Don’t Make These 6 Keyword Research Mistakes
Keyword research is one of the most important factors in the success of your SEO or PPC campaign. When done properly, it will improve both the quantity and the quality of your website traffic. But if you make mistakes when conducting your keyword research, you could be shooting yourself in the foot.
Which mistakes should you avoid? Here are the 6 most common keyword research mistakes.
1. Targeting keywords that are too broad- Let’s say you own a company that sells tables. As nice as it’d be to rank #1 for the term “tables,” that’s not happening in this lifetime. Instead, you need to go after long-tail keywords like “glass top dining tables” or “contemporary dining tables.” Focused keywords like this will give you a better chance of ranking well and receiving targeted traffic to your website.
2. Choosing keywords with no search volume- Long-tail keywords will be the bread and butter of your website traffic. However, there is a fine line between a good long-tail phrase and a keyword that no one ever searches for. If a keyword gets no search volume, don’t waste your time targeting it.
3. Using jargon your customers don’t know- I think it’s always a good idea to get outside help with your keyword research. Here’s why: you might be too familiar with your business. In other words, you could end up using keywords filled with industry jargon that your customers don’t know about. Ask your friends and customers the types of terms they would search for if looking for your products. These are the types of phrases you should be using.
4. Not studying the competition- Competition analysis is an important yet often overlooked part of keyword research. You need to be aware of which keywords your competition is targeting. This will help you come up with the best strategy for surpassing them in the search rankings. It will also help you identify the keyword research mistakes your competitors are making so you can take capitalize on them.
5. Ignoring seasonal phrases- Almost every industry has various seasonal keywords that get high search volume for short periods each year. Many companies overlook them because they might not conduct their keyword research during the time of year when that phrase is hot, so it gets forgotten. But these seasonal phrases pose a huge opportunity for companies to increase their web presence during peak times of the year. Google Trends is a great tool for analyzing seasonal data for various keywords.
6. Thinking keyword research is a one-time action- Perhaps the biggest keyword research mistake you can make is to only research terms at the launch of your site. Keyword research is something you should be doing on a regular basis. Search trends are always changing, and new relevant keywords are always popping up. Don’t get left behind by sticking with the keywords you chose 3 years ago. Stay on the cutting edge of your industry by always conducting keyword research.
Have you made any of these keyword research mistakes?
December 5th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Great summary! There is another approach – choose keywords according to user’s interest(s). Have a look at interestmatrix.com
December 5th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
I have done number 2 and number 6 before, but I don’t anymore of course. I can give you a good example of number 3. If you do a Google query for sem Houston you will see that I rank number one in the natural results. At first this seems great but sem is industry jargon for search engine marketing. Unfortunately this is not common knowledge for the average person so gets barely if any traffic.
December 7th, 2008 at 8:12 am
I think number six is very important and and also the one that is most neglected out of these sex points. There was a time when I didnt think to update my targeting keywords on sites that had seen the limelight but were dying out. But eventually I was determined to see these sites perform again – and it was’nt exactly hard or a lot of work. Stick up to date with the keyword trends in your market!
December 8th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Another tool you can use for No. 5 in monitoring seasonal trends, is the Time Machine feature of KeywordSpy.
April 26th, 2009 at 6:48 am
A good way to get keyword suggestions is to use Google Adwords keyword tool. First, you need an Adwords account. Then start a new PPC campaign for your site and use the keyword tool to find not only keywords that people have searched on but also their relative popularities.