Keyword Research – What Is It?

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword Research is an essential part of any marketing plan. Whether you are building a blog, writing articles, posting videos, or even posting notes on Facebook, without at least some basic knowledge of keyword research, you will miss out on a lot of traffic.

A keyword is a word or phrase that you are going to optimize your content for, and hope to rank for on the search engines. Finding a good keyword to use can be rather difficult if you don’t know how to go about it.

Do your Keyword Research & don’t be a Know-It-All!

Many new marketers make the mistake of assuming they already know what will work best. Without putting any time into keyword research, their marketing efforts usually prove to be futile. Take for example the key word “Home Business.” This particular keyword phrase has hundreds of millions of pages competing for their page to rank highest on Google. If you were to write a blog post optimized for that keyword, you would find it nearly impossible to find your content on the first 100 pages of Google, let alone on the very first page.

This is where keyword research comes into play.

Since it would be so hard to rank for the simple keyword “Home Business” you should consider using what is a referred to as a long tailed keyword. Something that is tailored to fit your niche as well as increase your chance of having your content rank on the first page of Google. A phrase such as “Home Business Starter Kit for Newbies” would have less competition and therefor would be easier to get your content ranked higher in the organic search results.

Strategy = Success

You shouldn’t just shoot from the hip and make up random keywords. With a good keyword tool, you can find out just how many times a certain keyword is being viewed each day, how many sites are competing for that keyword, and a number of other factors. There are some free tools you can use, as well as paid tools. Generally the paid keyword research tools are more robust and will give you more information allowing you to pick better keywords that will net more views for your content.

There is a surprising number of marketers who have no idea about keyword research and how it could benefit their business. It is a rather simple concept that can elevate your business greatly. However, there is a learning curve, especially if you go at it on your own. Keyword research isn’t that hard, just a little time consuming, but well worth it!

Category: SEO Tips