Keyword Research Is Essential for Getting Traffic to Your Website

Of all the ways of getting traffic to your website, keyword research is probably the most essential step in the process. It’s often an overlooked step, as many people think they already have their keywords picked out. This is one of the sloppiest errors of all time.

Keyword research is essential because the slightest variation in your keyword phrasing can drastically change the amount of traffic you gain from it. The altering of one word for a synonymous one can change the traffic from several thousand visitors a day to one or two. As you can see, this makes all the difference in the world in getting traffic to your website.

There are several ways available to do keyword research. The first that I would like to mention is what is called “organic keyword research.” The idea behind this is to type a keyword into a search engine. By observing the appearance of the results page, much can be surmised about the market of this keyword.

For one thing, the number of pages that the search engine found can be used to determine the level of competition for this keyword. This is an important consideration in getting traffic to your website. If there are too many pages, it may not be worth pursuing. However, this isn’t the point to decide that.

Another feature to look at is how many sponsored ads are being shown on the results page. The more sponsored ads there are on the page, the more money there is to make from this keyword. While everything is still abstract, the number of sponsored ads may counteract the deterrence that the number of pages may cause.

After that, you start adding additional words to your original keyword to create a keyphrase. The added keywords should on some level clarify the original keyword. For instance, let’s say your original keyword was “heat packs.” You could add a word such as “shoulder” or “knee” to this keyword. Then you would perform a search on this keyword.

How have the results changed? Have the number of pages decreased significantly? Are there still sponsored ads? Again, the comparison between the number of sponsored ads and the total pages can help you determine if going into business with this keyword is worth pursuing. It may mean that you need to add another keyword, or change this one, and repeat the process until you reach a comfortable level of competition versus opportunity.

The other option is to use automated tools for your research. Wordtracker is a frequently used one, as is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Here again, there is a certain level of risk assessment. Most people would think that the more searches that are made on a given keyword, the more lucrative the keyword is to use. Experience has shown many people that this isn’t the way it works. What the number of searches ultimately shows is the level of competition. I will leave you to guess which keywords you should actually look at.