Keyword Research – The Right Stuff

Who knows your business better than you do? I’ll bet there aren’t many (if any) people who can say that they do. So since you’re an expert on your business, it should be pretty simple to select the keywords that customers and prospect would use to search for your site on the web, right? Well, not necessarily.

Before selecting the keywords for your web site, you really need to know what people are actually searching on, not what you think they are searching on. Keyword research enables you to tap into how people are searching, and to know the exact words and phrases they type into the search engines to find information.

Let the Data Speak for Itself

For instance, if your business sells blue widgets, you may think that “blue widgets” is the way people would search for your product. But by using the right keyword research tools and analysis, you can find out in real time what searchers are really using, whether it’s “blue widgets,” “blue widget services,” “Michigan blue widgets,” and so forth. Why spend time and money optimizing for keywords that nobody actually uses? It’s typically less expensive (and far more effective) to do the keyword research up front so you can target the appropriate keywords and phrases based on actual user data.

Once you determine which keywords searchers are really using on the web, it’s important to understand how competitive each keyword is. If the term “blue widgets” gets lots of searches but is found on 10 million other sites, it might be nearly impossible for your site to rank well for this particular term. It may be better to go with a keyword that gets fewer searches, but also has fewer competing web sites. Of course, there is more to choosing a good keyword than just how competitive it is, but it’s a good criterion to include as you consider your keyword choices.

Don’t Just Guess – Get It Right

Even though you may know your business better than anyone else, you can’t really know how others search for your business unless you do the keyword research. You may not realize how important it is to choose the right keywords, but if you don’t have actual user data to identify the terms that are being used in searches, your keyword choices are little more than an educated guess, and probably not very effective. The point is that keyword research matters if you truly want to improve your search engine rankings, and without this information, it’s less likely that you will be successful in getting good traffic to your site from the search engines.