Keyword Research

Keyword Research

Keyword research is about the most important part of your success. You can be great at implementing all the proper SEO techniques, but it will all be in vain if you target the wrong keywords. This article will describe briefly how keyword research works.

First let me explain what keywords are. Sometimes there is some confusion about it, caused by the meta keywords tag (meta name=”keywords” content=”keyword1,keyword2,keyword3,etc.) Keywords are not the words you can find in the meta keywords tag:

Keywords are the words that you choose to be found for in the search engines.

Each page can have a set of keywords or keyword phrases that you target. The best would be to target just one keyword phrase per page. However, if your web site has just a few pages you can target more than 1 keyword phrase per page, but 3 is the absolute maximum.

So now that we know what keywords are and how many to target with each page, we need to find out what keywords to choose. This is where the research begins. What you need to know is how often your keyword phrases are searched for. Choosing a keyword phrase that is searched for just once a month has little use. You need to target those keyword phrases that are actually used a lot.

There are different resources to do keyword research, but the most important I believe is your brain. Just imagine what a searcher (and not you) would type in that little box of a search engine to find what your web site has to offer. Then use the keyword suggestion tools to find out if they really are used a lot or not.

In order to be successful in getting the high positions in the search engines you also need to know how much competion there is for a word. Keywords or keyword phrases that are very competitive need more than just a well optimized page to rank high in the search engines. Off-the-page factors like link popularity and anchor texts in the links that point at your web page are very important to consider when choosing keywords.

In conclusion keyword research is the first and most decisive step you will take when optimizing your web site. It will determine how successful you will be.