A few weeks ago I started blogging about keyword research. The first blog post is available at: All Credit to the Keyword Research (Part 1). In this post, I discuss how to start creating a keyword list for your business.

Keyword Research – Where to Start?

Businesses need to put a lot of effort into creating a complete keyword universe. There are many elements involved in finding the right keywords for a business. Below is a list of 3 preliminary steps to take:

1. Website Research – This involves familiarising yourself with the clients website and the services they provide. We go through every page on the site and look through the content and Meta details and extract a list of keyphrases. As your keyword list expands you might start noticing opportunities for incorporating landing page expansion. For example a services page might contain 10 different services which all target different keyphrases. Targeting 10+ keyphrases at one page is not an effective strategy. Therefore, it would probably be worth your while expanding out this services page into 10 separate page, with each page targeting more specific keyphrases unique to that service.

2. Client Feedback – Nobody knows their business better than your client. It is vital to get their feedback. We ask the client to supply us with the most important keywords for their business. We also ask what keyphrases they ‘must have’ top rankings for. There are always some phrases that are very important to the client which you might not have found or thought of through your research. These phrases might not bring in much traffic and it might not make much sense to target them but in our experience we find that not obtaining top rankings for these ‘vanity’ keywords can often be deal breakers. Clients can be very stubborn when they want to be.

3. Competitor Analysis – Your client will have many competitors online. Many of these competitors will be more successful than your client and they will actively embracing Internet marketing. Get a list of your clients main competitors from your client. You need to know who your opposition are. You can also easily find out who your client’s competitors are through searching through Google. I feel it is important to get your client’s feedback. Often times there is a passionate business rivalry going on; finding out who your client wants to beat most and what keywords your client wants to beat their ranking for can be useful in ensuring strong client relationships. When you have discovered the competitor list then visit their websites and perform website research.

After these 3 steps are performed we will have a preliminary keyword list. This list doesn’t mean much unless we can put search amounts beside the keyphrases. Then we will know the relative importance of our keyphrases. This will dictate how we assign our keywords to web pages later in the optimisation process. Also, this list is very much an incomplete list. There are hundreds of keyword possibilities not explored yet. This is when we turn to our keyword research tools. To be continued……

In a recent Business Plus Magazine publication, JumpStart Marketing were asked to give our responses to a number of search marketing questions. The first 2 questions and answers are given below:

Q1. The whole Google, search, AdWords arena can seem intimidating at first. How tough a nut is it to crack?

Q2. Search engine optimisation involves many strands. Which ones do you think are the most important?

Answer 1:

There is a lot to learn in the area of search marketing. To make matters worse things are always changing. What you know now might not be relevant in 2 years time. Getting your head round it all can take time. To become an expert in the field could take years. On the plus side though, it is not rocket science! Putting together a successful, high ranking, high conversion marketing campaign can be achieved by inexperienced people but there certainly are variables which can make cracking the nut beyond the reach of new comers to Internet marketing.

In comparison to the UK or global markets, the Irish search engines are less hard to crack. There is less competition, therefore it is easier to rank highly in natural search results and it’s easier to keep costs down and make a profit in Adwords. You can sometimes get away with not having fully optimised sites or having badly structured Adwords campaigns in Ireland.

When concentrating solely on the Irish market, much depends on the industry you are in. Getting high rankings for terms such as ‘Dublin Accommodation’ or ‘Travel Insurance’ can be tough. These are very competitive areas and there is much competition. When competing in these sectors you have to know the intricacies of Internet marketing. A lot of time and money needs to be invested by clients to crack those nuts.

Answer 2:

The most important strand of SEO is keyword research. Keyword research is the strong foundation on which your SEO campaign must be built. If you target the wrong keywords then no amount of onsite optimisation, link building work, etc. will make your campaign a success. Through keyword research tools, competitor analysis, and communication with your client you can identify the full keyword universe for that business.

Whether you like it or not, link building is essential for SEO success. It is a key factor of the Google algorithm so you cannot ignore it. Your company needs to have a link building strategy. The key is to try and gain quality, relevant links in a natural fashion. If your link building activities look suspicious then you won’t get the ranking boost that you expect.

Your link building strategy should be built around providing useful content and a useful service. You will naturally gain links from this. Other link building strategies include article submissions, directory submissions, press releases, social bookmarking, paid links, and begging for links!

Keyword research is the backbone of all SEO projects. The success of your website depends upon finding and targeting the best key phrases for your niche. If you do not put the research in then all your SEO efforts might be wasted chasing non-existent, low quality traffic. Your business needs to get the keyword facts before any optimisation is attempted. Over the next few weeks I will be going through the keyword strategies used here at JumpStart Marketing.

Did You Know?
Keyword targeting in SEO is restricted by the size of your website. The bigger the site the more key phrases you can target. At most 2-3 keyphrases should be used on each page. If you target more key phrases on a page you are in danger of diluting the overall effectiveness of that page. Therefore, if you have a 10 page website you will only be able to target 20 -30 keyphrases. Many of the pages on your 10 page website would make poor landing pages, so in reality you might only have 5 – 6 quality pages to target with your important keywords. In order for your business to target more keywords you need to create more web pages. A 40 – 50 page website of highly useful content can help you to target 100+ important key phrases. It is clear that landing page creation is an essential element of your SEO Strategy.

Search engines treat each web page individually
It is not just your index page that ranks highly in Google. Each inner page is analysed individually and if it is judged to be the most relevant page to the search query then it is displayed in the search result. When people search they are looking for relevant information. If I am looking to buy a printer I want to be brought to the printer specific page and not the general computer homepage. There will be a lower bounce rate if I am brought to the information I want. Treating every page of your website as potential landing pages is important. As each web page is judged individually by Google, each page should have unique key phrases assigned to them. This allows you to greatly increase the number of keywords your business is targeting.

In practice, there tends to be a far greater amount of possible key phrases than web pages. Landing page creation can be slow with most clients. Given the choice of optimising pages like your contact page, sitemap page, about us page for different keywords or leaving them un-optimized, I would always optimise them. Use these pages to target less important keywords. True, they do not make good landing pages and they will have higher bounce rates, however, I feel it is better to rank for something than not to rank at all. Each visitor that finds your site through the contact page keywords has the potential to click through onto other website pages to find what they want. They might have got into your shopping centre through an emergency entrance but they can still find the shops.

Key Points
• Treat every page of your website as a possible landing page
• Target web pages with unique key phrases
• Choose 2 – 3 key phrases and assign them to each web page.
• If there are no relevant pages then create them.
• Expand your website to target your keywords.