Brainstorming & Researching Effective Keywords

September 29, 2015

Brainstorming & Researching Effective Keywords
Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is a process that affects a website’s visibility within a search engine’s rankings by reviewing how the respective search engines work, what people are searching for, the keywords or phrases used and which search engines different audiences prefer. For example, Google, Yahoo or Bing.

Keyword brainstorming is the first step when deciding which keywords to target when creating a website. At the beginning of a web based project, it is often wise to start out small, using less competitive keywords, and as time passes – and hopefully your market increases, then upgrade to include additional and ‘more competitive’ keywords.

Keyword Research It’s important to research keywords to determine their viability – are they worth working with or targeting? Often, one of the best ways to research a keywords popularity is to use a search engine. Type in your potential key phrase and see what results appear.

The right keywords to target have to be popular, relevant and obtainable. If a person targets the wrong keywords, then all of his or her efforts to optimise and promote a website would be in vain – and a waste of money!

It can be difficult to choose the keywords that describe your company and its products or services so that users will see your website when they perform an online search. Obviously, you want people who are searching for what products or services you provide to find your website near the top of the search engine results pages.

So how do you achieve this? The answer is “by using keywords and key phrases in your website content.” These are the words that people type into search engines when they are looking for something.

Choosing and researching good keywords is a process that takes several steps that can essentially be broken down into the following stages:

Initial keyword Research. Have a brain storming session with your staff and, if possible, customers. Ask other people for ideas, too, including your family, try to get as many opinions as possible. You will often discover that what you consider your optimal key phrases are not those typically used by your customers.
Use Key Word Research Tools. There are several online keyword research tools that offer information about the number of times users perform searches for specific words. These can help you identify key phrases ‘related’ to your products or services that might help generate quality traffic to your website.
Selecting of Key Words. Use the research you have done and select the most appropriate key words that is likely to deliver the best results for your business. Note this may mean you choose a key phrase that isn’t the most searched for (which will probably be the most ‘competitive’ in terms of achieving a page 1 result on the web) but which will bring you high quality traffic in numbers that should help generate you business.
Analytics. After you’ve chosen your keywords and optimized your site, you need to perform measurements to see whether it’s delivering the amount of traffic and conversions you expected. You can use this information to make adjustments and refine your keyword strategy.

The above represents a fairly basic overview of choosing effective key phrases for your website and the web is full of more in depth articles and guides to help you.

For more information on choosing the right key words for your website call Direct Submit on 0845 2722350 or visit our Internet Marketing and SEO website and see how we can help you make the most of your online Internet project.