Key Phrase Research

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

It is exactly what it says it is - the research of 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 - we want to do the job properly and correctly.

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. It is based on the company, market, website 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 still 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.

Common Research Mistakes

In this example, we will assume we have a range of Star Wars accessories to sell. Let's 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.
keyphrase research results

Looks like our top term is 'star wars', so let's 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.

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

Google Search Results

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?

Let's add the word Lego to our search.
star wars lego results

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, three word key terms usually bring lots 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.

When 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 for a content writer to optimise for.