How to Do Keyword Research

In order for your website to survive the tough competition, focus on keyword research.

Keyword research is one of the most valuable, significant and high “return on investments” in the field of search marketing. By ranking competitively for the “correct” keywords, your website can make a break. You need to do a detective work of figuring out the demand for your website’s target keyword. You have to discover the perfect phrases and famous terms to target with SEO. Lastly, you need to put your feet on your customer’s shoes to have a better grasp of your customer’s preferences and behaviors.

It’s not about HOW MANY visitors you have every day to your site but it is about HOW TO GET THE RIGHT TYPE of visitors. By using this intelligence with keyword research, you can have a good prediction in case there are shifts in demand and you can quickly take action (not react) to ever changing conditions of the market. Most importantly, you can create the content, services and products  that are actively seek by people searching the web.

How to Determine the Significance of a Keyword

1.    Answer the following:
• Is the keyword relevant or connected to the content of your website?
• Are the web searchers going to find what they are searching for on your website when they use the keyword?
• Are the web searchers going to be happy with what you give to them?
• Are you going to be financially rewarded or meet your other business goals?

          If all your answers are “Yes,” see the next step.

2. Use the major search engines by searching for the phrase/term - By understanding which websites are ranking highly for your keyword, you can gain significant awareness about the competition. Are you seeing several search ads on top and right-side of the organic results? If you are seeing a lot of ads, it means that the keyword has high value. It also means that the keyword has highly profitable tendency and high direct conversion rate.


3. Purchase a sample campaign for the keyword at Google AdWords or Bing Adcenter - If your website is not ranking well for the keyword, you can consider doing a test traffic by buying it from Google and/or Yahoo. In AdWords, you pick the “exact match” then point the traffic to the applicable page on your website. Track about two to three hundred clicks for impressions and conversion rate.
   
   
4. Based on the data you've gathered, determine the keyword’s exact value - If you are able to generate 5,000 impressions from your search ad where 100 visitors have visited to your website and 3 out of 100 have converted for total profit of $300 then a single visitor’s worth for that keyword is $3 to your business. The 5,000 impressions could create an 18 to 36% click-through rate if the site is ranking number 1----- meaning your site can have 900 to 1800 visits every day, at $3 per visitor which totals to one to two million dollars every year.

Now stop wondering why all types of businesses are into search marketing!