How to develop your

keyword strategy

Getting your website

recognised by both

search engines and

customers remains

vital for companies.

Laurence Knopf investigates how to developing your keyword

strategy can help increase the amount of traffic your site receives


To gain reasonable levels of high quality traffic to your website via search engines, you need to understand what your potential customers are searching for and find natural ways to use those search terms—keywords—within your website.

Thinking up keywords is not necessarily the biggest challenge for business website owners. Let’s face it—you know your business and can probably think of lots of words to describe what you do and what you sell. The question is whether the keywords you think of are actually going to deliver you more customers or clients.

To do this you need to know how much traffic each keyword or keyphrase receives, have a methodology for valuing those words and a way of confirming that the intention of people using those words is to engage with a business like yours.

Finding keywords

The research phase starts with a list of potential words and phrases—a ‘seed’ list. To begin with, write out the phrases that most effectively describe your industry, sector, business, products and services. It may be helpful to look at which ones key competitors are currently using. Take a look at your website analytics and list the keywords you already have that regularly bring meaningful traffic. Try typing the beginning of phrases into Google to see which automated suggestions it brings up.

Once you have your seed list you can then examine each word or phrase on your list more closely using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool at https://adwords.google.co.uk/o/Targeting/Explorer.

Using the Google keyword tool

Sign in via a Google account and copy and paste the keywords in their original form, selecting ‘Exact Match’ and the country you are looking to target, deciding whether you want to examine results for static or mobile devices. Look at the monthly local searches for that region, and download the results as a .CSV file to view in Microsoft Excel.

Do not worry if your list is now reduced to very few viable results. Re-input this reduced list into the Google tool and the system will start displaying different and slightly more targeted terms.  Repeat this a few times and you should have a decent list. If you have different types of services or products you may want to separate these for the research process—you will find that you get more target variations by doing this.

Keyword value

The easiest way to choose the best keywords is to balance them with volume and value. Obviously if a keyword or phrase has a high volume and is still very relevant to your business it is likely to be useful. But if you also look at the cost-per-click (CPC)—from the Google AdWords advertising platform—this can tell you if advertisers are willing to pay for them. If they are, then that is a good indication that they are good keywords for sales and/or enquiries.

Thinking about the long tail

It has been estimated that 30 percent of searches are for ‘short’ words and phrases, while 70 percent are for ‘long tailed keyphrases’ for more detailed, individual searches. It therefore pays to consider them within your overall approach. An example of a short search is ‘printers’ and the long tail is ‘brochure printers in Newcastle’. The short version will have more volume but possibly be more competitive and less specific, whilst the long version will have less volume but may be a better converter if it matches your business more closely.

Raw value

If you look at the CPC from the Google AdWords advertising platform, this can tell you if advertisers who want to appear for these words are willing to pay for them. If they are, then that is a good indication that they are good keywords for sales and/or enquiries.

Another simple option is to look at which keywords other businesses are frequently using in the Google ads that are appearing above or at the side of relevant results. It is possible, but not certain, that they have a higher conversion rate.

User intention and testing keywords

Another method to determine user intention and conversion value is to create a short-lived live experiment. Find a keyword with a reasonable search volume using the ‘Exact Match’ setting in Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Then start a Google AdWords campaign directing visitors to the best matching page within your website. Measure what actually happens with your website. Track it for between 2,000 and 3,000 clicks; how many page impressions does the campaign generate? How many visitors actually arrive at your site and how does the conversion rate then behave? This exercise can help you better understand the likely value of each visitor. Useful applications for measuring performance include Google’s ‘AdWords’ Keyword Estimator’, ‘Insight for Search’ and ‘Trends Keyword Demand Prediction’.

Also, see which types of sites Google tends to show for a particular search. You will find some searches naturally bring up more information based sites at the top of the listings, whilst some bring up more sales based sites—pick and choose based on your own goals for the keyword or phrase you are optimising.    

Why content is critical

Having established your viable list, you need to develop content which reflects both your brand values and guides Google to understand why you are relevant for those searches. Your copy needs to be well-written, in the English language, without spelling or serious grammatical errors. Consider what users are looking for—if your website is not a good match for what the person searching really wanted to find, they will simply ‘bounce’ by clicking right away from it within seconds of arrival.
 
It is also important to debunk the ‘density myth’. It will not help your website if it is plastered with keywords which have been inserted simply for the sake of it, or worse still, shoe-horned into poorly written copy. It will help your website more if it is easy to understand and engaging; interesting and full of relevant information, using only cohesive, coherent and professional language; an added bonus of this is the increased capture of long tailed searches.

You should also consider what you want visitors to do when they visit. Your customers need to rapidly understand exactly how your business can help them, how to buy products or services, how to ask for more information, and so on. Clear calls to action are a must, even if you do not have an e-commerce enabled website, it is not enough to have a contact page and hope that customers will know what to do next.

Finally, as well as providing you with appropriate content, investing in good search engine optimisation (SEO) helps to further maximise the return from each viable keyword. The higher your position in search results, the more traffic you are likely to receive as the vast majority of Google users only choose results from the very first page. The research and content generation does require at least an investment of time but it is well worth the effort.