Keyword research
Keyword research is a practice search engine optimization (SEO) professionals use to find and research actual search terms that people enter into search engines. Search engine optimization professionals research keywords, which they use to achieve better rankings in search engines. Once they find a niche keyword, they expanded on it to find similar keywords. The process is usually aided by keyword suggestion tools, like the Google Adwords Keyword Planner, which offer thesaurus and alternate keyword suggestions.
Usually, the various search engines provide their own keyword suggestion tools, which also include the number of searches for each of those keywords. The keyword researcher uses this information to select the correct keyword, depending on the SEO goals of the website. Around 20-25% of searches are of very specific long tail keywords entered into Google every single day it’s easy to rank said keywords, so long as you have a good amount of content and backlinks to match. Keyword research is a valuable and high return activity in the search marketing field.
Importance of research
Keyword research
The objective of keyword research is to generate, with good precision and recall, large number of terms that are highly relevant yet non obvious to the given input keyword.[1] Process of keyword research involves brainstorming and the use of keyword research tools. To achieve best SEO results, it is important to pick the most relevant keywords. It is good practice to pick keywords that have little competition and a high number of searches. Little competition makes it easier to achieve higher rank in search engines, and high numbers of searches guarantees that the keyword attracts web traffic. The downside of this practice is that usually keywords that have little competition get fewer§ searches, while those searched millions of times a month are difficult to rank for.[2] There are three important concepts to consider when conducting a keyword research. Good keywords are related to the theme of the website. search engine algorithm has the right to ban or exclude from search results websites whose content is not relevant to the keyword.[3] Good Keyword that are highly competitive are less likely to rank in the top. Keywords that have no monthly searches generate no traffic, and therefore are useless for SEO.
Research examples
A very popular and highly competitive keyword on Google search engine is "making money". It has 5,63,00,000 search results, meaning that millions of websites are competing for that keyword. Keyword research starts with finding all possible word combinations that are relevant to the "making money" keyword. For example, a keyword "acquiring money" has significantly less search results, only 47 900 000, but it has the same meaning as "making money". Another way is to be more specific about a keyword by adding additional filters. Keyword "making money online from home in Canada" is less competitive on a global scale and therefore easier to rank for. Multiple tools are available (both free and commercial) to find keywords and analyze them.
Keyword research tools
Google AdWords Keyword planner
Google offers free tools to do some basic keyword analysis. All the results are relevant only for Google search engines. Features of AdWords Keyword planner:
- Get traffic estimates for the keyword.
- Generate new keywords by combining different keyword lists.
- Create new keyword variations based on initial keyword.
- Provides Keywords used for websites - This is useful for you to do competitive analysis.
Limitations of AdWords Keyword planner:
- Hides long tail keywords data as the tool is made for Adwords and not for SEO purposes.
- Keywords generated by the tool may not produce good results as the tool is targeted towards advertisers and not SEO.
Bing Ads Keyword planner
The Bing Ads Keyword Planner provides keyword and ad group suggestions and shows average monthly search volume trends, relative competition and suggested bids. Features of Bing Keyword planner:
- Get search volume data and trends.
- Get performance and cost estimates.
- Multiply keyword lists to get new keywords.
Limitations of Bing Ads Keyword planner:
- Bing holds only 20 percent of the U.S. search engine market share, the data provided may not be reliable at least not for optimizing websites for Google search engine.
- Similar to AdWords Keyword planner, data provided by the tool is for helping advertisers and not publishers.
References
- ↑ Joshi, A; Motwani, R (2006). "Keyword Generation for Search Engine Advertising". Data Mining Workshops: 493. doi:10.1109/ICDMW.2006.104. Retrieved 3 April 2014.
- ↑ Jerkovic, John (2009). SEO Warrior. O'Reilly Media. pp. 213–236. ISBN 978-0596157074.
- ↑ Ross, A. Malaga (2008). "Worst Practices in Search Engine Optimization". Commun.ACM. 51. doi:10.1145/1409360.1409388. Retrieved 3 April 2014.