The Most Common Keyword Research Mistakes
Posted 10th January 2012 at 08:13 PM by UMS
Tags google, keyword research, seo
Time and time again I see the same questions and misconceptions come up again and again regarding keyword research.
Keyword research is like building the foundations for your house. Get it wrong and the whole house can come tumbling down.
So let's look at what the biggest mistakes are.
Most people use Google Adwords Keyword Tool to start their research and it is a good place to start, so long as you use it properly.
The most common error by far is to base your keyword research on the broad match results (this is the default).
I see many people complain that their site is ranked #1 for a keyword that gets 20000 searches a month, but they are getting very little traffic.
In almost all cases, the problem was that the monthly searches was based on the broad match result, which is generally very different to the exact match result (the one you want to pay attention to).
I'm not going to go into all the details why you shouldn't look at the broad match results, apart from saying that broad match results include so many related and vaguely related topics that you won't be optimizing your site for.
Bottom line, ALWAYS use the exact match figures.
The next most common mistake is thinking that Google Adwords Keyword Tool (GAKT) gives you the competition rating to rank for a particular keyword.
GAKT doesn't tell you anything to do with how hard it will be to rank for a particular keyword.
The competition column refers to competition bidding on Adwords campaigns.
The only time this information is useful is if you are building an Adsense site. Generally you want a good level of Adwords competition as it will mean more targeted Adsense ads on your site.
To get an idea of the difficultly in ranking a keyword, you need to look at the strength of the top 10 results.
Using a free tool like Traffic Travis will assist you with this task.
Lastly, one metric that gets overlooked very frequently are the search trends. Remember that GAKT gives you a monthly figure averaged over the last 12 months.
Using Google Insights will show you the search trends for a particular keyword. It maybe a seasonal keyword, eg: Valentines Day Gifts, or it may simply be a keyword that is on a downward trend.
What you really want to look for is a keyword with a steady or upwards search trend.
Hope you find these tips useful.
Cheers
Peter
Keyword research is like building the foundations for your house. Get it wrong and the whole house can come tumbling down.
So let's look at what the biggest mistakes are.
Most people use Google Adwords Keyword Tool to start their research and it is a good place to start, so long as you use it properly.
The most common error by far is to base your keyword research on the broad match results (this is the default).
I see many people complain that their site is ranked #1 for a keyword that gets 20000 searches a month, but they are getting very little traffic.
In almost all cases, the problem was that the monthly searches was based on the broad match result, which is generally very different to the exact match result (the one you want to pay attention to).
I'm not going to go into all the details why you shouldn't look at the broad match results, apart from saying that broad match results include so many related and vaguely related topics that you won't be optimizing your site for.
Bottom line, ALWAYS use the exact match figures.
The next most common mistake is thinking that Google Adwords Keyword Tool (GAKT) gives you the competition rating to rank for a particular keyword.
GAKT doesn't tell you anything to do with how hard it will be to rank for a particular keyword.
The competition column refers to competition bidding on Adwords campaigns.
The only time this information is useful is if you are building an Adsense site. Generally you want a good level of Adwords competition as it will mean more targeted Adsense ads on your site.
To get an idea of the difficultly in ranking a keyword, you need to look at the strength of the top 10 results.
Using a free tool like Traffic Travis will assist you with this task.
Lastly, one metric that gets overlooked very frequently are the search trends. Remember that GAKT gives you a monthly figure averaged over the last 12 months.
Using Google Insights will show you the search trends for a particular keyword. It maybe a seasonal keyword, eg: Valentines Day Gifts, or it may simply be a keyword that is on a downward trend.
What you really want to look for is a keyword with a steady or upwards search trend.
Hope you find these tips useful.
Cheers
Peter
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