Keyword Research
The film, the "Six degrees of Separation" proposes the theory that you can be connected to any person in the world by a chain of 6 acquaintences.
In 1967, Stanley Milgram an American sociologist wanted to test this theory which he called "the small-world problem." He randomly selected people in the mid-West to send packages to a stranger located in Massachusetts. The sender would be given a package with a recipient's name, occupation, and general location and they were told to send the package to a person they knew who they thought was most likely to know the recipient personally. That person would do the same, until the package was personally delivered to its target recipient. The result was that it took between 5 to 7 jumps to reach the target person. Hence the term, six degrees of separation was coined.
The internet has created a world where there is one degree of separation from you to anyone else who sells or wants to buy products or services on the internet.
However, the key to connecting or finding the right person relies on choosing the right keyword phrases. This is an important part of website design planning that should be integrated with business goals, product development and marketing.
What is a keyword phrase?
A keyword phrase is a set of words. as opposed to one word that a searcher enters into a search engine to look for a product or service.
Choosing the right keywords is there a right or wrong answer ?
Every business is different and using online research tools can be useful but brainstorming or doing your own research cannot be overlooked as an alternative. Choosing a general keyword phrase, is more likely to have higher number of searches but the conversion rate is significantly lower than if you were working on a targetted keyword phrase.
You can go to https://adwords.google.com.au/select/KeywordToolExternal to find out how popular your keyword phrases are.
Keyword tools such as this, only generate results based on the keywords you put in, ie a seed key word. Another source of seed keywords, to discover other keyword phrases is to use your website statistics.
Use your chosen keywords to implement SEO techniques into your website or in Google Adword campaign.
The beauty of experimenting with keyword phrases is using your website statistics to determine if there is a market for a new product or to read website statistics and determine new products or markets. Until you launch your first optimized website, you are unable to see the traffic from natural search results and therefore unable to make an assessment on future strategies to improve those results.
Other Considerations
The age of your domain, and page rank of your domain is a major consideration in search engine optimisation. You may find that the keyword phrases you have chosen to compete on in natural search results are out of your reach because the keyword phrases are (1) dominated by websites with high page ranks (2) very popular (3) too general
The solution is to modify your keyword phrase with a locality name and see how well you go for that keyword phrase. ie. instead of a two word keyword phrase opt, for a three word keyword phrase or to try another keyword phrase. Or you should focus on link building.
Unless, the keyword phrase you are targetting is definitely the top keyword phrase that represents your business and exactly the phrase that a searcher would type in to find your product or service, it is best not to get obsessed with one keyword phrase to the detriment of other worthwhile key phrases, that are just as likely to generate traffic and business.
See Also Search Engine Myths
See SEO Consultants