Keyword Research Tools
The next step the keyword research campaign for your WordPress website is to start digging through your preferred keyword research software.
Both Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery have features that allow you to search for these core terms.
Wordtracker
In WordTracker, core term research is the first step when you start a new project. The left side of the screen lets you search for “related keywords”.
Type in a keyword here and the results below give words that appear to be closely related to what you were looking for.
Keyword Discovery
If you use Keyword Discovery, go to advanced search and select Related or Fuzzy. Both of these tools should give you additional lists of core terms.
When using either of these programs, use some of the core terms you already found and scan through those results for additional terms that you hadn’t thought of or added to your list. Many of the core terms will end up producing the same, or similar, results, but you’ll often find one or two (or perhaps more) new core terms with each search.
Server logs provide keywords already people use to find your site and show low volume/high converting phrases. You can also use the keyword research tools provided by both Google and Yahoo to find good core terms.
Keyword Research Tip: Try Google Suggest, Google Sets and Google Web Search using the title operator.
Successful Search Processes — Sorting Core Terms
With any of these research tools, sometimes you get junk — other times you find treasure — excellent core terms. Just keep sifting and sorting and eventually you will find relevant core terms you can use to build your SEO strategy.
Note: Core terms research is an ongoing process. Just keep adding new words and phases to your core term spreadsheet. You can never find too many keywords.
Search Volume
Search volume is how often the phrase is searched daily, monthly or yearly. Before determining what your most important core terms are use Wordtracker or Keyword discovery to find the search volume of your core terms.
Those with the highest search volume should probably be given more importance over those with low search volume, provided they are also relevant.
Target Audience
Some core terms may get fewer searches but, if ranked well, would produce a higher number of targeted visitors, resulting in more sales. Any core term that targets your audience better than others should be considered important.
Profit
Some core terms may be able to bring you a higher profit margin than others.
Meet Demand
Just because a product or service is not selling well now, doesn’t mean you can’t generate high demand by being better positioned on the search engines for your primary keyword terms.
However, your ability to meet demand should also play into your decision in choosing which core terms are most important. If you build an effective WordPress website that has been optimized with targeted keywords, and lots of folks visit it, and most of them make the decision to push the big, red, BUY NOW button — Can you deliver?
Build your SEO strategy to match your capacity to deliver your product or service. Converting a visitor to a buyer, only to deliver a bad-buying experience, is the worst outcome imaginable. Unhappy customers now have dozens of review sites on which to complain about a bad experience when purchasing your product or service. Make sure you are ready for success before you launch an aggressive marketing campaign.
Finding Search Phrases
Search phrases differ from core terms in that every search phrase is a variation on the core term itself. Finding search phrases is what tools like WordTracker and Keyword Discovery do best.
- These tools give you all the various search phrases that contain the words in the selected core term.
- Make sure to search for both plurals and singulars
- Don’t spend too much time analyzing each phrase
- Add any term that, at a quick glance, appears relevant and then remove it later in the sorting process.
- Depending on your keywords, a core-term search may produce results rating from 0 to 1000 keyword phrases
Keyword phrase search is easiest, but time consuming part of the research process. Rushing the process will lead to problems later on. Based on experience, attention paid now will avoid additional, unnecessary work later.
Selecting High ROI Search Phrases
Avoid single-word keywords
Single-word queries generally produce the highest volume of searches,
But, can result in the lowest amount of targeted traffic.
Target Multi-Word Phrases
More people search using two and three-word search queries in greater numbers than single words.
Most searches for single-words end up being re-performed as multiple word queries as searchers find ways to target their searches more effectively.
Highly-targeted, multiple-word queries tend to produce more qualified traffic than the single-word queries.
Proper selection and targeting of these phrases result in greater traffic volume and higher conversion rate.
Target Phrases with Measurable Search Volume
Keyword phrases that have no search volume, no matter how targeted won’t do anything to increase business or sales.
Using search volume and additional competitive matrix information, determine which keywords will be your primary phrases to produce largest amount of targeted traffic
Target Multiple Phrase Variations
Every keyword phrase will have multiple variations that should accompany it in the page. Such variations are plurals, singulars and stemmed variations such as “ing,” “ed,” etc. In many cases you can also swap word order.
Localize Phrases When Necessary
If you are targeting an audience specific to your geographic location, be sure to localize your phrases accordingly. To do this you can place city, county, state or other local references such as city districts or zip codes before or after each phrase.
By localizing your phrases you will get targeted traffic to your site and eliminate the need to deal with emails and phone calls from searchers who are not in your geographical location, and therefore not your target audience.
Sorting and Selecting Keywords
No one knows your business better that you. Even if you hire an SEO strategist, YOU have to be involved in the sorting process. That being said it is a best practice to get other knowledgeable stakeholders to provide their input as well.
Review the results produced from a core term search in WordTracker or Keyword Discovery. This selection process requires some skill, knowledge and persistence — sort through the keywords to find those that will support your marketing campaign —eliminate the rest. Begin the sort by entering the search phrases in a spreadsheet organized by core term; then carefully consider the appropriateness of each keyword phrase.
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