4 Top SEO Keyword Research Tips

Keyword research is one of the first concrete activities that you complete in an SEO campaign, and one of the most important. Trying to move too quickly here, or acting on assumptions rather than research, can taint your whole campaign and remove the value of all of those dollars you put in. Keyword research tips are many, says Yoda – today we look only at the top 4.

Keyword Research - not a precise science

1. Relative Search Volume

When you first startedt on the process of determining the keyphrases that will best serve your SEO and web marketing needs, you probably got out a big piece of paper, called everyone into the same room, put on the coffee and fluffed up the sofa cushions, and said ‘Troops – Brainstorm!’. You’ll have a heap of different phrases relating to your business – the nest step is to determine which of these consumers are searching for the most. The top phrases are not necessarily the ideal ones to go for if they don’t represent your business as well as others – but you need the information.

So, check the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, the MSN Keyword Research Tool, and Wordtracker.

2. Keywords in season

Check when your keywords are in season. This won’t be the only deciding factor on whether you should use a particular word for your web marketing, but it will help guide which ones are more important. For example, if the term with the highest average yearly volume shows an enormous peak in November and December, but is flat the rest of the year (and you don’t like competing at Christmas time!), it won’t be as high on the list.

3. Examine the competition

Look at the domains that rank in the top five spots for the terms you are targeting – perhaps for your top five keywords. Check out their Pagerank, and number of inbound links.

4. Think about emerging trends

Knowing the lexicon of current events and trends is one of the easiest ways to get traffic to your site. Find out exactly what people are talking about with site-specific tools like Google News Trends, Blogscape and Twist for Trends in Twitter. This may add to your brainstorming list, or it might indicate which keywords would make your SEO campaign more likely to succeed.