Keyword Research – The key to success

Keyword research is so important, I can’t stress enough how much.  Any kind of campaign online must never be attempted until you have a thorough understand of the things that people are actually physically typing into the search engines.  All too often companies assume they know what people are looking for, but in reality it can be completely different.  Each keyphrase is it’s own individual market, so in order to understand which ones to target you need to know the volume of searches for each term, how competitive they are and whether you are able to compete against other websites.

You also need to bear in mind that often it is better to first target long-tailed keyphrases, here are some reasons why:

• It is easier to get organic rankings for these terms
• You often pay a lower click cost for your paid advertising campaigns
• They are less competitive
• They often have a higher conversion rate as the searches are so much more specific

In terms of SEO it is a balancing act between volume and what you can realistically achieve high rankings for.  By targetting longer tailed keyphrases first it then helps when you come to go after much more generic phrases as you already have some SEO juice with what you have achieved.

So search out those long-tailed keyphrases, make sure you understand which ones you are targetting and then build your campaign based around this.  If you follow these simple steps then you will be well on your way to using your keyword research to have a successful online campaign.