is an integral part of SEO because if you target the right keywords and phrases on your website, you have a greater chance of getting people to your website that want what you provide. It’s important for you to understand what is being searched for so you can target your audience by utilizing the search terms they are using.

Where to start?
There are a few things to consider and do before you begin researching keywords.

1. What is your target audience, men, women, doctors, business professionals, mothers, restaurant owners, etc.

2. Do you want your website to target a specific geographic location? If you own an auto body shop you may want to target a smaller geographic area than say a national trucking company.

3. Jot down your notes and be as specific as possible. If you sell maternity clothes out of a shop in La Crosse, Wisconsin, your general audience will most likely be pregnant women in their 20’s and 30’s who have families and are living in or around LaCrosse, Wisconsin.

4. Now that you know who your target market is, start a seed list of potential keywords. Using our maternity store example possibilities include:

Maternity clothes
Maternity store
Maternity dresses
Maternity bra
Nursing bra
Pregnancy clothes

Add in other terms and locations that searchers might include creating combinations like:

Buy maternity clothes
Trendy maternity clothes
Affordable maternity clothes
Maternity store in Wisconsin
LaCrosse maternity store

Your list could get pretty long, that’s good.

Start Researching
There are a few free research tools available to you on the Internet to help you find the best keywords to target on your website. I recommend Keyword Discovery, Google Keyword Tool and WordTracker.

These tools are pretty easy to use. You can start entering the search terms one at a time from your seed list and find out how often people are searching for it. This information will give you a great insight into keywords and keyword phrases to use throughout your website as well as ideas for keywords that you hadn’t already thought of.