Why keyword research is important

As a Drupal site owner, you have the opportunity to position yourself as the best site available for the keywords people are searching for.

You're an expert in your field, so of course you know many of the keywords that people use to find your products and services. But, are you sure you know them all?

A few years ago Tom, a friend of mine, hired me to do SEO for his high-end landscaping firm. His company designs and installs yards, trees, retaining walls, and so on, outside million dollar homes in the hill country near Austin, Texas. We sat down in an early morning meeting and he said, "Ben, the right keyword is landscaping. I know it so there's no reason to do all this research. Don't waste your time and my money. Just do landscaping and that's that". Being the thorough person that I am, I did the keyword research anyway. Guess what I found?

The number one phrase in his business was landscaping. However, a very close second was landscaper. And, while landscaping had dozens of competitors—some of them were very well entrenched—there were only a handful of competitors showing up for landscaper.

The next day, I called Tom and told him what I found. "You know what?" he said, "Now that you mention it, many of our customers do refer to us as landscapers—'I need a landscaper. Call a landscaper' ".

So, we started his campaign targeting the keyword landscaper. Because there was so little competition, he ranked in the top five in a matter of weeks and was number one in Google within two months. He was dominating half the search traffic within two months! The leads were rolling in so we switched to the keyword landscaping. It took longer—about three months—for him to break into the top ten. By that time, he had so many inquiries, he hardly even noticed.

The lesson here is three-fold: