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Key Phrase Research

'What is key phrase research?' The answer is simple:

Naturally it is researching key phrases.

"But what do I get for my money and why does it take a few days before I see anything?"

Once again the answer is straight forward, "Because we want to do the job correctly and properly."

Many companies will sub contract this work out to a well known company in the US which provides an excel workbook with several sheets of data and a few hundred key phrases to choose from.

Our research is different; based on the company, market, web site and facts taken from internet resources.

A combination of these elements provides the best phrases. Taking the easy option and running an automated query in a well known tool may convince a customer but you will be found wanting several months later, when despite the SEO work and link building, there is still little converting to traffic.

Key phrase research is a skill which combines understanding with experience and is not simply about crunching data.

For just £49 +VAT we can provide you with an insightful list of great key phrases for your projects.

Common Research Mistakes

In this example, we will assume we have a range of Star Wars accessories to sell. Lets say we have some dress up clothes, light sabres, DVDs and Lego.

First port of call, the Adwords Keyword Tool. We enter our generic seed term of 'star wars' and look at the results.

Looks like our top term is 'star wars', so lets optimise our site for the key phrase 'star wars'. After a quick reality check, I realise there is not much chance of a top ten ranking for such a generic term. At least i can use PPC to pull in the customers. Job done.

Lets put 'star wars' into Google and see all of the ads I will be competing with.

Excellent news, I think I may have dropped on a winner here. A very popular key phrase with many monthly searches but no ads on Google. What a result.

Hang on a minute, why are there no ads?
The answer is obvious, if you put yourself into the shoes of the user. Ask yourself this question. What would you type in if you wanted to buy Star Wars Lego for your son for a present?

Lets add the word Lego to our search.

As you can see, full of adverts, lots of competition. Yes, I agree this was an easy example to prove the point. During my many years experience, 3 word key terms usually bring a lot of traffic and some conversions. They are difficult to rank in the top few positions and can take a lot of time and effort to achieve the ranking position.
What we have found, is that 4 word and 5 word key phrases provide the right balance between traffic and conversion.
Finding thousands of 4 and 5 word key terms will usually result in good targeted traffic.

If we are looking to promote our star wars lego range, we would optimise for the generic term of 'star wars lego' but we would also be looking to add a 'qualifier' and point this to the corresponding section.

Our website will be structured to contain a section specifically for 'figures'. Thus creating a search term 'star wars lego figures'. This is now a much more targeted key phrase which will only bring visitors who are interested in 'star wars lego figures'.

We now have one of our key phrases to optimise for.