Keyword Research

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is a thorough analysis of your business' function and brand against what your customers search for when they are looking for you or the service you provide. Keyword research is imperative to a good SEO campaign and should be done prior to any optimization efforts on your website. The research will be your guide to understanding your customers, your conversions, and meeting your long term business goals.

Factors to Consider in KW Research

Industry/Services

What industry do you work in? What services do you provide?

Location

Where do you perform these services? What is your primary service area? What are some of the smaller sub-locations of that primary location?

Customer Profile

Who is your perfect customer? What is their age range? What is their average income? What are their interests? What is their technological capacity? What kind of language do they use? Are they likely to misspell words? (pray that they do - those misspellings are golden opportunities for companies!)

Competition

Based on the information above - who are your top three competitors? What keywords are they using? What words show up on their Search Engine Results? Are they using phrases (longtail keywords) or one - two word keywords (short-tailed keywords).

Feasibility

What is the liklihood you could rank for a specific keyword?
(This is determined by looking at how many results populate from a given search and comparing it to unique domains, the overall authority of those domains, the life cycle of domains, and the ad spend against the keyword)

Common Sense

What kind of words would you use to search for your service (if you didn't own or work for the company) - looking through your own search history may be scary, but will provide you with valuable insight into your own behavior and patterns. Asking employees, and friends will also gain insight (call it "market research").