The Key to Succeeding with Keyword Research

Keyword Research success

If you are always writing content for the web, like most of us do, then you must think keywords research. This is because keywords are what will help you target your web content to the right audience and therefore, the success of your marketing content will depend to a large extent on the keywords/phrases you use in your content.

This is why SEOs (search engine optimizers) and web content marketers spend most of their time researching keywords every time they create marketing content. But that being said, for keyword research to be truly successful there is a secret ingredient that many content marketers over look. It’s not enough to use some powerful keyword tool for your keyword research (this may be free like the Google keyword tool, the bing keyword research tool and Traffic Travis or paid). If this essential ingredient is missing your keyword research may not give the results you desire.

I'm sure you will be wondering, what is this essential keyword research ingredient?

To simply answer that question let me quickly that this essential ingredient is YOUR MIND!

Yes, I mean your mind as you can see from the following points. But let me say this is all about how you apply your mind and knowledge of your target market, in evaluating your keyword research results before making a decision on which and how to use them!

Keyword Research Tools

Many content marketers, when doing keyword research focus most of their attention on the search volume and the competition as returned by the keyword tool they are using. However, you must understand that keyword research is not an exact science. Keyword research is supposed to be market research, which has to do more with real life rather than just figures. This means that the figures you receive from your keyword research should be taken as a relative value.

If you therefore base your keyword ranking research simply on the figures your keyword tool returns, your results will be far from what you desired. Remember your web content is basically focused on getting the right people to your site and then guiding them through your site until they help you achieve your Most Wanted Response (MWR)!

Recommended: Niche Site Duel 2.0 – Putting My Cards on the Table!

So,

How Do Your Mind or Business Knowledge Help with Your Keyword Research Success?

1. Understand The Relationship Between Keywords

When you depend solely on how high or low a keyword is in picking your target keywords without applying your business knowledge, this cannot help your site. Most keywords/phrases are useless even when they have high search results. Many others are not TRUE searches by your target audience (potential customers) but research keywords being used by other SEOs. In fact, no keyword tool will be able to tell you this except you use your mind and your knowledge of the target market.

2. How Best To Use Your Keywords

Every market has its own nuances. When doing keyword research the business context must be considered. Your keyword tool cannot do this for you. You need your mind and your business knowledge to decide on which keywords to use or not to use. If your business knowledge is limited in a particular market, your ability to make the right decision on how best to use your target keywords will be limited. This is one reason why you should focus on areas you have some knowledge in. This way, you will be able to apply your understanding of the circumstances to good use.

3. Structuring Your Keywords

One of the purposes of your keyword research is to help you in structuring your website. But the keyword tool cannot directly do this for you. You may use any keyword tool to run your research but the final decision of how to use this to structure the navigational flow of your site depend on you. There are so many things to consider here. Please note that Google loves a logically arranged site structure. So, by using your keywords based on your knowledge of the market, you can give Google what it wants.

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4. Research or Money (Buyer) Keywords?

This is another area most keyword research tools cannot help you with. A keyword may be high in search volume and low in competition but deciding to use it based on that criteria alone may not be a good decision. You’ll need your knowledge of the market to decide, is this keyword really valuable? Are people simply using it to look for more information or are they in buying mode? How much will the keyword impact on your profitability?

It is only the knowledge of your target market and applying your mind to analyze the keywords that can help you effectively answer these questions.

5. What Are They Really Searching For?

Another thing which keyword tools cannot directly tell you is the intent of the prospect. Though this is similar to #4 above however, you can understand this from carefully studying the keyword structure. Many people know about long tail keywords but only a few truly know that every long tail keyword phrase has 3 parts to it. These are the head, the modifier and the tail.

While the keyword tool can give you the string of words which you term as long tail keywords, it is your responsibility to “unravel” the intent of the searcher. You can easily do this by understanding the modifier in the long tail keyword string.

For example, the keyword: “marketing tactics online” is different from “marketing tactics critic online.” The focus of these two is not the same. Someone searching with the first phrase is definitely looking for tactics to market your product/service online while the one using the second phrase is not looking for marketing tactics but something else! Also someone searching for “discounts” or “offers” is definitely different from someone who uses the modifier “luxury!”

Marketing takeaway

Keyword tools are very important if you must succeed with your search engine optimization strategies. But most importantly, you need your mind and business knowledge of the target market if you must know which of the keywords to use and how to effectively use them. This is the only guarantee that your marketing content will achieve your most wanted response!

As usual I love to hear your views. How do you carry out your keyword research? Is there any keyword research tool that can really help you with areas discussed in this article? Share with us in your comment below.

7 Comments
  1. Hey man,
    I can’t agree more on everything you’ve shared here. Keyword research is really very important if you want to be getting any traffic from the search engines which is very important for any content marketer.

    Yea, its really very advisable to be using your mind whenever you’re performing keyword research. Those KWR tools are pieces of scripts but you’re a human so, while you’re using those tools, you should also use your mind as a human to analyse certain things because, those tools will still be lacking some things that you can discover if you put your mind on it.

    A very awesome article as always man, thanks for sharing and enjoy your weekend.

  2. Hello Chadrack

    When I first decided to have a website, I asked my web developers to do a bit of keyword research for me.

    They suggested that my primary keyword focus should be the niche phrase ‘website copywriting services’.

    The number of local (UK) searches was around 200 (neither too competitive nor too little traffic). So I thought great – go with it.

    It wasn’t until my site went live that I realised this figure meant nothing. Once I started regularly checking my search ranking for this keyword term, I soon realized I was inflating the numbers myself.

    PS Is CommentLuv not working (parsing errors)?

    • @Kevin Carlton,

      LOL! That is what I call real keyword research! You have just given a clear reason why you need some understanding of how to do SEO as webmaster. Leaving that aspect of your online in marketing in the hands of a third party could most times turn out very unpleasant. I have realized that most of the keyword results we are working with are not what the customer is really using to locate us. The best way to get what others are using to locate you is by looking at your website stats.

  3. Informative tips Chadrack, I truly learned from your posts. I am an SEO Copywriter and I mainly use Google Keyword External Tool (which is going to be upgraded as Google Keyword Planner very soon). Do you think using this free tool is not enough for my online activities? Any other best tool from your mind, please advice. Thanks 🙂

    • @Vincent,

      Thanks for your comment. For information sake, Google keyword tool is no more. Keyword Planner has taken its place a few days ago!

      Now, if Google’s keyword tool is just enough for your keyword research efforts, I’ll say it depends on what your target is. As an SEO Copywriter I’m sure you doing this at enterprise level which means you deal with different clients at different times.

      If that is the case, I’ll suggest you get some paid tool in conjunction with the Google keyword tool. This will help you with bigger research needs and also you will be able to get things done right on time. However, if you don’t want to invest in such a tool for now you can download a free copy of a good one here: http://bit.ly/16F1J1s.

      But. like I mentioned in the post all of these tools can only make a meaning to you if you apply your knowledge of the market to it. No tool can do all the work for you.

      Regards.

  4. Hi! Quick question that’s totally off topic. Do you know how to make your site mobile friendly?
    My blog looks weird when browsing from my iphone4. I’m trying
    to find a template or plugin that might be able to fix this problem.
    If you have any suggestions, please share. Many thanks!

    Leave a Reply to Chadrack Cancel reply

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