- Drupal 6 Search Engine Optimization
- Ben Finklea
- 1442字
- 2021-04-01 14:01:55
How to pick the best keywords
By now, you know the goals of your SEO campaign—branding, lead generation, sales transactions, and so on. Now, it's time to dig into the data. There are infinite number of ways to go about doing keyword research. I'm going to take you step-by-step through one of them. It's not necessarily the right or the best way but it's a good, solid technique that I've used many times to produce excellent results.
You need one more thing—a spreadsheet. Whether you use Excel, Numbers, or Google Docs, the easiest way to keep track of a list of keywords is in a huge spreadsheet. It doesn't have to be complicated, just a simple list of keywords and some key data about each one. Something like this:
Keyword Research
Tip
Google's list
Google will tempt you into adding all the keywords to a list that they'll keep for you and then you can download when you're done. I avoid this for two reasons. First, they only save the keyword, not how many searches it brought so the data is incomplete. Second, it can sometimes take me a few hours or even days to finish my keyword research. Google doesn't save the data for that long so I might have to start all over if I forgot to export it. It's better to just build your own spreadsheet from the get go.
The scenario
Let's say that I'm doing keyword research for a large computer manufacturer called Big Computers Unlimited. They sell computers all over the U.S. from their web site and a few select retail outlets. They recently acquired a smaller competitor called Intergalactic Gaming that specialized in high-end gaming PCs. The purpose of this campaign is to create more online sales of the specialized line of entertainment computers by increasing traffic from the search engines. While Big Computers spends millions each year on search marketing, this campaign is a trial to test the waters so they've only allocated a few thousand dollars over the course of three months.
How to gather a keywords list
Carry out the following steps to gather a keywords list:
- Visit https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. You'll start with the most basic keyword that you can think of, for your industry, like pc, and click Get keyword ideas; as shown in the following screenshot:
- It's a good idea to adjust your match type to phrase or even exact since SEO typically focuses on a single, specific keyword at a time.
Note
Broad, Phrase, Exact: What do they mean? Say you want the term tennis shoe. Broad Match is the outcome of any possible search that contains your keywords, including searches that had other words in them, plural versions of your keywords, and even synonyms. For example: shoes for tennis, tennis shoes, or tennis sneaker would match. Phrase Match can include other terms as long as it includes the exact phrase you've specified. For example: nike tennis shoes fits but shoes for tennis would not. Exact Match means that the phrase must match exactly. For example: tennis shoes and nothing else.
- Click on Approx Avg Search Volume to sort the list of keywords that was generated by searching for the term pc. This shows you the most searched keywords at the top.
- Looks daunting, doesn't it? Don't worry, you're just gathering ideas for now. Notice that there are a lot of phrases that have words that are completely off-topic, like free or repair? Well it's time to filter those out. Click the Filter my results link, located just below the keyword box. Enter one negative keyword per line, as shown in the following screenshot:
- Click on Get keyword ideas. Now the list is a bit cleaner. Nice!
- Notice that there are quite a few phrases related to games, like pc games, pc game, and gaming pc. They might seem like great choices but stop to consider that someone who is looking for pc games is not the same as someone who is looking to buy a high-end games pc. Careful! Google treats the search phrase games pc and pc games as the same in this result. If you change the Match Type to Exact, the number of results drops in half. Let's find out how many of those terms are actually games pc.
- Go back up to the keyword phrase list and type in games pc, gaming pc, and game pc. Under Filter my results, check the box next to Don't show ideas for new keywords. This will just show you results for those three terms. Now click on Get Keyword Ideas.
- Change the Match Type to Exact and you'll see a very different story:
- These are still terms that should be considered but they're certainly not as hot as you may have thought at first. Add each phrase and it's search data to your spreadsheet.
- Now, let's unclick the Don't show ideas... box and see what we get. There are some good ones here: gaming pc, best gaming pc, gamer pc, video game pc, and so on. I'll add them all to my spreadsheet. This could go on for hours and for a large project, it's not unusual to have a list of 500 keywords after a few hours of research.
- Now, let's find out how hard it's going to be to rank for those terms. Notice that there's a column on the report called Advertiser Competition. That report will tell you how many advertisers are bidding on that key phrase in Google's Adwords. That doesn't exactly correspond to how many are trying to rank for that term organically but it's probably close, so let's use it.
- Hover your mouse over each Advertiser Competition bar and a little pop-up will give you an indication of how difficult it is. For example, next to games pc it says Very high advertiser competition. Since I will probably want to sort the list, I'll change that into a number; say 10 for the hardest and 0 for no competition.
- After doing all that, my spreadsheet looks similar to the following screenshot:
- Now, let's find out where Big Computers already ranks for these terms. We put each term into Google and here's what we find:
Picking the right terms
Now, we've got some decisions to make. There are some huge terms on that list with over 100,000 searchers per month and very high competition. However, there are two terms that Big Computers already ranks for: game pc, games pc and gaming pc. All three have considerable traffic but notice that they rank on page 2 for game pc. With 74,000 searches per month, this is a hot term and definitely makes our short list.
The term gamer pc has somewhat less competition as does video game pc. Although there's relatively little traffic, less competition means an easier time getting ranked. We'll keep both of these for now. On the other hand, best gaming pc and gaming pcs have high competition and low traffic. We'll reject both terms for our initial campaign but they might be good to add in later. That leaves games pc and gaming pc—both terms are high traffic and high competition. If this was a full campaign, I think they'd make the list—remember, though, that this is just a trial. Since we want to justify a fuller campaign, we need some easy wins. We already have three good terms to work with, so I'll say no to these final two terms. So, my almost-final spreadsheet looks similar to the following screenshot:
Getting rid of the wrong terms
At least as important as finding the right terms is rejecting terms that are not right. Some terms seem perfect until you put them under the microscope, then you will start to see the flaws in your own logic. Here are a few steps you can follow to make sure you've got good keywords:
- Google the keyword and look at the results. Do you see relevant results?
- Use Wikipedia to read about your keywords. Are those words used in other ways in a different industry than yours?
- Ask your customers, colleagues, and companions: "What does <keyword> mean to you?"
- Look in the <gasp> phone book. What companies show up for the phrase you're evaluating? Are they the right kinds of companies?
- If you've got some money to spend, try running an Adwords campaign. Put in all your keywords and write some ads. After a few weeks, you should have a pretty definitive idea of which terms perform the best for you.
Now that we've got our keywords, it's time to start using them on our web site.
- 中文版Photoshop CS6完全使用手冊（超值版）
- 創意UI：Photoshop玩轉移動UI設計
- Oracle Business Intelligence : The Condensed Guide to Analysis and Reporting
- Hadoop核心技術
- Photoshop CS6完全自學案例教程（微課版）
- 中文版Maya 2022完全自學教程
- 工業軟件研發、測試與質量管理論叢
- Photoshop CC 2017從入門到精通
- Jetpack Compose：Android全新UI編程
- 中文版Photoshop CC平面設計實用教程
- Premiere CC視頻編輯入門與應用
- 快學熟用D3
- Photoshop CC移動UI設計實用教程
- 新印象：CINEMA 4D電商設計基礎與實戰（全視頻微課版）
- Power Query For Excel：讓工作化繁為簡