SEO Fast – Keywords and Keyword Research!
There are over 1 billion websites on the web, when you want to find something search engines have to sift through thousands of pages in under a second to present suggestions to you, all these pages are stored in one big database. So how do you make your website appear on the front page of the search engine or one of the top ranked when someone types in your product?
K e y w o r d s !
Keywords are a huge deal, giant – no wait, bigger, they’re ginormous! Keywords are what google, and other search engines use to search for when the user types in a phrase or word to present the most relevant pages to you.
Being able to find out what words and phrases are most relevant and connect well with your business whilst are crucial for wanting to appear and rank highly, so we’ll give you some quick tips to jump start your knowledge in SEO.
The value of keywords
It’s insane to think that 1-2 words can make or break some sites ranking, it really can, but how do you know the words you’re using are worth you putting into content pieces or product descriptions? Well, we have a couple of useful tools that can help you decide most clicked and widely sought-after keywords.
Google AdWords
Google AdWords is primarily a PPC planner however we’ll be focusing on the keyword planner. The planner has lots of options for you to play with to get very vague and very specific audiences not only that, but you can search up the keywords you want to use, check prices, create campaigns and even set it so keywords are only tied to specific locations such as the UK. After creating a campaign, you can view all the data from them ready to be analysed properly. AdWords and the keyword planner are free but you have to register for an account to start.
If you want to try Google AdWords click here.
KWFinder
KWFinder is a keyword research tool that gives you a bunch of data from the search volume to trends and the price per click. The only downside is that you can only look up two lots of data before having to register but it’s a quick tool if you know what you’re looking for.
If you want to try KWFinder click here.
Although these tools are great, they cannot give you a definite value of keywords (since they change all the time, and some are much better than others), so then it comes down to the content creator or marketer to create their own conclusion on certain keywords. Usually you can assess a keywords value with a few easy check points or if you can’t find a particular keyword/it’s not showing up:
You can search up the term on all the different search engines, this gives you a broader spectrum to look at and you can look at the sites that are doing well using those keywords/phrases as well as on products or in blogs.
See what other keywords competitors are using that could link with your business and maybe add them to your list if they’re relevant and effective. You can also look at any PPC adverts that are also using that word/phrase to make good PPC adverts.
If you’re wanting to test different keywords you can in fact create a campaign that can run for just a week at a relatively low price and see how well it does, since you can look up the data for it and compare it to other keywords it will help decide whether to use it or not.
We’ve probably repeated our-self many times at this point but the relevance of the keywords linking with your website make a huge difference. No one will click a website that has no relevance to them or isn’t at all what they searched for example, if they searched “book” and a car advert appeared, they probably wouldn’t click it.
With these little tips you should be able to make a list of the most valuable keywords, some people make tables with the estimated price so if you have a budget you can pick all the keywords you want and are unlikely to accidentally overspend. At this point you should be able to use the knowledge gained to accurately estimate how well those keywords will work both short term and long term as well as how much it’ll cost, however those big keywords are not the only ones you should be looking at, you should also consider the long tail, what’s the long tail you ask? Well!
The Long Tail
The most popular searches make up just less than 30% of searches whilst the other 70% are what is called long tail searches. Long tails are unique searches they may not be done on a regular basis however over time will accumulate some searches per day not as many as the big top generic words like “shirts” but over time they will eventually make up for it. They tend to be cheaper than the big keywords and phrases, so it’s always a good alternative to look at if your budget isn’t as big as multi-million corporations who can pay for £45 PPC keywords! The long tails are not only cheaper, they can be a long-term investment especially if you sell products.
Marketers have found out that specific searches which would be classified in the long tail group tend to have the higher percentage of brought items/services because these are the users that are searching for unique products usually with exact key phrases such as “Studio Ghibli size M shirts” narrowing the search all the way down for those type of shirts that have that size.
Taking everything into consideration, you should at this point have a list of keywords and phrases that can help both kick-start your business and keep people coming and buying over time. Always make sure check on those keywords too because they can change over time and it’s always a good idea to evaluate semi-regularly to see if they’re worth keeping and if you need more or need to take out less effective ones.
We hope this fast guide has helped you understand how keywords work and how keyword research can benefit your business. If you’re interested in SEO you can check us out!