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As of early 2006, there are almost 1 billion internet users on earth who make roughly the same number of daily searches. (Please be careful with the number of daily searches, there are quite different numbers, but whatever the actual number is, it’s huge!)
As e-marketers, we want to understand what people are looking for when they search the web. Keyword research can help anticipate trends. Google Zeitgeist is a fun source of aggregated internet search information, and all major search engines publish similar data. Keyword search data provides surprises and insights as the internet reveals undisguised preferences as surfers feel unobserved.
By examining keywords people are searching for, we can understand whether we actually have a market, and if we do have a market, how difficult it will be to exploit. The ratio between the number of searches for a particular keyword and the competing pages for that keyword in the major search engine indexes shows how effective it will be to use those keywords on a website.
It is important that strategic keywords consist of at least two words so that your website visitors who come from the search engines are targeted. The more words in a keyword phrase, the easier it becomes to be at the top of the list. In general, the process of finding the right keywords is to first find the most general terms that represent the site’s business, and then break down these general terms into more specific ones. Each page of your website must then be optimized for the most specific term that characterizes that page. Whenever possible, favor product names over other available keywords.
The number of keywords in your keyword basket determines the minimum number of web pages your website must have. It’s a good idea to have no more than 5 main keywords for each page. When launching a new website, it makes sense to be as specific as possible when choosing keywords, later on more general and therefore more competitive keywords can be chosen.
These are the general principles of keyword research and they work. However, they do not guarantee the success of a website business. Here are some additional factors:
1. Consider the quality of websites in a specific industry. There are certain industries that have poor overall website quality. Quality here refers to all local factors (technology, coding standards, content). In these industries, getting to the top of the list and making money will be easy if you can develop a workable income model.
2. English is the predominant language on the Internet. Keyword research can and should be done in multiple languages to maximize visibility.
3. The overall e-readiness of an industry or business unit. Business models on the Internet are diverse. In some areas, simple lead generation may be the most effective and profitable way. Some lines of business may just not work.
4. The goal of keyword-rich content is to rank high in major search engines. However, search engines can only “see” these keywords if our website is fully crawlable, for example if we use search engine friendly technologies.
5. If a website ranks high in the major search engines for relevant keywords, it will attract significant traffic. Traffic on the web is money, but that’s only true when converting potential customers into paying customers, when converting traffic into clicks on ads, and so on. This opens the discussion to entirely different areas such as website stickiness and usability. A website needs to convert or it will not be successful.
In short, keyword research is undoubtedly a very important and also fascinating field of internet marketing that is unraveling the greatness of the internet. But it’s one of several key ingredients. Keyword research can be used as a feasibility study and forecasting technique for a new website project and increase traffic potential for an existing one, but it’s not the only factor that improves a website’s visibility on the Internet. When other must-have onsite and offsite factors are also present, visibility drives traffic. However, traffic only brings money if a website has a good conversion rate.
Thanks to Svend Nelson | #Keyword #Research #Considerations #Limitations #Successful #Internet #Marketing
