How To Do Keyword Research For SEO

Keyword research is a critical component for search engine optimization because when used correctly it provides a road map for both the design and execution of building websites and developing content.

Keywords are usually broken up and grouped based on the number of words within the query phrases. The more words in a keyword phrase usually the easier it is to rank for the term, since usually there is less relative competition.

Schools of Thought

In my opinion, SEO tends to focus on one of two areas;

Optimizing for traffic, or
Optimizing for conversion
Most SEO’s (and dare i say internet marketers) fall victim to optimizing too heavily for traffic, and not conversion.

It’s not necessarily bad to optimize for traffic, it depends on your goals; if you’re in e-commerce or a service based business it is more valuable to invest your resources in making sure you rank well for the terms that are most likely to lead to a sale; optimize for conversion, not just to gain the visitor.

Where as if you are in the advertising or publishing business, where your revenues are directly correlated to the number of visitors and pageviews, or in other words the volume of eyeballs, then optimizing for traffic is going to be a better strategy.

Like any good SEO campaign, your optimization strategy should be dictated by your campaign goals. If your top level goals are straight-forward, such as increase revenue, then decide which optimization path is going to be the most effective based on your business:

Does more traffic directly imply more revenue?
Or do you need to make sure you are acquiring more traffic for specific conversion-focused keywords?



The Value of a Keyword


Within these two school’s of thought a keyword’s value is based on either:

The monthly search volume relative to the level of competition, or
The revenue acquisition potential (or conversion rate)
There are a number of ways to get relative monthly search volume, but what remains the easiest is using Google keyword planner (the replacement for the now deprecated keyword tool).

It’s not quite as straight-forward as the keyword tool was, and there is a much heavier focus on AdWords, but it still provides data as a starting point for your research.

But it really does drive you focus on AdWords specific data, so be aware that you will need to stay conscious of the toggles between Ad Groups and Keywords, here are some examples:

After entering your seed keyword(s), you will need to switch the default from ‘ad group ideas’ to ‘keyword ideas’
Then after you’ve built your initial list – you need to click ‘Review Estimates,’ at which point you will need to toggle (again) from ‘Ad Group’ to ‘Keyword,’ and then enter a bid before you see any useful data.