How To Get Started With Keyword Research

Keyword research is one of those terms you hear floating around on the internet as being the holy grail of tasks when it comes to positioning your website and business online. Research the right keywords, they say, and you’ll be at the top of the Google food chain. But what exactly is keyword research – and more importantly, how the heck do you get started?

Keyword research is the first to step to promoting any website online. It’s the first to step to Search Engine Optimization, to Google Adwords, to creating good content… and it should be the first step to building a serious blog.

The definition of Keyword Research

Keyword research is essentially the process of finding relevant search keywords that describe your business website, or project. When you type anything into a search engine, you are typing in a search term, or keyword.

When you hit enter, Google returns a listing of websites that match that particular keyword, but not necessarily all of the websites about that entire subject. The reason for that is Google wants to give you very specific information about what your looking for, and it wants you to find it in your first search. Usually the more broad you are with your keyword, the more broad your results. The more specific your keyword, yep.. you guessed it.. the more specific your results, and usually.. the less results you get. 

Ever had to do multiple searches for something about the same subject? Chances are you’re searching for something specific.

It all starts with a phrase that describes your business

Let’s say you have a website and you want to generate Google search traffic. Just having it there isn’t going to get traffic…unless you’re Justin Bieber. It starts with popping these keywords into the Google Keyword Tool, which is one of the best tools on the internet for understanding exactly what keywords matter.

All Google essentially does is create an index of websites based on keywords it has in its directory. Like a phone book. So when you search for a term it gives you a listing of sites that match that search term.

Google “Mike Ziarko” and you’ll get this website, my Facebook profile, my LinkedIn profile, etc. Somewhere in Google’s mammoth phone book there’s a “Mike Ziarko” keyword followed by a listing of websites that pertain to that keyword. Now researching “Mike Ziarko” for a website called Mike Ziarko Musing isn’t really needed, because guess what.. Google already gave me the top spots for my name. If I had a more common name, like John Smith.. it wouldn’t be so easy because chances are there are tons of J.S.’s out there competing for that term.

But what if I wanted to be in the top spot of Google for the keyword “Entrepreneurship” instead? I wouldn’t be able to because there are too many competing websites out there for that word. But could I possibly rank in Google for a keyword term related to the word ‘entrepreneurship’? Let’s find out. You can follow this example by opening a second tab and performing the same steps.

Checking for competition and search volume

Take your handy Google Keyword Tool, pop in “Entrepreneurship” and see what keywords and related keywords come out. Related keywords are words that are similar to the main keyword you’ve searched for. Google does this to give you ideas about other possible search terms that people use to search for the same subject.

When you see the results, click on Global Monthly Searches to sort the search volumes from highest to lowest. Notice “entrepreneurship” deosn’t even come out on top but “small business” does. “Entrepreneurship” comes up at #3 with a mere 1 million searches per month. Now take a look at ‘competition’ column. If those blocks are completely filled your facing heavy competition from other websites who are ranking for those words.

So let’s try a different keyword term because clearly “entrepreneurship” is a bit competitive and quite frankly its a bit too broad anyway. So let’s try “online entrepreneurship” and see what we get. The reason I choose this word is because it has less competition as compared to other keywords and its a related keyword to “entrepreneurship”.

So I follow the same step – pop in the search term and get a listing of results. Sort again by Month Search Volume. Where did the term go? It’s way at the bottom of the list. As it turns out it’s not a very popular search term (about 5400 searches per month) and yet competition is fairly high. This tells me it’s not the best term that I want to rank for, since monthly search volume is low compared to other (it’s ok) and the competition is high. But I may want to keep this term handy for further research.

When competition is low and search volume is high = you’re golden.

This is where the research part of keyword research comes into play. Scroll up the list and you’ll find a term that doesn’t have high competition but lots of searches. It’s “entrepreneurship women” with 14000 searches per month. So if I was building a small business blog about women’s entrepreneurship this would be a great keyword to use.

Going back to the online entrepreneurship example, that keyword isn’t the best term to use because it doesn’t describe my website very well. The great thing about the tool is that it lets you generate an infinite amount of searches to get ideas for keywords to use. So rinse and repeat the above exercise until you have about 5-7 keyword search terms that have a high search volume and low competition. This will give you the best chance of ranking for those keywords and getting natural organic search traffic.

Once you have your list of terms, you’re ready to do On-site search engine optimization and off-site search engine optimization, which is a subject for another post. If you’d like to go in-depth and get further resources on keyword research and SEO in general check out Alex Whalley’s excellent blog The Keyword Research and Niche Marketing Blog. Alex also just released a free eBook on the subject, and if its anything like his knowledge about keyword research it’s certain to be a real winner.

How have you done keyword research for your blogs and businesses, what sort of strategies and tools have worked for you? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below.