When it comes to SEO campaigns, using the right keywords is critical to success. You can corner the market on keywords that are related to your industry, but if these keywords don’t correlate to clients and customers, what good does this do? Keywords serve as invitations for customers to check out your site. When someone does a search on a keyword or phrase and your site ranks highly in the results, you’ve effectively brought them to the front door of your virtual business. A smart keyword strategy not only gets customers to your virtual store but makes sure they are looking to spend money and not just there to window shop.

Keyword Research

Knowing your market and your place within the market is critical to researching your keywords. Less competitive keywords and phrases might generate less traffic but there’s also a greater chance that you’ll rank highly for them if you target them with an SEO campaign. If you are in a niche market, you can find keywords that will specifically target people looking for exactly what you’re providing. This can get your ideal customer to your website quickly while providing immediate returns on your SEO campaign. If you are an established company looking at long-term gains, you might want to focus on a few keywords that are more competitive. You’ll know your market and your position better than anyone else and will want to adjust your SEO campaign accordingly.

Before starting any keyword search, there are a few things that you’ll want to consider:

  • If you are using Google AdWords Keywords Suggestion Tool, make sure you are doing an Exact Search instead of a Broad Search. This is something that you can toggle between by clicking a button before you perform a search. A Broad Search will include phrases that include your keywords in any order or even parts of your keyword phrase. It also includes plural or singular forms, stemmed forms and synonyms. An exact search only returns the phrase exactly as you entered it. You can search for both if you want to expand your search but this can create confusion in your research.
  • Think about all of the different ways that people might search for your products. Instead of just focusing on your category of business, do searches for specific product models or sub-categories of services you provide. Search for variations with part numbers or popular abbreviations of products.
  • More than anything else, ask yourself what customers are searching for and build your keyword list accordingly.

Before you start doing your research on your keywords, it’s important to have a game plan in place. Instead of just grouping words together that “seem” the same, group them into categories. If you sell golf clubs, one category could be for name brands of golf clubs. Another could be for types of clubs (such as drivers, irons, wedges or putters). Other categories could describe what people are searching for with new versus used equipment. This lets you select keywords that target the right audience and potential reach as many different customers as possible.

Ultimately, you want to get the highest Return on Investment for your SEO campaign. eVisible understand this, which is why we’ve created a powerful Keyword Research and Suggestion tool and made it available for free on our website. All you need to do is enter in a keyword, phrase or a bit of marketing copy and it instantly gives you a list of related keywords. It’s a great way to start your keyword research and narrow down (or expand) your choices. You might want to focus on areas of your business that are currently underperforming by targeting related keywords. Or you might notice keywords and phrases with a limited amount of competition that you can rank highly for more quickly. Having a smart game plan and doing the research the right way will set you on the path to smart and focused keyword-based SEO campaign.