Keyword research secrets
This week’s vlog went for 20 minutes because there was a lot to cover. I decided to cover in detail the way I research keywords. This was prompted by a question from a viewer.
Crowd source seed phrases
Often we’re too close to our own business and what we think people would search formight be way off the mark. The classic case of this was the airline industry in the early days of search marketing. They all tried to rank for “low priced airfares”, when of course people were searching for “cheap flights”. Sometimes it’s hard to ask others about your keywords without influencing their answer. Here is the question I ask. “If you were looking for products or services like mine, what would you type into Google?” The question is keyword free. You can even ask this question on Twitter and facebook.
Select seed phrases
Once you have some diverse phrases, say 5 to 10 depending on the nature of your business, head across to Google insights for search and use the tool as I do in the video. Look at the related & breakout phrases that appear. Are there trends developing? Make sure there is a consistency of definition in the related phrase to your seed phrase otherwise search volume is probably weak as I demonstrate with the “how to present” phrase.
Pick 5 rank for hundreds
Settle on around five to rank for, depending on the size and diverse range of content on your site. By ranking well for five and producing quality content around these five, you will end up ranking for hundreds of phrases you would not have even thought of. The plumber example I use in the video now ranks for solar energy related phrases. We didn’t target them though. We used our five key phrases as points of reference for our ranking activities. The work we did around that made sure that content was well signposted. Combine SEO structural best practice with quality content updates and every piece of content you add will rank.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
