SEO Recap: Keyword Analysis and Research

Keyword analysis starts even before you choose your domain name and remains a constant requirement for all SEO efforts over the lifespan of your website. Keywords are search terms and related words that people looking for a service or product similar to yours might enter as a query phrase.

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When internet users look for information through the search engines, they will often use a string of words that form a coherent thought, even if the string is not a complete sentence. These are more of a shortened form of the information needed; as when someone is looking for information online, depending on the information they are searching for they can use single keywords and short keyword phrases.

Looking for Japanese food in Seattle? The search would probably use phrases like ‘japanese food seattle’, ‘eat Japanese food in seattle’, ‘seattle Japanese restaurant’, Although every possible key phrase will not make sense to a human audience, the search engines will recognize the request and deliver the information that is being sought after by the internet user.

Search engines don’t generally try to translate the meaning of a grouping of words; rather, they try to match individual words in a given sequence, or find websites that have a large number of the keywords in close proximity.  Websites with an exact match to the keyword phrase are normally listed at the top of search results, and websites with an inexact but close match are listed in the lower positions.

Of course, this is not the only factor that search engines uses to rank websites in search results pages.  Links, age of the site, and various other factors also apply, but for keywords alone, the ruling holds.

When conducting keyword research ad analysis, remember that some keywords will have more competition than the others. Battling to attain optimization and front page Google results for  high competition keywords can be a daunting task – you are up against a lot of webmasters, some of who are very skilled, and who all have a head start on you.

This doesn’t mean to give up on high competition keywords altogether. It will be a difficult task and it will require greater efforts to get the desired results if you only target them, sop split your efforts.  Don’t be discouraged and leave out the keywords with very high competition completely; instead, blend them in pages with longer tail keywords and keyword phrases so you end up using all the words that best describe your products or services.

To summarize – your list of keywords should include keywords with high competition as well as less popular phrases, and your content should reflect the relevance of your website to the search queries you want to rank for.  Initially, most traffic to your website will come through the keywords that have less competition. As your company grows, you can start ranking in search for the keywords with high competition, and really become a player in the internet marketing game, with more traffic and higher conversions.