Keyword research, the definitive guide

In this article, we’re going to explore and explain what keywords are and how they are being used by people.In brief, keywords are the way people think about certain topics narrowed down to a few words. People search keywords because they get inspired by ideas, they have questions or, they just want to figure out or learn about something new. Anyone today can find the answers to their questions at their fingertips.All that they have to do is to go to a search engine, summarize their thoughts into keywords and enter their keywords into a search engine.

Importance of keywords

Research has shown that 91% of all adults use a search engine nearly every day to help them find the information that they’re looking for. If we look at the things that people do when they’re online, the number one thing on the list is searching for information. We have also found that most people use search engines to find the information that they need for a certain activity. Some examples are; people searching for information about their hobbies, about a specific location by using maps, to check the weather, to search for product reviews or to look for news articles. In other words, people use the search engines as tool to find the specific information that they need and the keywords that they use is the summation of their thoughts, ideas and needs.

However, when a person tries to find information, their searching efficiency will depend on the way that they phrase their keywords. This means that owners of websites have to discover what people enter into the search engines and then match the keywords used by the customer. To grow our business, we want to deliver our product or the information that searcher needs based on the little information that they have given us when they entered their thoughts into the search engine.

But, we also want to develop our keyword insights. What we mean by this is that it’s important to understand that when people search for something by using a keyword, there are many possibilities of what they are actually searching for. Which one of the words in the search is the most important to them and which of them are less important? When we can link their behaviour to the keywords that they’ve typed in, the chances of connecting them to our website will increase and we can help them find their ultimate goal.

The first thing to do when optimizing your website is to find out which keywords will best match with the potential customers of your company’s pages, products and information. In this blog, we’re going to evaluate keywords. We’re going to give you ways which you can use to determine which keywords are important and which aren’t. This will help you to prioritize keywords that will help you with building a strategy and it will help you to bring the right kinds of customers to your business. And at last, we are going to tell about the way that you will have to implement keywords into your website to increase its visibility. This way, we’ll be able to choose the right keywords so that we attract the searchers we want to your business.

The implications of keywords

When we’re talking about the development of a keyword strategy, the first thing that we need to take into in account is that all of these strategies depend on the search engines. They are the providers of the resources to the searchers. The only thing that we can do is to try to affect the search engines to favour your business.

A fundamental part of how the search engines work is a software program which will visit your website and download the content that’s available. This software program is often referred to as a bot, spider or crawler. What they do is they find your website via a link on another website and they follow that link to your website through which they can find your website’s pages. They will then download the content of the pages and find all the links on your websites which will redirect them to other websites.

All these downloads are being stored on the servers of the search engine. So, when someone is searching for anything on a search engine, they’re not actually searching online but they’re searching in the database of the search engine. Once the search engine has applied their algorithm, the searcher will receive the results based on the copies of websites that are contained in the database of that particular search engine.

The first thing when it comes to developing keywords is that you have to make sure that your website has a good construction. If your website doesn’t have a good construction, it’s possible that the search engines will not be able to access all of the pages on the website. There are many ways which can block bots, spiders and crawlers. But, at the moment, we want to make sure that the construction is open. This way, the search engines can get through, see the links from page-to-page and see the links to other websites. Make sure that they are able to see the page’s content so that they can describe what the topic of the page is and how it compares with other websites.

How can we use keywords

When we start to build a keyword list, the best way to start is to take a look at what the search engines provide in terms of feedback on your specific products. The better you understand the keywords that people are using to find your products in your market, the more you can use these same words in other forms of your marketing. And, when you understand in what way they’re searching for specific things, you will be able to use the same keywords correctly in your Ad Buys, in your company’s press releases and on your social media accounts. This will allow you to track your success rate in Analytics.

For example, the family Pewtersmith wants to go on a vacation to California. Because they have little to no knowledge about California, they’re going to use a search engine, such as Google, to help them find their vacation. The first thing that Charles Pewtersmith enters into the search engine is “California vacations”. The result of this search is:

As shown above, Google shows him some recommended destinations to visit. It also shows some basic information about California in the right column and it shows him some advertisements in the left column. Google also shows him the homepage of “Visit California” and a review about California vacation packages from the website Tripadvisor.com.

If your company sells vacation packages in California, then you can use these search results to figure out what the competition is for your company. It’s interesting to take a look at the kind of competition you have and to look at the reason why they’re showing up. The first thing that you should notice is the exact keyword matches that some of the results will have. When the results have the same keywords as the ones that are entered into the search engine, these words will automatically be bold. Every search engine performs this function because people tend to look more closely at the results which have more bold terms. We can use this to take a look at the way that the competition is utilizing the exact phrases that we may want to position ourselves for.

