Keyword Research is one of the most important pieces of an effective Search Engine Optimization strategy. Selecting the right keywords will have a great influence in several aspects such as brand image, merchandising, site traffic, conversion rate and search engine ranks.
The first step that the Plum Tree Group takes is to conduct a comprehensive market research on your industry, including market structure and segmentation, target costumers, competitors, product brands, product trends, and social media analysis. Once we come up with a list of hundreds of keywords, we evaluate them according to the following criteria:
Search volume
This metric indicates the number of people searching for a given keyword. Although this information is pulled from Google, the numbers are not completely accurate, and therefore it is important to weigh them relatively to the search volume of the other keywords in our list.
Relevancy
This refers to the degree that the keyword connects with your goals. In other words, how would a searcher feel if they searched for this term and found your site? Would your site satisfy the searcher’s need? Once we have determined the most relevant keywords, specific landing pages should be developed for them.
Competition
The competition level represents the number of sites targeting a given keyword. There are two primary sources to determine this level: the number of sites competing for the keyword advertising space on Pay Per Click networks, and the number of sites optimized for the term.
Final Keyword Evaluation
The most valuable keywords will strike a balance between search volume, relevancy and competition. There are three combinations that hold a high value:
Higher competitiveness and higher relevancy: Sometimes there is no choice but to fight for a competitive term. If this is the case, we have to make sure that the term has a high degree of relevancy.
Higher search volume, lower competition and higher relevancy: Keywords that have high search popularity, are targeted by a reasonable number of competitors, and are related to your site conversion goals represent the ideal balance and must be on our keyword list.
Lower search volume and higher relevancy: Even if the number of people searching for the term is small, the people that do execute this query are more likely to land on your site and ultimately convert.
Tags: competition, keyword research, search engine optimization
