Introduction

Selecting the right keywords is of the utmost importance in getting your online content to be found by sufficient potential customers. Almost everyone who is looking for specific information and access to the internet is using Google. It is an art to set apart your business from the competition and come up high in the search results.

In this blog, I will explain the three key points for determining good keywords and give you a six-step plan on how to do the ultimate keyword research to get the perfect results. 

What is a keyword anyway?

A keyword is a search term, input in a search machine, which can be more than one loose word. Think about it: if you want to find something on the internet to prepare for your summer vacation, you might be looking for the search term ‘holiday’ or “cheap hotels in South- France”? Both are keywords and the site that addresses them well will receive visitors.

Why are keywords so important?

There are all kinds of reasons why keywords are extremely important for your website:

• First and foremost you need them to get high rankings in the search engines in order to attract many visitors to your site. Ideally, you want to be on pages 1, 2 or 3. Being number one in the search results should not be a goal in itself. No one can guarantee you a number one position and if you reach it you will come under the scrutiny of Google at one point or another. You have nothing to worry about if you use the right keywords and quality content.
• You need them to ensure that visitors stay long enough on your site. First impressions count and you have 10 seconds to convince visitors that your website deserves a closer look. Moreover, if you can convince users to stay on your page for half a minute, there’s a fair chance that they’ll stay much longer—often two minutes or more, which is an eternity on the web.
• You need them to advertise your product and or service in the right way. Selecting high-quality, relevant keywords for your advertising campaign can help you reach the customers you want when you want.
• You need to achieve the best site linking to your site. If you can persuade people to link to you using important keywords in the anchor text, then you will likely benefit from higher rankings for those important keywords (find the world’s best Chardonnays on chardonnayfans.com rather than chardonnayfans.com only).

Three key points

You should bear in mind that there are 3 key points to remember, that every keyword has to comply with:

It should be relevant

In determining good keywords, it is important that keywords must be relevant to the information that the target audience is looking for. Because you ideally are part of the target group you should be able to imagine what terms they would use to find certain products. Inspiration for relevant keywords you can gain by going to the search engine and using the alphabet soup feature by typing in your keyword and discovering what comes out.

It has to be unique

If you want your business to achieve a high ranking in search results, it is recommended to avoid generic keywords as much as possible. Therefore you should think carefully about unique terms that are specific to your niche to attract the audience you target.

It does not copy competition’s keywords

Look carefully at what keywords your competitors are using. By using different variations of words, or choosing a good combination of search terms, you can differentiate from competing businesses. It is difficult, if not impossible, to finish high in the search results when you use exactly the same keywords as your competitors.

How do people generally search?

Obviously, there are many reasons why people surf the internet, but they could be summed up in these three main types of search:

• Search for information, for example, to study or work;
• to do research for a purchase that one intends to do;
• Search for the best site to make the purchase. These are the people who already know exactly what they want and are ready to buy.

Let’s get to work!

In six steps you are going to compile a list of terms that your target audience is looking for. Please note that the people in your audience might be ready to buy (or to get your business, or to download anything or to subscribe, you get the picture).

Step 1: Brainstorm on a list of relevant search terms

Grab a sheet of a paper, whiteboard or open a document and just go out of your mind making a list of keywords and combinations thereof. Naturally, use your product name, company name, trade name, and so on. But try to force yourself to look beyond this. Do it possibly together with a colleague or partner. As an indication, you should be able to come up with at least 30 terms.

Step 2: Think as your audience thinks

Not everyone will be looking straight at your product or service. It may also be that they type their problem as a search term. Or describe a solution to their problem, without mentioning your product or service. Expand your list with these kinds of terms. (For example, “leak-pools ‘or’ algae prevention” instead of a name)

Tip: Take a look at synonyms, spelling, plurals, merged words or just with hyphens (e-commerce or eCommerce). Also, descriptive words are often used to describe the problem as the solution (fast, slow, cheap, luxury, etc.).

Step 3: Look at your website statistics to terms where you are now found!

Do not forget to take a look at your website statistics. Google Analytics will support you for this.

In your statistics, you see the words and combinations of words, pages or posts where the current visitors enter your site. Make sure these keywords are on your list in any case as you can use them as an inspiration to come up with expansions and new words. Please note that you are now being discovered by these words, but it does not necessarily mean they are the best keywords.

Step 4: Check the keywords against your competition

You should now search in Google and type in the keywords that you have collected so far. Visit the first three sites (which are the highest) that your keyword triggers. Then view the page source in the menu: click View – Source to enter or choose Right ‘View Source’.

Look at the title tag, keyword tag, description tag and header tags. They will look something like this: <TITLE> Web Hosting ….., make your own website and cheap domain names </ TITLE>. Take a look at <META NAME = “DESCRIPTION” …> <META NAME = “KEYWORDS” …> and <H1>

Again, use these words as inspiration. Please note that keywords ranked this high do not necessarily mean that they are good.

Step 5: Jaaxy’s Keyword Tool

Indispensable to your keyword research is to check them for their expected value in a keyword research tool.

Such a tool will enable you to enter your keywords, which you have listed so far and you will then see variants to your keywords. Use this tool to find additional keywords. But more importantly, you can check out how many searches a month it gets and how strong the competition is, which is exactly what you need to know from this tool.

Although there are many tools available, my recommendation here is to use Jaaxy. Click here to go to my personal Jaaxy review and see what it can do for you, its advantages and why it is the world’s best keyword research tool.

Step 6: Edit and combine your list

After all this, you now should have quite a long list of keywords. Because this is brainstorming, there is probably not much logic in it yet. You may want to delete some words and other words may need to be combined. Try then to put the list in order of importance, where Jaaxy results will help you determine priorities easily.

Conclusion

Keyword research is a fundamental part of any campaign, if not the most important part. Without the right keywords, you will probably not generate the traffic needed to successfully monetize your website.

Using the right keyword research tool is imperative; follow my above number one recommendation and you are guaranteed high rankings.

Please feel free to leave comments or ask any questions and I will be back to you within 24 hours.