Keyword Research

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is what follows competitive research. We like to first establish who your relevant competition is. Then we like to do a full analysis of each competitor to see which keywords Google is rewarding for websites in your industry. This list of keywords equals the larger keywords to be found for. But keyword research goes far beyond this. There are many other types of keywords and phrases that we want to analyze and discover. All are relevant in bringing high-quality traffic, and conversions. As a general rule of thumb the keywords that we collect for you, we want to have 4 primary attributes if possible. Of course, not all keywords you need to rank for will have these attributes, but the ones that do equal very good opportunity.

What makes good keywords?

1. The first thing you want your keyword to be is high volume. We’ll talk later about this known exception (aka long-tail key phrases). It goes without saying that high-volume keywords bring more traffic.
2. The second thing you want your keywords to be if possible is low difficulty. We measure difficulty in 2 ways.
   • One way is in measuring the difficulty of ranking for this term organically.
   • The other is the difficulty of ranking for this term with paid sources, such as Google ads. In either case, the low difficulty will equal cheaper to achieve.
3. Thirdly, relevant terms related to your industry are also important, not only the main/common ones.
4. Finally, it is beneficial to have keywords that have low search engine result page features. This means that they don’t show up in many features or search verticals. Examples would be Rich Snippet Returns, or Image Searches, Google Local Map Pack, etc…

Types of keywords we collect

Common Keywords

Gathering your keywords from your major competitors is one list that we like to create. We like to call this list, common keywords. These equal keywords that are obvious, and known to the industry, and the client. It is always a good idea to do this on your competitors to ensure you have the correct list of common keywords you need to be found for.

Related Keywords

The other types of keywords are called related keywords. Typically you want each page in your website, if possible, to focus on a specific keyword or keyphrase. This idea ensures that your page and its topic of it stay focused and do not dilute with multiple concepts. Google has been very clear for a long time that the more focused the content can be the easier it is for it to read and for users to understand. Therefore, many of Google’s algorithms are geared to identify this type of content and its focus of it. With the understanding that each page should represent a focus keyword, it is important to understand the idea of related keywords which is the second list of keywords we like to create. Related keywords are words that commonly show with the primary keyword for the page.

We like to use a simple spreadsheet to list out the common keywords that you should be found for, and on this same sheet in another column list out all the related keywords for this focus keyword that research reveals. This list of supporting related keywords should be woven into the naturally readable text of the page, while still focusing on the focus keyword. Content creation happens in a completely separate step, however, you have to have the words that you’re going to use within the page before you can properly write the content. This is a good reason why doing keyword research early on is a good idea.

Questions as Keywords

Another very common way we all search on the Internet is through literal questions. Keep in mind that people visit the Internet to do 3 primary things. It is either to buy something, educate themselves, or be entertained or any combination thereof. As you can imagine, if you went to Amazon.com and started looking for some item you wanted to buy, this process may involve all 3 reasons. Think how many searches you make that start with a question to Google. These questions equal actual search terms. Your site should be the one that answers them! Another part of our keyword research involves examining questions that are common to your products, services, or industry. These questions make for a great content strategy that can take the form of frequently asked questions. FAQs are also great types of content that we can make eligible for the rich snippet return also known as the zero position return from Google. We’ve all seen this when we ask Google a question and Google doesn’t give us a website it just gives us the answer in a box before all other search results are shown. This is known as the rich snippet return and as you can imagine it gets a lot of traffic. Such clean answers that show like this give the answering domain a lot of clout and authority. Being an authority on the topics that bring you converting traffic is the name of the game when it comes to search engine optimization services.

Long-Tail Keywords

Long Tail keywords are simply keywords that have many words within them which we then call key phrases. Mini of the keywords identified will likely be key phrases, however, long-tail strategy refers to very long key phrases. The idea behind this type of search by the user, and why you want to rank for these terms, is due to their specificity. Typically if someone finds a website from a longtail keyword search the click-through and conversion rates are usually much higher although the traffic gains from being found through long-tail key phrase are often lower. You want to be found for these terms for the dual reasons of bringing more traffic anyway, but more importantly, this type of traffic is usually more focused and leads to more conversions. More conversions equal more profit which means a long-tail strategy should never be overlooked. Even though these terms may bring very little traffic, they could bring those extra couple of deals each month or year that make a big difference in your bottom line.

We conduct comprehensive research to determine the best overlap of long-tail keywords that you’re likely to be associated with, which also offers the opportunity for profit-generating conversions. Long Tail keywords also represent a great content strategy in an ongoing way for future SEO work as focused pages can be crafted around them.

Opportunity Keywords

Finally, we have what we call opportunity keywords. In our analysis of your online presence, we check to see the keyword gaps or overlaps with you compared to your chosen competitors. This is another reason why competitive research should be step one when analyzing search engine optimization strategies. We conduct research that examines which keywords you and your competition share and do not share. This gives us a very clear idea of the road ahead in terms of difficulty for shared terms and illuminates certain opportunities for terms you are found for that your competition is not.

For common keywords that overlap, again, we will gain an understanding of how much work it may take to beat out your competition for the most popular key terms. But, conversions are conversions that lead to profit which makes the bottom line bigger. Finding opportunity keywords is essentially finding gaps in the “competition wall”. These terms are designed to penetrate into the market in areas where your competitors do not yet have a foothold with the correct terms of keywords. Additionally, ranking your site first in these areas typically makes it easier to stay ahead of the competition with those terms.

Risks of getting the wrong keywords

Here at Perfectly Optimized, we put a lot of emphasis on proper comprehensive keyword research. One of the biggest risks that any website faces is to rank well but for the wrong keywords. This is a very annoying problem because it indeed brings traffic, and makes reports look good, however, user engagement, bounce rates, and of course actual conversions that lead to new business are absent. Our free website audit analysis actually begins the keyword research process. If you would like to know what terms your website is found for, and what type of competition online may be threatening your rankings, then simply fill out our free website audit form, and will give you two (2) comprehensive reports.

Of course, we are happy to review this data with you and answer any questions you may have. Either way, the report is free and we would be honored to provide them to you. This free information may yield opportunities you weren’t aware of that leads to more conversions. Finally, if you do engage with our free website audit form, we stress that we do not put this information into any newsletter or distribute it in any way. It is only used to deliver your free reports. We hate that stuff, so we aren’t going to do it to you.