SEO Keyword Research

Knowing SEO goes well beyond just entering meta title and keyword data into a page, and it’s more than targeting the keywords in your titles, tags and text. The most important step is one often overlooked, and that’s making sure you choose your keywords properly from the beginning.

To do that, your SEO keyword research is crucial. It doesn’t have to be as time-consuming as it sounds. Here are simple steps to researching the right SEO keywords before you post:

• First of all, come up with your post’s topic or draft title.
• Research the phrase you think is best to see how many searches are conducted. The Overture Keyword Selector Tool is a nice free resource.
• Start with the shortest version of the keyword phrase, and slowly add words. For instance, if you want to post about SEO keyword research, you might enter keyword and see what people are searching for related to that. You might see an alternative title and keyword phrase to target that is better.
• Look for synonyms to be sure you’re targeting the best phrase. Perhaps instead of SEO keyword research, more people search for search engine phrase research. Play with various alternatives to see what most people enter in search.
• Now stop. Is there one phrase that is dramatically more searched than another? Maybe you should avoid it. That might sound strange, but it is better to rank number one for a phrases searched by hundreds than to rank 30th for a term searched by thousands.
• Check out the competition. Go to Google and search for your keyword phrase. What’s the competition? Is there too much great information matching that keyword phrase? If so, perhaps you should try another and see what the competition is there.

And you’re done! This really can just take a few minutes before you post, especially once you practice and get into the habit of doing your SEO keyword research before you post. And it can make a big difference in the number of search referrals and page views your site gets.