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Successful Keyword Research PART 1

Written by: Keith Stephenson

Article Overview: What Comes First - Content or Keywords? If your Webmaster and Web marketing company are pro-active you will often hear them continually asking you to create more content for your website in response to your complaints about falling rankings and poor showing on the SERP [Search Engine Results Pages]. What comes first the content or the research into the topics to write about?

Successful Keyword Research PART 1

Successful Keyword Research PART 1

Any SEO campaign relies upon a successful and thorough analysis of keyword research. Web sites are made up of words both on the page and in the form of the ‘meta’ tags. If your website is going to be successful then it is vital that your keyword research is carried out before your site is even created let alone before an effective SEO campaign is embarked upon.

What Comes First - Content or Keywords?

You will often hear your web master continually carping on about creating more content for your website in response to your complaints about falling rankings and poor showing on the SERP [Search Engine Results Pages].

It is true you must embark upon a programme of content creation, that is uniquely written pages of interesting information for your readers. Without content your website is like a book with only an introduction, contents and summary and who wants to read that?

Before you can commit to the creation of content, you must decide what topics you ought to write about. There has to be a structure to your story from a Title, to the chapters and conclusions. This can only be achieved by carrying out detailed analysis of keyword research to identify the topics that are going to being searched for by your prospective readers and potential customers.

If you know what the people are searching for then you can give them what they want and create interesting and informative information to match that need.

Like a fisherman trying to catch a fish, you wouldn’t dream of casting your line and hook with no bait, so why do you think you can create a website and attract visitors without bait that is ATTRACTIVE to them?

The important key phrase is that which is attractive to them. Most often web owners create pages of content that they think will be interesting to their readers and, through vanity and a degree of self importance, they also create information that they believe a reader really wants to know.

When it comes to effective SEO strategy you have to consider not only what your readers want and most importantly are looking for, but also what the Search Engines can identify, index and add to their database to match a searcher’s request to your site.

Key word research is more than just looking for the essential key words that people look for, you must also look for key phrases and headline grabbing statements that make people stay on your page.

Consider the newspaper and magazine industry, every day they publish new content and every time they create headline grabbing statements to stop you in your tracks in an attempt to make you buy their newspaper. This is basic keyword analysis research where editors are using topical events and forming short punchy headlines to capture your interest. They hope that the headline will make you pick up that paper or magazine and buy it on the basis of curiosity to find out more behind the headline.

Remember the next time you’re in an airport departure lounge or store and you find yourself scanning the magazine racks to find some reading matter that interests you. First you look at the headline or cover which grabs your attention, then you might be tempted to pick it up and look at the short description inside or on the back and, based upon that, you will make a decision to buy it or put it back.

Key words and key phrase research must come first to determine what your potential readers are really looking for. Once you have established this, then and only then can you commit yourself to a programme of creating content pages that meets those needs. It’s not what you think they want, it’s what your readers want that matters if you are going to have an effective SEO.

You have to appeal to your readers not your vanity, they don’t really want to know how big your company is and how long it has been in business or how nice you are when it comes to customer service. Whilst these factors are important they have to be kept in perspective as to what you are really offering to your customers, the description and price.

Key Word Research Tools are readily available to help you establish how your customers are looking for your products. The most popular ones can be used to determine what your potential customers are really looking for. You mostly likely will be surprised to learn they are not looking for what you think they are and are even looking for keywords and phrases you hadn’t even thought about, let alone included in your website.

Key word research tools are sometimes referred to as ‘reverse search engines’.
In part 2, I will explain in more detail how you can access these reverse search engines and a couple of links which you will find useful.

Related Articles
  Understanding Article Marketing Research
  The Basics of Article Marketing Research
  Best Keyword Research Training
  The Basics of Keyword Research
  Keyword Research is the Pulse of all Online Marketing

Article Tags: keyword research, SEO, SEO, SEO, Successful Keyword Research PART



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Re: What I'm reading this weekend - Feb 18, 2011 - Hi Evan, Thank you for a great list as usual, I haven't had the chance until now to read them as I spent all yesterday helping my father to re-build half of his house (or it seemed that way,LOL) I will make a start reading them today and I particularly like the look of Keyword Research in Google Webmaster Tools, thanks again, Mal.
Most Useful SEO Tools For Webmasters - Hi, My name is Jeff, I work for WebBizIdeas.com and we are developing an article called "50 Most Useful SEO Tools for Webmasters." We have ranked & listed our top 30 SEO Tools but want to get your opinion on what SEO Tools are most useful to you; as Internet Business Owners. Google Webmaster Tools Google Analytics Google Alerts Yahoo Site Explorer SEOBook.com Keyword Research SEOBOOK.com SEO For Firefox Tool SEOBOOK.com Search Engine Rank Checker SEOBOOK.com Back Link Analyzer SEOChat.com Keyword Difficulty Compete.com Quantcast.com Alexa.com Archive.org Stompernet Site Seer Technorati.com PRWEB.com ADDTHIS.com SHARETHIS.com EzineArticles.com Scribd.com Squidoo.com YouTube.com StumbleUpon.com Reddit.com Digg.com Del.icio.us Wikipedia.org Flickr.com NewsVine.com Yahoo Answers NOTE: When you list your answers please include a description on what the site is, why it is important to you, and your experience please....we may include it in our article. Jeff
Re: Keyword Selection - Hi All, Very interesting topic of discussion! Website success mainly depends upon the target keywords so the keywords should be relevant to website theme. Long tail keywords often rank easily in SERP. You can also use Ad word Keyword tool for keyword selection. Keyword having less competition and high monthly search volume are easy to rank.
Re: Best Internet Marketing Strategies - I'd disagree with the first point. Keyword research is important, but it should not be the complete focus when doing niche research. A niche is typically made up of thousands of keywords, and researching them all is very difficult, because the keyword tools won't tell you what most of them are. Plus a niche is not a bunch of keywords, it is a demographic interested in a particular topic. You need to learn about the people in this demographic. Keyword research tells you their search habits and gives clues to competitiveness and potential profit, but you are looking at through a very narrow window of a much bigger picture.
Re: What's 1 word to describe what your business will be in 2012 - Successful.


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