Where do I go from here with my keyword research?

[janc]

Hi all.

I'm wondering if I can get some assistance on keyword research.

I've set out a step-by-step process for myself about how to go about finding a list of keywords we want to optimise our site for. I've used a guide over at http://www.seonick.net/keyword-research to break it down step-by-step.

After using Keyword Tool and Ubersuggest to get a list of keyword suggestions with their local monthly search volumes, I now have an Excel file with  1663 suggestions (yikes!).

It is at this point where I am not 100% sure of what to do with this data & how to figure out which of these terms we should optimise for. I know not to go purely based on the local monthly search volume because that is not based on organic searches.

So how would I go about condensing this into a list of keyword suggestions to target for optimising?

Thanks in advance for assistance on this.

[mblsolutions]

Hi Janc

I think it would depend on four main things

• how competitive each keyword was compared to the potential traffic
• how far along the buyer journey the keyword was - you want to be in a mix pf places so that you can build up a brand reputation. It is most important to be at the end stage of the buying process so that you are more likely to convert people as they will just be looking at price/service at that stage. For example compare the term "mountain bike" to "men's red mountain bike for sale" your second customer is ready to buy having done most of the research they now know what they want.
• how the words will fit into your current site structure
• the profit margin/the importance to your business that the keyword relates to

We always start off with a handful of keywords (or group of keywords) for ourselves and our clients and then when we feel that they are working well for us we expand the selection from there.

For example say you had a website selling stationary, when you look at your sales you find that when somebody buys a pencil from your site they always also buy a pencil sharpener, pencil case and ruler to go with them so that they have the set. The traffic and competition might be both middle of the road but the profit margin and the importance to your business is high.

You also might notice that although there is a lot of potential traffic around the keyword phrase 'buy staples' and the competition is low you find that these customer only buy staples and the margin for your business is low.

You would first of all start with the keywords related to the pencil and then expand from there, knowing that the keywords that you were targeting had the most positive affect on your business and led to longer term sales and growth rather than a one off sale.

Hope the above explanation helps, if you have any further questions please let me know and I'll see if I can explain it better!

[janc]

Thank you for your reply!

To put what I've done into an example:

Our service is selling document storage to companies in the UK. So I searched for the term 'Document Storage' in the keyword tool and after also putting it into Ubersuggest, I have this enormous list of keyword suggestions.

I'm now trying to condense these into terms worth optimising for for when we launch our new website.

But it is actually this process that I am trying to figure out. How do I know which of these terms (which I'm now filtering into the ones relevant to our service) have lower competition and are easier to rank for, whilst still being searched for by people?

Like I said, I understand that the local monthly searches and competition columns don't give a true estimation on how competitive these terms are.

I'm sorry if I'm not putting across my problem well enough! But as you can see I'm at the very initial stage of figuring out just what keywords we want to try to rank for.

[mblsolutions]

Hi

That's ok no problem. To be honest with regards to the levels of competition for a term we just use the keyword tool and look at the LMS and competition, even though it's not 100% accurate we find that it gives us a 'ballpark' to work from.

Once we have narrowed down the field a bit we also use Google trends to help see the patterns of how people search and use different keywords through out the year. This can lead to some useful topics for targeted blogs through out the year to make the most of the keywords.

I did a quick bit of Google research and came across this site http://www.verticalleap.co.uk/blog/seo-traffic-predictions-how-to-calculate-keyword-value/ which may be of some help to you as well.

Good Luck!

[HeatherBakerTopLine]

Hi Janc

It's a really frustrating process, but totally worth doing: go through every keyword in your spreadsheet, line by line, and ask yourself: "will people use this keyword if they are looking to buy document storage?" if the answer is yes, mark the keyword '1' in a new column.

Then, sort your list by the new column, so that all the keywords with '1' next to them are together- my bet is your keyword list will now be at a more manageable level (probably close to 100).

Then, Google every single one of your keywords to check if the search results are similar companies to yours. For example, if you google "drawers" and the results are all to do with women's underwear, you can cross this off your list as you will struggle to compete for rankings with those results. Or if you google "office document storage solutions" and three competitors are all ranked on Page 1, you know that this is probably a worthwhile keyword to target.

By this stage, your list will be much shorter and  much more targeted. Then, look at competition and local monthly searches - based on these, choose your top 30-40 keywords to focus on. Optimise for those high value keywords first - it's a big job. Then move on to the next tranche.

I hope this helps - I am learning all about managing capacity in SEO.

Kind regards

Heather

[janc]

Heather,

Thank you for your detailed reply.

I'll follow your advice in a two step process:

1. Is the keyword relevant to us?

then

2. Does the keyword bring up similar companies in Google after a search?

[EGOL]

So how would I go about condensing this into a list of keyword suggestions to target for optimising?

If this was my list I would have it in excel and sort it by volume.

Then I would look at it, starting from the top to see which ones are most important for the success of my business, focusing on the ones that represent service areas, products and strategic information categories.

Then on small-post it notes I would write these most important phrases.

Then on my planning wall I would draw a vertical axis and horizontal axis.  The vertical axis is labeled "profitable", the horitzontal labled "sharable".  Then each post-it gets placed on the graph according to how profitable and sharable the topic is for my busness.

The ones that are stick closest to the top right are attacked first with great vigor, the ones that I can produce kickass content for are attacked next with great vigor, then keep working at all of those that are very important.

After you are done there the remainder can be blog posts for the next several years.

This is just one way to think of content categories.

At my office the ones that get done first are the ones that are the most fun to do - because that is where the best work is produced.

[KeriMorgret]

Something like this would make an awesome post for YouMoz.