Keyword Research
Keyword research helps you understand what your prospective customers are looking for.
There are many different ways to do keyword research – this article will describe a process using the Google AdWords Keyword tool. This is not only free, it is probably the most accurate source of keyword data available for business website research.
Who this article is for
This article introduces you to keyword research and:
- explains what keywords are and why keyword research is important.
- shows you how to start using keyword research for your online business, in strategy, planning and execution.
- points you to additional keyword information and resources.
Note: you can follow this article and do keyword research yourself, or you can hire us to prepare a Keyword Plan so you start working with better keywords faster.
What are keywords?
Keywords are the words people type into the search fields for Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask and all the other search engines of the world.
Keyword research helps you identify keywords that are searched more frequently than others. And it can help you understand what your prospective clients are interested in.
Your potential clients are already typing keywords into search engines like Google to find a whole range of information and make purchases.
They may use a single keyword (organic), multiple keywords (organic garden) or multiple keywords that form a phrase or question (find organic garden design).
A lot of people have opinons about what people would be most likely to search on. But rather than guess, why not just go and look?
An example of keywords research in action
Lets try an example. Say you are an expert in organic and biodynamic gardens. You are considering launching a business to intall these gardens, and want to understand what your prospective customers are looking for online.
We can use the Google AdWords Keyword tool to help.
A few important tips for using the Google AdWords Keyword tool:
- you can find the tool by searching Google for keyword tool
- make sure you are localised to Australia or
- after you see you keyword results for the first time, make sure you change the Match Type from broad to Exact
Let us look at an example.
First of all we will enter biodynamic garden as the root keyword. Once we get a set of results, we switch Match Type to Exact – you only need to do this once at the beginning of each keyword research session.
Search on keyword biodynamic garden
Next we’ll enter organic garden as the root keyword.
Search on keyword organic garden
From these two searches you can see the difference in relative popularity on searches for biodynamic and organic gardening (figures represent searches per month in Australia).
| Keyword | Searches/Mth |
| biodynamic garden | 0 |
| biodynamic gardening | 110 |
| organic garden | 170 |
| organic gardening | 1,600 |
You need to use a wide range of different seed keywords. And take note of what your research returns to suggest new seeds to use.
Look for popular terms that are specific and relevant to your business.
In the examples above, it is clear more people are likely to be considering an organic garden than a biodynamic garden. That doesn’t mean you would ignore biodynamic – but you would do well to consider what the figures tell you in relation to demand.
Intuitive?
You may figure you could have guessed that. And I agree, sometimes the results seem intuitive.
But once you start doing keyword research, you will see that not all of the trends are that easy to guess accurately up front. And if you think one term will be more popular than another, knowing it is 2x or 20x or 200x more popular can make a big difference to your decision making.
What are your prospective clients thinking?
Keyword analysis helps you to see exactly what your prospective customers are keying into search engines (like Google) when they are looking for the products or services you are offering.
Guessing about what they are thinking is not as good as having a look at the real deal.
So last century
Lets just stop for a moment and consider the implications of keyword research.
Last century, marketers used to wonder about what their prospective customers were thinking.
And expensive market research was conducted. Focus groups shared cheese and biscuits. Clipboards flashed to collect survey data. All to try and understand consumer sentiment and buying motivation.
Last century we did not have search engines to help with market research.
This century we have access to data from tens of millions of searches every day. We have access to incredibly direct information about what people are interested. We can see the actual keywords they choose to use. We can get insight into their buying intent.
There will always be a place for qualitative and quantitative market research of course.
But in the era of search we have a new tool for marketing research. It costs less, covers more people, and is probably more accurate.
What kind of market research do you do? If the answer is ‘none’, or your market research tools belong to last century, then its time to look at keyword analysis.
The benefits of keywords research
Getting your keywords analysis right has a lot of benefits.
Rather than try and restate them, I’m going to quote the smart folk over at Wordtracker who say that keyword research can help:
- Drive traffic to your site by using the words people use when they’re searching
- Write great website copy by incorporating terms that people immediately identify with
- Plan profitable pay-per-click campaigns by building up a broad range of keyword phrases that will capture your market
- Develop great content ideas that directly addressyour customers’ needs
- Understand your customers’ behavior and concerns by analyzing the words that they use
- Measure the size of a potential online market by the number of searches conducted, and
- Develop new revenue streams by using popular keywords to inspire new product and service ideas.
Hard to put it better than that.
When to use keyword research for your online business
Business strategy. Do you want to build an online business the hard way or the harder way? (The easy way – the million dollar home page – has already been done 
) Why not use keyword research to help identify a product or service that prospects already want? Then build a business strategy responding to that want.
If you have an existing business – online or offline – and haven’t used keyword research yet, it is time. Now. Do it.
Look at your expertise, your products and services, through the lens of the related keywords appearing in search. What related keywords are popular? Why? What buying intent can you see being expressed? How can you respond?
Business planning. You already have an online strategy, but how can keywords help you plan for success? Keyword research can help you enormously in planning your content marketing and search marketing campaigns. Pay Per Click search marketing is a low cost way of testing your findings. For example, if you identify popular, highly relevant search terms, launch a PPC campaign and test conversion rates.
How to use keyword research for your online business
Step 1: Find keyword phrases
Come up with a good selection of seed keywords. Using good seed keywords will help you assess the most popular keywords relevant to your area, and also keywords that express a highly relevant search intent.
Popularity. We’ve already looked at organic and biodynamic. But there are many other relevant keywords for this kind of business. You don’t want to miss keywords that are very popular, and finding good seed keywords avoids this.
Specific Search Intent. Using good seed keywords can also help you find ‘garden designs’. With a limited number of searches per day, it is not as popular as other related keywords. But seeing a reasonable volume of very relevant search traffic may help you decide to offer organic garden designs as a service.
To find related keywords, have a look at good websites in your area and notice what keywords they are using. If you look at the Page Source you may be able to see the meta keywords the site is focussing on. Notice the words used in advertising and direct mail in your subject area.
If you are using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, you can use the Additional Keywords to Consider section which comes after your main set of keyword results.
Finding a good set of seed words is important to do before you go looking at popularity.
Step 2: Finding your best keywords
Finding the best keywords for your business means looking at what is important for you.
| Popularity | High traffic keywords are better at driving traffic than keywords that are rarely searched. A #1 ranking is more valuable for a popular keyword than a keyword rarely searched. Assess: historical and predicted search volumes and analysis of existing content |
| Specificity | Highly specific keywords are better at driving relevant traffic than generics/multiple meanings Relevance increases conversion rates. Assess: relative search volumes for different meanings |
| Relevance to Intent | Searching a keyword often expresses an intent. Aligning with the right search intent increases conversion rates. Assess: qualitative nature of search intent. |
| Context | Understand the context of the keyword, the quality and qualitative nature of the primary content for the keyword. Understand opportunities to build links from relevant content. Assess: nature of existing content: websites, blogs, photo blogs, news |
It is essential to look at the context in which your prospects are searching: How relevant is their search to your site? What is their search intention?
For a business it might not be worth investing in traffic for a particular keyword if there is no chance of a conversion. Better to have fewer visitors and a higher conversion rate than more visitors and a lower conversion rate.
Keyword Resources
Here are some excellent – and free – introductory resources that will help you learn more about keyword research.
Brian Clark over at CopyBlogger has some excellent articles:
Summary
Is keyword research relevant for your business?
If so, the resources mentioned here should help you get going with it.
Too busy to do keyword research yourself? You can always hire us to do it for you – check out our Keyword Plan service.
