If someone told you that in a few hours time you could learn exactly what people in your niche or industry are willing to buy from you, and exactly what will send them enthusiastically to your website, would you be interested in knowing what they're talking about?
Would you be surprised to know that obtaining this knowledge is easy and free and yet few small or home based business owners even know this information exists or where to find it.
Whether you're just starting your business or you've been at it for a while a key task you should spend a bit of time on weekly is keyword research. If you've done any keyword research you've probably thought of it in terms of finding the right keyword phrases for each page of your website. This is important because the right keyword phrases, placed correctly in the title, description and keyword metatags of your website, and in the actual written content of each page, can vastly improve your visibility to the search engines. That means higher ranking when people search for those keywords and a bigger chance that those people will find their way to your site.
But keyword research has several other uses that are just as important.
1) Getting inside your prospect's head
When you find that thousands of people are searching for a keyword phrase that tells you that lots of people want information on that topic. Many of my clients try keyword phrases that they think their potential clients would use only to be surprised to find that few people are searching for those terms. A phrase may mean a lot to you, but your prospect may type in a simple question instead because they want to solve a problem. For example, instead of "branding" a small business owner might search for "marketing ideas for a small business." That person may need branding, but that's not what they search for.
You'll also discover if your keyword phrase is too broad. For example, instead of "coaches" you might look try "life coaches in New York."
If you're thinking of creating a product or service, the fact that many people are searching for a certain keyword phrase can also help you understand what problems people are experiencing that you may be able to solve. Any "how to" phrases that are getting lots of searches can provide you with a great foundation for a product name.
2) Gaining key information about your competitors.
When, through your keyword research, you find what you think is a great keyword phrase to use on your website or for an article, look and see what websites come up when you do a search for that term. Go to those websites. Do they offer similar products and services to yours or are they completed different? If so, that may mean that people wanting your type of service are not actually using that keyword phrase even though it seems like a good one.
You can also look at your competitors keywords. Hover over the content, right click and scroll down to "View Source". This will allow you to view what keywords they've used. Would some of those same phrases work for you or are they unrelated to what you do? This can give you some great insights and some clues as to what keyword phrases you need to research.
3) Use keyword optimized articles to get noticed.
Have you found a good keyword phrase for a specific niche in your business that would make a great article? If so, use that phrase in the title and content of the article and submit it to article directories and put it on your blog. The search engines love fresh content on specific topics and often will put fresh keyword optimized articles on the first page of search results for that keyword.
Whether your small business if focused mostly offline or online, keyword research needs to be an ongoing part of your strategy. If you ignore it, your competition will move ahead of you quicky.