The order of what people insert when they are searching for something in a search engine can also affect the order of results that are being shown. For example, if we take the following keyword-sentences: “How to use keywords” and “Keywords, how to use them”

As you can see in the examples above, there’s a big difference in the results that are being shown. The one on the left starts with an advertisement while the one at the right doesn’t. In fact, there’s just one result that shows up in both, the one from SEOmark. Note that it’s very important to take a look at the way that people are searching for your kind of product. Also, keep in mind which order of terms is most popular and which order is most interest for your company.

Keyword resources

Fortunately, there are a couple of tools available which can help you build a keyword list for your company. One of the best ways is to get it right from the source; for example, via webmaster tools in Google or Bing. But, you can also take look at your analytics program to get an overview of which search engines are redirecting visitors to your website, which keywords these visitors used and to see how they progressed through your website and if they became a customer.

Some of the tools that you can use are the webmaster tools from Google and Bing. You can also find some helpful tools on Google’s AdPlanner and Google AdWords. Google AdPlanner will help you to see which keywords are the most popular and which ones are in demand. Google AdPlanner will also help you to understand the world of keywords.

The Google AdWords keyword planner can also be of great assistance when it comes to building your keyword list. When you go to the tools tab, import one or more of your high level products. Then, put in your landing page and then Google will directly give you suggestions for which keywords will work best. The competition that’s shown in this tool is based on the number of companies that are bidding on the same keywords.

The most interesting things for your company are the quantity of keywords that are related to your business and the average number of searches per month on these keywords. Once we have this information, we know which keywords are more popular than the others. The tools which we described above are some of the best research tools available, but there are a lot of other options. And, of these options, a lot of them offer free trials so you can always try some out to decide which one fits your company the best.

Optimizing your pages, blog posts and products for search engines starts with choosing the keyword that you want to rank for. Needless to say that this is one of the most important parts of optimizing your store. Keyword research will help you to get to know your customers and how they search through the search engines.

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. We noticed a lot of webshop owners find it difficult to pick the right keyword. Let’s clear things up to make it a little easier. Here, we’ll explain how to properly research for keywords in just a few steps
What keyword you choose depends on your site, your visitors and their online behavior. You know your site, your customers and your products. We’ll start with some information about different kinds of keywords and their search volumes.

The search demand curve

What kind of keyword did you choose? Do you need to make it more specific?

Short tail keywords are unspecific one word keywords which (mostly) have a lot of search volume. Due to the high amount of competition, it’s hard to rank for these kinds of keywords and it’s even harder to convert.

Long tail keywords, written in natural languages, can be larger in search volume than short tail keywords. This is because they’re less competitive and more relevant to your websites content. Consequently, long tail keywords have a higher conversion rate and are easier to rank for

Example:

Say that we sell all different kinds of coffee. We could use ‘coffee’ as our keyword. This would be quite an unspecific keyword. Search results would contain a lot of different websites, such as coffee corners, coffee brands, coffee blogs  and etc. The chances of ranking high with this kind of keyword is very small because all these websites are ranking for it.

To give you another example, we’ll continue the fictional coffee store story. The coffee store mostly sells their products to coffee corners. These coffee corners know a lot about our products and also know what they want to buy from us. In this case, they’ll search more specific terms. It works best when you use the coffee brand and other specifics as the keyword because the customer will directly search for the brand and/or for specific items.

We mostly recommend choosing a specific, long tail keyword for your products and more middle tail keywords for your categories. This way, you’ll reach people who know exactly what they want to buy and you’ll reach people who are still orientating themselves.

Step one: Checklist

With the given information, you should be able to pick a keyword for one of your products or pages. Don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be the perfect keyword immediately. During the following steps, you will probably realize there’s another keyword that fits better.

1. Will the searchers find what they’re looking for when they’re searching these keywords
2. Will they be happy with the content you’ve provided?
3. Will the search lead to a purchase or one of your other goals?
4. Is the keyword relevant to the content of your page or product?

Step two: Get to know the competition

The internet is big. There are probably websites who (try to) rank for the same keyword that you chose. The more competition, the harder it will be to achieve a high ranking. Let’s try the big search engines like Google and Bing to see how much competition there is on the chosen keyword.

While doing this, take a note of the following:

1. Are there any advertisements at the top of the search results?

Many advertisements indicate that there is a lot of competition.

1.   How many big brands are in the top ten?

When there are a lot of big brands ranking for your keyword,  it could take years of effort to conquer a high ranking.

Step three: Google Adwords keyword planner

The Adwords keyword planner gives you suggestions for keywords. The tool also provides the expected search volume and contest of running paid campaigns for these terms. Test how good the keyword works for you and see what your potential results could be.