How to do keyword research – Part 1

If you have a business and would like your business website to do well in the search engines then it is very important to know how to do keyword research.

Why is keyword research necessary?

In general people will only click on the top results of all keywords results returned so getting a top ranking for your main product or service is crucial. If internet marketability is crucial for the success of your business you may even need to do this keyword research before you register your business name or register a domain.

You may think that you can just target your main service for which you know there is a lot of demand, eg. haridressing. However, for a a general keyword like that, there will also be a lot of competition. If a lot of the websites ranking high for that keyword are very established websites with a high pagerank and many relevant websites linking to them, then there is little chance you will get a spot on the first page of Google for that keyword. You can forget about getting a number one spot.

Finding keywords that are relevant but not so competitive

What you could do though is look for related keywords or keywords that are more specific. Some of these keywords may have a lot less competiton. Of course the daily search volume will be lower too, but if the daily volume is 100 and you are number 1 for that keyword phrase, a lot of those 100 will visit your website for a very specific service you are offering.

Using tools to do keyword research

There are a lot of ways to do keyword research online. However, I now use a tool called Market Samurai that makes it a lot quicker and easier. In addition they have a set of very useful tutorials that teach you how to use the software but also how you should do keyword research.

Learn about the 4 crucial elements of keyword research:

• Relevance
• Competition
• Traffic
• Commerciality

Since these videos explain so well what keyword research is all about and why it is so important, I thought I would share them on this site. This first video is all about relevance. Learn and enjoy!

All the best,

Sylvia

PS. If you have any questions regarding this part of keyword research then please let me know. If you want to try Market Samurai for yourself then sign up for the free trial