SEO TIPS: Taking Full Advantage of Keywords

There is more to working with keywords than just picking them out and starting to write. The biggest, and most important aspect of it all, is keyword research. Conducting keyword research is more than using Google tools and Trends to ping high traffic keywords or niche search phrases. Focusing on words that show good demand does no good if they don’t specifically map to what you are offering. Relevance matters, but so does being realistic.

Not all words are created equal, and some are actually a waste of your energy and resources. One example is ranking high for a non-relevant high-volume keyword is a waste of time and resources. If search marketing is the ‘database of intent’, you need to look further than immediate or periodic demand and discover the “intent” behind search. That is what too many webmasters neglect.

Starting is simple. It’s easy to come up with a list of keywords that directly reflect the thrust of your site. You can then expand from there by thinking about your locale, demographic, brand, objective, and other factors to expand your base. There is another layer, however, and it consists of the following factors:

Internal search (how the consumer navigates your site: where they go, what they look at, and when they exit)

Visitors from organic search (SERPs results for keyword driven search)

Visitors from paid search (advertising campaigns such as AdWords)

What do you know about your traffic? Who is searching for you, how they do it, and where do they come from. Concentrate on the people that convert and not those who don’t – what did you do right? How can you attract more people like them? How do they search, where do they search, what page do they enter your website at and how do they move through your site? This is a major key to growing and making money.

You should be able to use data and analyze it for trends that are specific to your website and indicative of web-search as a whole. Use this information to formulate new campaigns. Don’t stop with mere SEO. Use what you have learned from the way searchers react to your keyword choices to discover more and better ways to optimize. Observe, ask, examine and implement – that is the process in a nutshell.