How to Conduct Keyword Research to Boost Website Performance

July 15th 2013 | By Steve Grant

Using the right keywords in your website content and blogs can help your business in two ways. Firstly it can help your website climb the rankings for the key terms your audience is searching for. And secondly, it can help drive traffic to your website by capturing new visitors who are using search engines with a relevant keyword or query.

Using the right keywords is essential, but how do you go about working out what they are? Here are some points to help with research:

1. Start by brainstorming all the keywords and phrases that describe your products or services. What words do your customers use to describe what you offer?
2. Use website reporting software such as Google Analytics to show which keywords are currently bringing visitors to your site, and converting them.
3. Use Google Suggest to come up with popular alternative phrases to the ones you’ve already thought of.
4. Research which keywords your high ranking competitors are using.
5. Take the results of 1-4 and feed them into a free tool such as the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to find out which keywords people really are using. This tool allows you to refine your search to specific countries, examine search volumes globally and locally and see competition levels. You can also use the tool to examine the keywords being used on any particular web page, including those of competitors. You should shortlist all those keywords that have lower competition but higher search volumes.

Once you’ve come up with your shortlist you’ll need to check your current rankings for these particular keywords so that as you work on your SEO strategy you can see how well you are doing.

The final stage is to consider how you can accommodate using the selected keywords. It may be possible to insert keywords into content on existing website pages or you may need to work on building new web pages. A website copywriter can help to formulate new content and weave in keywords too so that the copy reads well for humans but works well in the search engines.

A Note About Long Tail Keywords

The most popular search terms do not necessarily lead to visits to a website. There could be thousands of searches for ‘solicitors’ but the conversion rate would be low. In contrast, there will be far fewer searches for ‘good contract solicitors in Kent’, but the conversion rate would be higher because the query is far more specific.

Research shows that people are typing longer search terms and queries into search engines and whilst there may be fewer people searching for them, they convert at a much better rate because they are so specific.

With so many websites competing for head keywords, it can pay to make a better strategy for ranking higher for longer tail keywords rather than ranking low for head keywords.

Keyword research is hugely beneficial in helping your website and / or blog rank higher for search terms that can also lead to more traffic from prospective customers. It needs to be done regularly rather than as a one off process. Professional expertise and an ongoing commitment is a must. Contact the team at Figment if you’d like to learn more about ongoing keyword and search engine optimisation.