A Deep Dive Into Keyword Research

The goal of keyword research is to identify relevant, high volume search queries that qualified users regularly search on search engines like Google or Bing, then providing recommendations for optimization to these terms with the aim of ranking for them in organic search results. The research helps you determine the market’s keyword demand by looking at search volume data provided by Google. Once a broad list of search terms is collected that represent users at all stages of the conversion and consideration funnel, these keywords are assessed for the likelihood of ranking by weighing their Keyword Difficulty Score from MOZ.

Striking The Balance

It is important to consider not only keywords that are relevant to the specific page and business, but also content that searchers are actively seeking. The challenge here is striking a balance between high search volumes also keywords that your site can actually rank for based on the difficulty score and competition level. If you select keywords with difficulty scores that are too high you are entering an uphill battle to get rankings, which may never actually end in your favor. You want to ask yourself a few questions while selecting keywords such as:

• Is this keyword relevant to the website’s content?
• Will the searcher find what they are looking for on my website?
• Will they be happy with the content I am providing?
• Will this traffic help support the online business goals of the website, whether financial or otherwise?
• How many people are searching for these terms on a regular basis?
• Is there enough search volume to warrant this term?
• What brands are currently in the race for these terms?
• Can my website provide better content and/or compete with the current ranking sites?
• What are my chances of success when considering the current search results?
• How difficult would it be to beat out the competition?
• Are there any paid efforts that are bidding on these terms as well?

An ideal keyword list is a balance of terms with mid-to-high search volume, with difficulty scores that scale to the reasonability of ranking for your domain. Not all domains are created equally. For example, Amazon.com is far more likely to rank for the search query “tennis racket” than is a local sporting goods store because of the powerhouse domain. This is an extreme example, but the exercise of weighing keywords applies to all domains.

Page-Level Keywords vs. Site-Level Keywords

Broadly speaking, there are two types of keywords: page-level keywords that are relevant to the specific content of any given page, and site-level keywords that are pertaining to the overall subject matter of the website. For each specific page, we use a strategy that is focused on creating the best user experience. To us this means that the page titles, like ‘Contact Us’, or ‘Floor Plans’ would be the page-Level keyword, to coincide with the content that will be specific to that page and provide the best on-page user experience. These keywords pair with the site-level keywords to create a holistically optimized page.

In the end, it’s important to have pages optimized for searches that users are actually conducting, rather than focusing exclusively on keywords and phrases that are in line with a business’ brand identity. This is the best way to maintain and grow organic search traffic, which is typically the top performing and highest converting traffic channel for any given website.

(Photo: SEO Punishment by flickr user Sean MacEntee via Attribution 2.0 License)