Comprehensive Keyword Research Guidelines

Comprehensive Keyword Research

What is the purpose of Keyword Research? I have asked that question to a number of web site owners and in essence I get the same reply which is “To discover what words people use to find something on the Internet” Which is absolutely correct.

However, I do consider this to be a bit of an all encompassing answer and not at all appropriate for the Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing purposes of Keyword Research.

The objective of Keyword Research should focus on identification of not just the keywords used to find your product or services but the most competitive keywords.

The internet has become incredibly crowded and simply typing one of your preferred keywords or keyword phrases into Google will provide you with the number of instances of that keyword. And this number is often at least 6 digits are your competitors for that keyword or phrase.

Of course not all instances of this term are serious contenders. However, when we consider that there are often 6 digits or over a 100,000 or even millions of instances of a term or phrase, achieving the Top 10 in one of the major Search Engines does appear to be a daunting task.

The Needle in the Haystack

Finding the keyword phrase with reasonable monthly search volumes without a large amount of competition is like finding “The needle in the haystack”. But when that term is found you are far more likely to rank well for that term than if you use popular or generic keywords.

Keyword research has two facets:

The first facet of keyword research is discovering the keywords and keyword phrases used by Internet users to find the products and services your business provides. In many ways this is not all that difficult, there are many tools available to assist with determining what these words and phrases are.

The second facet is by far the most difficult, that is discovering the most competitive keywords and phrases. This is a time consuming task and from observations made while doing keyword research I have come to believe it is a task that is often not given the importance it deserves.

Often when doing Keyword Research I have come across keyword phrases which have excellent monthly search volumes and very little competition. My first thoughts when discovering such a phrase is “Why hasn't this phrase been optimized ?” The only conclusion I am able to reach is; it boils down to inefficient or lazy keyword research. Effective keyword research is a very very time consuming task.

Building the Keyword Lists

The keyword list is not about keywords but Keyword Phrases. A single keyword is much too generic to provide targeted traffic to your web site and extremely difficult to rank well in Search Engine Results pages. This is not to say single keywords are not important and single keywords should be integrated in the hierarchal use of keywords in your web site content.

Keyword Phrases are generally 2, 3 or 4 word phrases Internet users’ type into Search Engines to have a better chance at finding exactly what they are looking for. It is these terms which you should be considering and researching, for Search Optimization purposes.

Keyword Research Tools

I use a variety of keyword tools to determine the preliminary keyword list including Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, Google Adwords

Although these tools generally provide similar results there are instances where they do vary and it these terms which are likely to provide the most competitive keyword phrases. However, the tool which I use to finalize my keyword lists is Google Adwords and it does have the competitive advantage of being free.

Using Google Adwords Keyword Tool

Developing your preliminary list is relatively simple.

1. Enter 3 or 4 of the first keyword phrases that come to mind into the Google Adword Search Box
2. Results are provided in 2 sections. The first are terms closely related to the phrases entered. The second are Google’s recommendations.
3. Download the provided lists into an Excel spreadsheet ( A button is provided to accomplish this)
4. Open spreadsheet and filter the keywords in the first column alphabetically. Once this is completed scan over the phrases, you should be able to identify different groupings of keyword phrases. Break these groups out and repeat your search with these. This will expand the returns by groupings.
5. Repeat the process of 4 with the various groups
6. Copy and past all these keywords into your own spreadsheet and use the filter to show only unique results.

The above process should provide an extensive list of keyword phrase suggestions.

Keyword Research – Competitive Analysis

The competitive analysis of your keyword list will provide an indication of the keywords which you should seriously consider for your Organic Search Engine Optimization or Pay Per Click programs.

I will provide you with some of the methods I personally use. However, sorry to say it but all will not be revealed. I use a number of processes to determine which keyword phrases to use, and since I have never seen them outlined anywhere on the Internet I feel they still offer competitive advantage to my company and my clients, so all will not be revealed. But I will get you started.

Since Google Adwords data is what I have used for an example I will continue to use this for my examples.

Search Volumes

Within the Google Adwords data the information you want to focus on is, the Global Monthly Search Volumes. According to Web Pro News Google's Search Engine market share is in the area of 65%. So with a bit of math you can estimate the total monthly volume for a particular search term. This of course is only an estimate and should not be used to predict potential web site traffic.

Competitiveness

Although Google Adwords Keyword tool does provide some indication of competitiveness for a phrase, I have found this to be next to useless on further analysis.

The Process

The first step is to open and set up your own spreadsheet with the columns for:

• Keyword phrase
• Monthly Search Volumes
• Exact Match
• In Anchor
• KEI

The Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) compares the number of searches for a keyword with the number of times the term is indexed.. The higher the KEI, the more popular the keyword and the less competition they have. Meaning you have better chance of obtaining reasonable search volumes for a lower Cost Per Click.

1. Copy the keyword and monthly search columns into your spread sheet
2. Go to Google Search page and enter the “keyword phrase” in quotation marks. The result will provide you with the number of instances of that particular phrase and this figure is entered into exact match.
3. Set up the formulae in the KEI column of the spreadsheet Monthly Searches / Exact match will provide your KEI
4. Use Google advance Search to search for the phrase “In Anchor and input result in the in anchor column

Completing this for your keyword list is very time consuming however, this is the only way you will find the “Needle in the Haystack”. When this is completed you will begin to see patterns in the data.

What to look for

Obviously the KEI is worth considering. Compare the results of Exact Phrase to In Anchor if the results are fairly close it is a good indication that the term has been highly optimized. If the In Anchor is much lower than Exact Phrase this is a good term to consider. It can be helpful to set up another column to compare percentage for these two data points.

In the end once the data has been obtained and run through your spread sheet for analysis it does come down to observation of the data and looking for the keyword phrases that show potential. The more data you have the easier it is to identify the most competitive keyword phrases to use for Organic Optimization or Pay Per Click Programs.

Good luck allow plenty of time and eventually you will discover those niche keywords that you have a reasonable chance to rank well for.