Earlier this month, I was assigned a video keyword research task at work for our Dreidel-Palooza event. In celebration of Hanukkah this year, Yeshiva University students, alumni, faculty, and staff will attempt to break the Guinness Book of World Record for most dreidels spun at one time.<\/p>\n
What are keywords and why are they important? <\/strong> How do you effectively research and generate keywords for your website?<\/strong> Part 1) Create your initial list of keywords.<\/strong> Do not assume that your users are already searching for your keywords. Users could be searching with other synonyms or different terms. Look into the keywords list of similar successful websites. Ask yourself these questions: What is your target audience is? What products or services do you sell? What is the purpose of your website\/campaign? How many other similar sites are competing for the same keywords? How strong or successful are the rankings of your competitors’ sites? Knowing these answers will give you a good indication of how competitive your keyword choices are.<\/p>\n Part 2) Finalize your list of keywords.<\/strong> A spreadsheet is a great way to start. List the keyword\/phrase with their conversion rate, search volume, competition rate and the type of keyword (long, medium or short tail). Repetition of keywords are fine if they describe different contents in your webpages. Do not try to trick search engines with keywords that do not have any relevancy in your content. Highlight the terms that applies to your website\/campaign. Let keywords guide your overall content strategy. Successful keyword research will help you see what users are searching for and how search engine crawls your website. Use this keyword research knowledge to provide a better user experience and that will hopefully reward you with higher rankings and increase traffic.<\/p>\n Part 3) Adding keywords to your website.<\/strong> After you have narrowed down your list, you should have 20 to 30 focused keywords. If the initial research was done correctly, the list should already appear in your content. Current best practices for SEO keywords are 3 to 4 related terms per page. Title tags, meta description tags, headings, alt text, anchor and navigational links are some examples of where your keywords should already be.<\/p>\n Popular Keyword Research Tools:<\/strong> Google External Keyword Tool<\/a><\/p>\n Google Website Optimizer<\/a><\/p>\n KeywordSpy<\/a><\/p>\n Spyfu<\/a><\/p>\n Wordstream Keyword Tool<\/a> \u2013 Bing’s Keyword Tool<\/p>\n Wordtracker<\/a><\/p>\n
\nKeywords are the actual terms and\/or phrases people type into search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo!, etc.). Internet users are usually doing two things when they are online: 1) looking for information or 2) seeking to purchase something.<\/em> It is important to generate appropriate keywords because they can help improve rankings of your website on the search result list. The bad and overused keywords can trigger search engines to mark your website as spam.<\/p>\n
\nKeyword selection is fundamental to the success of search engine optimization. Keyword research is not a quick 30 minute process, but rather a long-term and ongoing effort. Once the keyword research process is complete, it is not the end! The process should be repeated with the knowledge accumulated from previous researches, optimization results, and traffic results in mind. Effective research can be broken down into three parts.<\/p>\n
\nGoogle Wonder Wheel<\/a> \u2013 Google’s Visual Representation of Grouped Keywords<\/p>\n