Do Keyword Research and Increase Your Website Visitor Traffic and Sales

Ask just about any website owner what two things they would like to improve about their website and you’ll usually hear “traffic and sales” in response. However, what many of these website owners are unaware of is that they can see huge increases in both of these areas just by learning how to effectively research and use keywords. Once you understand how it all works, you can use your keyword research to improve your search engine optimization, increase your overall traffic and, as a result, see a boost in sales.

The Basics

Keyword research is a very simple yet important technique that will help you to advance your website and online business in a number of areas. It is essential that you understand the importance and value of the keywords that you choose to use on your website and in your off-site advertising and promotions.

You are probably already aware that there are many different keyword and key phrase combinations that can be used to describe your website, business, products and services. These words are the “key” to helping your target customer base find your website through the use of SEO techniques that will benefit you in the search engines. The more relevant those keywords are to your business and what you are selling, the better your traffic quality.

Your goal is to attract a balance of quality traffic in a large enough quantity that you can increase your business. It is easy to get a massive amount of traffic to your website through keyword “cramming” and other tricks used to spam the search engines rather than adhering to proper search engine optimization etiquette. Unfortunately, this type of traffic is usually a waste your time, money and bandwidth. You want a lot of traffic, but it is important that the traffic be properly targeted to your business.

Proper Usage

You also need to know how to properly use your keywords on your website once you complete your research. Make sure that the keywords you use are relevant to the other content, products or services offered on each page. Use them in your meta tags, title tags, heading and subheading text, alt tags and throughout the text content on your page. Write articles, make blog posts, provide a FAQ section, add tutorials or anything else that will be beneficial to your visitors. Your efforts in creating this original content will also be very beneficial to the SEO and value of your site as a whole.

When you effectively use your keywords and key phrases on your website, you will attract visitors who are looking for the things that you are selling. You also will improve your relevance at Google, Yahoo and other top search sites, which will in turn boost your ranking, listings and reputation. All of these elements are essential to getting a front page listing on these major websites.

Keyword Research Techniques

Due to an increase in information available to marketers and developers these days, as well as many useful web-based tools, research is easier to conduct now than it was in the past. It is still always best to start with a simple list of keywords and phrases that you think up yourself that will appropriately apply to your business. You should have at least a dozen words and phrases to get you started.

To expand on your core list, you can use tools and software applications that are designed to help you find other relevant keywords and expand on them to create long-tail keywords consisting of three to four or more keywords each. Targeting longer key phrases can help you to get top listings in the engines by reducing the volume of competitors you will be going up against for ranking and can help you to better qualify your traffic in advance.

One of the best tools you can use is the Google Keyword Tool, which can be found at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. This tool is just one of the many tools available through the free AdWords marketing and development program. All you need to do is add in the keywords from your core list, type in your website URL and choose an applicable category. The Keyword Tool does the rest, giving you a list of relevant keywords and phrases along with information about monthly average searches and competition rating for each term.

Call New Bedford Internet at 508-415-8648 for a free consultation and evaluation of your current online search engine marketing efforts.