How to: Effective Keyword Research

There is no doubt that keyword research is a very important in SEO Campaign as well as PPC. Every SEO successful campaign lies in an effective keyword research. Don’t ever overvalue the importance of it by saying that this process in Search Engine Optimization is simple.

In PPC advertising you can test a vary of keywords rapidly and the changes can be made right away and see the impact of results immediately. On the other hand, In SEO, you have to stick on the key phrases/keywords that you chose at least long enough to get the page crawl by search engine spiders and index for the key phrases / keywords that you optimize and see the results after that. That’s why I suggest after doing the keyword research test first in PPC Advertising (If you have a budget) , and if the keyword you chose is effective then start  the SEO Campaign. So that, in the end all the tedious work that you’ve done is rewarding.

By targeting the wrong keywords, you not only put your money at risk, you are also wasting a lot of time and energy you put into getting your site to rank for the key phrase/keywords you choose. If you want to stay competitive, you can’t afford to do that. rRght?

What to consider for effective keyword research?

Keywords research tools, choosing long-tail or short-tail keywords and targeting a right keywords / key phrase are something that needs to be considered for effective keyword research.

What keyword research tools to use?
There are numerous tools in the market which help you do keyword research. I would still recommend the Google Keyword Suggestion Tool because first it is free and the data is from Google and second the integrity of the data is very high and of good quality.

You can also try Wordtracker and  Keyword Discovery so you can have something to compare with in terms of searches and competition for a certain terms in search engine.

Below are sample query that I’ve done using the keyword tools that I mention above.

Tool: Google Keyword Suggestion Tool
Data Source: Google search data
Website: https://adwords.google.com/
Free or Paid: Free and is part of your Google Adwords account.
Free version: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Tool: Wordtracker
Data Source: Dogpile and other Meta Search Engines (Meta Search Engines are bot based search engines, but they do not seem to specify the details). Give search volumes based on the last 30 days.
Website: http://www.wordtracker.com/
Free or Paid: Paid but has a limited feature free tool.
Free version: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

Tool: Keyword Discovery / Trellian
Data Source: 180 Search Engines, includes all major search engines. Complete list here. Data shows search volume per year and seems to com from any arbitrary data start month in the past.
Website: http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/
Free or Paid: Paid but has a limited feature free tool.
Free version: http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

Comparing the list of terms that populated by the keyword research tools means that the term “dubai hotels” indicates that this term is more popular  to the rest of the keywords / keyphrases.

Targeting keywords that right for your business

Now you have a list to choose from. The next this is choosing a right term for your business.  Targeting all possible search terms is importance so a smart way of choosing a keyword for your business can measures by the following:

• Number of Search - an estimated traffic that your website will gonna get in targeting a certain term.
• Keyword Competition – This measures the competitiveness of a certain keyword / keyphrase. This can be base in number of competitors and the strength of competitors base on different factors such as backlinks, age domain, quality content and more.
  

Choosing between long tail and short tail

A long-tail and short-tail keyword can also define as broad keywords and narrow keywords. A sample of long-tail can be “SEO Company Dubai” while a short-tail keyword cane be something like “SEO Dubai“.

When you compare the two keywords, ‘SEO Dubai’ has about twice as many competitors as “SEO Company Dubai’,  ‘SEO Dubai’ also gets far more searches each month. A small number of broad terms such as ‘SEO Dubai’ and ‘SEO’ account for a large proportion of searches but an equally large proportion of the searches are made up of millions of more specific search queries such as ‘SEO Company Dubai’. Below is an example graph that illustrates the short and long tail keywords.

You can see at the graph that the top  keywords bring in lots of traffic and each remaining keywords  bring a lesser amount of traffic that cumulatively totals a significant amount, but separately are not significant.

What does it all mean? Visitors who use long-tail keywords are more likely converts well as it is more specific.

Conclusion

When selecting your final keywords / key phrase, always remember what you need is those with lower difficulty ranking for your term, higher relevance means more specific in your target, and traffic that will benefit you with a higher value.