A couple weeks back I posted an article on 5 Important SEO Factors. This week I would like to delve into the first one a little deeper and help folks understand the process of Keyword Analysis and how it relates to SEO.

In order for you to formulate a quality search engine optimization strategy you must first and foremost establish a list of good keywords. Without this list of relevant keywords for your particular business or industry you are essentially planning to fail the rest of the way. It’s a must, so let’s get started…

A good starting point is to create a list of keywords that are being used to search for products or services related to your website content, as well as your competitors. What I recommend is to create an Excel spreadsheet with as many terms and phrases as you can think of to describe your business and the products or services you sell. Now that you have a list of keywords and phrases describing how YOU see your business; the next step is to expand on that list with the keywords and phrases used by the folks searching for your products and services on the web.

There are several ways to capture this data but the one I like to start with is the Google Keyword Tool. This is the best free tool out there IMO, and the only tool that will give you search volumes for a given keyword or phrase. There are other tools such as Wordtracker and Wordz that offer very good keyword tools, but they are not free. I like free.

On the main page of the Google Keyword Tool you can either enter a keyword or phrase manually, or you can enter a URL and have the tool extract relevant keywords and phrases from the website. This is a good way to spy on your competition and compare the top keywords and phrases the tool extracts for their website against the list you created. In any event, take that list you created and enter each of the keywords or phrases into the tool and click search. What I like to do is sort the results by Global or Local Monthly Searches so you have the big dogs right there at the top of the list. Local Monthly Searches give you the search volume for the location and language you can select in the advanced search options, and Global Monthly searches is the search volume from all Google.com and the entire Google search network.

Now, look at the list and pick out the most relevant keywords or phrases that have the highest search volume and put those into your Excel spreadsheet with the Global and Local Monthly Searches. You can also peruse the list and pick out some good niche keywords that might not have as much search volume but might be the diamond in the rough that drives quality targeted traffic to your site. Repeat this process for all the keywords and phrases in your Excel spreadsheet. Don’t forget about long tail keywords; those that are specific to your business but may have less search volume. A couple examples might be:

• Open your swimming pool and save
• Swimming pool chemicals at reduced prices
• Heat your swimming pool and extend the season

It is important to understand the appropriateness of these terms, because they are specific terms and may not generate huge volumes of traffic; they are quite often your most relevant search terms. Highly relevant search terms are the ones that generate the most business.

You should have compiled a fairly good list of all the relevant terms associated with your business, along with an indication of the search volumes for each of them. This is very useful data. We will now go ahead and pick the top 10 to 15 phrases out of that list that have the highest monthly search volume and are most relevant, or have a niche for your products or services. I use the Local Monthly Searches as this data is more relevant for most of the work I’ve done. This could be different for you, especially if you are doing business globally.

Now that we have our 10 to 15 most relevant keywords or phrases we need to figure out exactly how tough the road to ranking is going to be for each of them. I use the SEOChat and SEOLogs keyword difficulty tools for this. Again there are many other free and commercial alternatives, this is just my preference. I will usually use both tools and take the average of the two. This will get you pretty close to reality. Enter the difficulty rating into your spreadsheet.

The next step is to take each of those 10 to 15 keywords or phrases and perform a search in Google, Yahoo and Bing. For each search you are going to want to record a couple data points; how many of the top 20 SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) have an exact match of the phrase or keyword in their title tag, and where are you listed for that term, if at all? I know this requires quite a bit of effort, but it will give you a good indication of what keywords will give you quick results and which ones you will need to work at over the next months. You will be happy you did it.

You have tackled the hard part and are better for it.

Using all the data points you recorded, pick a maximum of 3 keywords or phrases that will give you the best chance to rank on the SERPs and get busy writing content using them. Remember, search engines love content, so the more you write the better your chances are to rank. As you write new material and post it on a blog, or a newsletter section on your website, you will increase your chances of ranking for your chosen keywords. Also remember to incorporate the keywords into your website design (title tags, heading tags, alt tags, anchor text etc).

That’s all for this post. I would like to point out that this is by no means a comprehensive, all encompassing guide to keyword analysis, but is meant to help you get the ball rolling. There is a great deal more to explore in the realm of keywords and how they are an integral part of SEO, and I hope to be able to share that with you in the coming weeks and months.

I hope you found this to be helpful and as always, all comments both positive and negative are welcome.

Cheers,

Kevin