{"id":935,"date":"2012-07-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-29T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/clurra\/keyword-research\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T22:15:46","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T22:15:46","slug":"keyword-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/clurra\/keyword-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Keyword research"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>It all begins with words typed into a search box.<\/p>\n

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Keyword research is one of the most important, valuable, and high return activities in the search marketing field. Ranking for the \u201cright\u201d keywords can make or break your website. Through the detective work of puzzling out your market\u2019s keyword demand, you not only learn which terms and phrases to target with SEO, but also learn more about your customers as a whole.It\u2019s not always about getting visitors to your site, but about getting the right kind of visitors<\/strong>. The usefulness of this intelligence cannot be overstated \u2013 with keyword research you can predict shifts in demand, respond to changing market conditions, and produce the products, services, and content that web searchers are already actively seeking. In the history of marketing, there has never been such a low barrier to entry in understanding the motivations of consumers in virtually every niche.<\/div>\n
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How much is a keyword worth to your website? If you own an online shoe store, do you make more sales from visitors searching for \u201cbrown shoes\u201d or \u201cblack boots?\u201d The keywords visitors type into search engines are often available to webmasters, and keyword research tools allow us to find this information. However, those tools cannot show us directly how valuable it is to receive traffic from those searches. To understand the value of a keyword, we need to understand our own websites, make some hypotheses, test, and repeat \u2013 the classic web marketing formula.<\/p>\n

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<\/td>\nA basic process for assessing a keyword\u2019s value:<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
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Ask yourself\u2026<\/h4>\n

Is the keyword relevant to your website\u2019s content? Will searchers find what they are looking on your site when they search using these keywords? Will they be happy with what they find? Will this traffic result in financial rewards or other organizational goals? If the answer to all of these questions is a clear \u201cYes!\u201d, proceed\u2026<\/p>\n

Search for the term\/phrase in the major engines<\/h4>\n

Understanding which websites already rank for your keyword gives you valuable insight into the competition, and also how hard it will be to rank for the given term. Are there search advertisements running along the top and right-hand side of the organic results? Typically, many search ads means a high value keyword, and multiple search ads above the organic results often means a highly lucrative and directly conversion-prone keyword.<\/p>\n

Buy a sample campaign for the keyword at Google AdWords and\/or Bing Adcenter<\/h4>\n

If your website doesn\u2019t rank for the keyword, you can nonetheless buy \u201ctest\u201d traffic to see how well it converts. In Google Adwords, choose \u201cexact match\u201d and point the traffic to the relevant page on your website. Track impressions and conversion rate over the course of at least 2-300 clicks.<\/p>\n

Using the data you\u2019ve collected, determine the exact value of each keyword.<\/h4>\n

Those 5,000 impressions in 24 hours could generate a click-through rate of between 18-36% with a #1 ranking (see the Slingshot SEO study1-2 million dollars per year<\/strong>. No wonder businesses love search marketing!<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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Even the best estimates of value fall flat against the hands-on process of optimizing and calculating ROI. Search Engine Optimization involves constant testing, experimenting and improvement. Remember, even though SEO is typically one of the highest return marketing investments, measuring success is still critical to the process.<\/div>\n
Going back to our online shoe store example, it would be great to rank #1 for the keyword \u201cshoes\u201d \u2013 or would it?It\u2019s wonderful to deal with keywords that have 5,000 searches a day, or even 500 searches a day, but in reality, these \u201cpopular\u201d search terms actually make up less than 30% of the searches performed on the web. The remaining 70% lie in what\u2019s called the \u201clong tail\u201d of search. The long tail contains hundreds of millions of unique searches that might be conducted a few times in any given day, but, when taken together, they comprise the majority of the world\u2019s demand for information through search engines.Another lesson search marketers have learned is that long tail keywords often convert better, because they catch people later in the buying\/conversion cycle. A person searching for \u201cshoes\u201d is probably browsing, and not ready to buy. On the other hand, someone searching for \u201cbest price on Air Jordan size 12\u2033 practically has their wallet out!Understanding the search demand curve is critical. To the right we\u2019ve included a sample keyword demand curve, illustrating the small number of queries sending larger amounts of traffic alongside the volume of less-searched terms and phrases that bring the bulk of our search referrals.<\/div>\n
\"Long \"Ignore<\/div>\n
Google\u2019s AdWords Keyword Tool provides suggested keyword and volume data.<\/div>\n
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Resources<\/h3>\n

Where do we get all of this knowledge about keyword demand and keyword referrals? From research sources like these listed here:<\/p>\n

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  • Google Adwords\u2019 Keyword Tool<\/li>\n
  • Google Insights for Search<\/li>\n
  • Google Trends Keyword Demand Prediction<\/li>\n
  • Microsoft Advertising Intelligence<\/li>\n
  • Wordtracker\u2019s Free Basic Keyword Demand<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Google\u2019s AdWords Keyword tool is a common starting point for SEO keyword research. It not only suggests keywords and provides estimated search volume, but also predicts the cost of running paid campaigns for these terms. To determine volume for a particular keyword, be sure to set the Match Type to [Exact] and look under Local Monthly Searches. Remember that these represent total searches. Depending on your ranking and click-through rate, the actual number of visitors you achieve for these keywords will usually be much lower.Other sources for keyword information exist, as do tools with more advanced data. The SEOmoz blog category on Keyword Research is an excellent place to start.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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    What are my chances of success?<\/h3>\n

    In order to know which keywords to target, it\u2019s essential to not only understand the demand<\/strong> for a given term or phrase, but also the work required<\/strong> to achieve those rankings. If big brands take the top 10 results and you\u2019re just starting out on the web, the uphill battle for rankings can take years of effort. This is why it\u2019s essential to understand keyword difficulty.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    Different tools around the web help provide this information. One of these, SEOmoz\u2019s own Keyword Analysis Tool does a good job collecting all of these metrics and providing a comparative score for any given search term or phrase.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    It all begins with words typed into a search box. Keyword research is one of the most important, valuable, and high return activities in the search marketing field. Ranking for the \u201cright\u201d keywords can make or break your website. Through the detective work of puzzling out your market\u2019s keyword demand, you not only learn which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":435,"featured_media":975,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,383,275,4,5],"tags":[384],"class_list":["post-935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogging-seo","category-empower-network","category-keyword-research","category-news-misc","category-personal-development","category-work-at-home","tag-keyword-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/clurra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/clurra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/clurra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/clurra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/435"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/clurra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=935"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/clurra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1025,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/clurra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935\/revisions\/1025"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/clurra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/clurra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/clurra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/clurra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}