Keyword Research – Better Run for the Hills
Do you shudder when someone says you need to put more focus on your keyword research? Does the mere thought of doing keyword research evoke feelings of pain, like having to do your homework?
If you’re like some of the small businesses that I work with, if someone has to remind you one more time to “do your keyword research”, you’re ready to run for the hills!
I’m sympathetic (really, I am). Doing a proper job with keyword research is harder than it looks. So let me help take some of the mystery out of this critical subject. As with many things in business, there’s the mechanical technique as well as the art form when it comes to learning the craft of keyword research.
You can learn the keyword mechanics easily enough from a manual. And there’s almost an infinite supply of useful keyword research “how-to” information online. Learning the art of keyword research, however, comes through practice and repetition. It also helps to follow some good examples so you can compare your approach to the expert approach.
Most important, discovering the keywords that will drive your online business is just as much about applying some common sense. It’s not as important what you think a keyword will do. It’s what the market tells you a keyword can do. Keyword research is about taking some of the guess work out of the equation.
Remember, every keyword represents a market, or a sub-market. More importantly, a market either exists for a keyword phrase or search term, or it doesn’t. Your job is not to invent a keyword (or invent a new market for that matter). Rather, your job is to discover where a market already exists, and find the keywords that let you tap into that market’s online traffic. Don’t gloss over that lightly, that’s a key concept!
Trust me, it’s much easier to discover the market and associated keywords, than it is to invent the market for your favorite keywords out of thin air.
Hopefully, we’ve learned that driving targeted traffic to our website or blog, whether organic or paid traffic, rests squarely on a foundation of careful and thoughtful keyword research. We know better, right?
Yet, in my consulting work with small business clients, failing to establish a solid keyword foundation for their website based on proper keyword research is easily the number one and most common problem that I encounter.
For some, the lack of keyword awareness is simply website marketing ignorance. Perfectly understandable, most small business entrepreneurs have a business to run, and don’t really have the time to learn and master internet marketing. Other clients that I work with have a good conceptual grasp around the importance of keyword research, but struggle actually executing the steps.
So in the spirit of trying to help the small business operator gain a better grasp of keyword research, as well as share some of the keyword discovery I go through when I work with my small business clients, I’ve decided to offer a keyword research series from this blog. This is the first in a series of posts where I plan on taking you through a complete keyword research exercise, end to end.
As I’ve suggested, nothing beats learning by example …
So feel free to follow along. Better yet, if you subscribe to our feed (see the Feed by Email sign-up box at the bottom of the left-hand sidebar), you’ll get each new post in the series automatically delivered straight to your email box.
Stay tuned for the next keyword research installment coming up in a few days.
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