By Jason Lam

Keyword research is an integral part of any SEM initiative, whether it may be PPC or SEO, so it is important to do it right. It is also important to do it right from the start. Google spiders (the bots that indexes web pages) can take months before they cycle to your site, so if you target the wrong keywords initially, it could take months to fix.

We have briefly listed the top five things to consider before you begin your fun journey of keyword researching.

1. Define your targeted pages.

Recognize what goals you want to achieve. If you are looking to sell cars, you want to optimize the pages containing information on a specific type of car, or pages containing content that will lead them to buy a car. Pages such as the About Us page and History page will not need optimization since no one is specifically searching for those pages. Make a list of the pages you feel would provide a lead for your business, and target the keywords on those pages.

2. Speak the way your audiences speaks.

While the correct term to describe your product may seem obvious to you, you need to speak your audience’s language in order to show up for their searches. For example, if you are selling “GPS navigation systems”, a person may have searched for GPS systems. It may not be the most politically correct term (Global Positioning System Systems), but if this is the term everyone uses to find the item you are selling, you may need to consider it as a keyword to target.

3. Know your competition.

Sure, ranking number one for “cars” would drive up your web traffic exponentially. However, what are your chances of obtaining that ranking? Typically, one-word keywords are extremely difficult to optimize. Millions of pages on the web are already well optimized for it, without even knowing it, (unless you want to optimize for kukukabo)

If you are in a very competitive industry (in the internet world) such as gaming, gambling, insurance, and such, you may find it helpful to pin down your keywords to a further niche and targeted level. For example, if you are selling cars in Toronto, you may want to combine “Toronto” with “cars”, or if you are targeting a specific demographic, you may want to include that it in the keyword. You may find that the competition for that term drops significantly, thereby, increasing your chances of success.

By increasing your presence for these targeted key terms, you are in a better position to optimize for keywords that are more ambitious in the future.

4. Using the right tools.

By no means, are the following the only tools you should use. They are some popular free keyword research tools that are simple, straightforward, and ideal to help you get started in keyword researching.

Overture Keyword Selector Tool

- Type in your keyword and it will show you some popular related searches and its search volume during a one-month period

- Be cautioned however that the words within each key phrase are rearranged in alphabetical order. For example, if you search for New York Horse Racing, it would show up as Horse New Racing York

Google AdWords Keywords Tool

- Type in your keyword and it will show you the search volume, competition levels, synonyms, and display some useful data for budgeting when setting up your PPC campaign in Google

NLC Keyword Competition Index

While this is currently in development, we are providing a tool that shows you the competition you face for each keyword. This index will help you determine your chances of success at optimizing for each term. The NLC folks here are using it internally and its one of the best things for Search Engine Marketers since sliced cheese. We will provide more details to this tool in our blog in the future, so stay tuned!

5. Snoop on your competitors.

After having a good set of keywords, go ahead and search for them in Google. Take note of the top results, if they are selling or promoting what you are, these are competitors. Browse through their site and keep an eye out for keywords they are using. It may help to view their Meta tags and description by going into the page source code (View > Source).

6. Smooth Integration with page content.

PPC

While in PPC, you have the freedom to target more broad terms and loosely related terms. You must also consider that people who have clicked on your ad are expecting to see what they searched. If your site has no relevance to what their keyword was, you probably just wasted $0.50.

SEO

When choosing keywords for SEO, you need to be much more selective. Remember, you will need to put these keywords on your page, and if you want to do SEO well, these terms are probably going to be in very prominent areas on your page. Make sure these terms make sense and can fit well into the context of your content.

Remember, when doing keyword research for SEO initiatives; do not ONLY aim for the terms with highest search volume and lowest competition. While that is generally a good rule of thumb, you must not forget the main point of search engine optimization. You are delivering more web users to your site, but you will ultimately need your web content to speak to your potential customers. Using keywords that make sense, and are related to your content is just as important as choosing obtainable keywords.

Jason Lam is a member of the Search Engine Marketing group at non-linear creations; Jason has a wealth of experience in everything SEO, PPC and SEM while working with many clients from varying industries.

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