I. Identifying Keyword Opportunities

Why Keywords Are Your Foundation

The way people shop has changed in the age of search engines. People are increasingly using search engines to help them find the products or services they are looking for. To do this, they type keywords into sites like Google, YouTube or Bing. The engines then rank sites related to these keywords based on relevance and authority.

Whether you know it or not, your website is already targeting certain keywords. Search engines extract these keywords from your on-page text, headers, page titles, inbound links and other factors. However, you might not have made a conscious decision to target those keywords. Even if you did, you might not be monitoring your rankings or have a sense of how good your chances are of ranking well for those keywords.

Choosing the right keywords is often the difference between getting found in search and not getting found. As a result, keyword research is the foundation of an effective online marketing strategy.

There are several variables that impact keyword selection. These variables can be divided into two groupings -primary selection variables and prioritization variables.

Primary Selection of Keywords

It is important to understand what aspects of keywords make them important to your business.  The different variables or characteristics of a keyword help determine whether the keywords are worth consideration in your SEO strategy. Only if keywords pass the primary selection tests can they be subjected to the prioritization variable tests. Considerations for primary keyword selection are:

• Ensuring keyword terms/phrases have sufficient search volumes
• Ensuring the chosen keyword terms are relevant
• Assessing levels of relative competition

If a search term does not satisfy the relevancy criterion, it should not be considered.

Prioritization of Keywords

Two things to consider when prioritizing keywords are:

• Competitive advantage for the product/services
• Profitability of the products/services associated with the keywords

Prior to entering the vetting process, a Keyword Opportunity List should be generated.