We all know how important SEO is for our businesses and their chance of success, but what a lot of us are overlooking is how important keyword research is to the success for our SEO efforts. There are many different aspects to SEO and we can't forget that it should all start with completely understand of the keyword or phrase and what it will take to make it profitable for us. So in this article, we are going to review why your SEO efforts will most likely fail without the proper keyword research prior to being implemented in your overall SEO campaign.
Unpopular Keywords
The first and most obvious reason is going to be its popularity. If you decide you want to spend a bunch of resources on a keyword, only to find that your target audience doesn't even use it, will only end in wasted time and money. If you had done the research on that keyword prior to working on it, then you would have known it wouldn't be profitable and you could have avoided it all together.
On the other hand, if you try to work on an extremely popular keyword without researching it, you will find that the competition is really high and extremely difficult to rank. Which again, ends up wasting your resources if you never end up getting the popular keyword to drive traffic to your site.
The keywords that you should be looking for are ones that are not too popular, but still have a good amount of searches per month. The competition is usually much lower so it is much easier and uses less resources to get those search terms to drive traffic to your website.
Attracting the Wrong Audience
Certain keywords, although within the same niche as you, could bring in the wrong type of traffic. A great example of this happening is if you have an online clothing store and try to rank for the search term "Great looking clothes". People that type that in to the search bar will most likely not spend any money, they just want to see what clothes are beautiful and what fashions are in. You are much better off trying to rank for the search term "Great clothes at a Fair price" or something similar to that. The person who types in great clothes at a fair price is more likely willing to spend money than someone who just wants to look at beautiful clothes.
Keywords and Phrase Changes
As much of us know, SEO changes all of the time, so you should be ready when your target audience shifts their search terms to find the same type of products. If you are unaware of the changes that are being made because you have not been doing keyword research, then your competition will end up catching it and get a head start, giving them the advantage.
It is very bad to start on a keyword or phrase after your competition because then it takes much more resources to catch back up. Keeping on top of all keyword trends in your industry is always a great idea that continues to provide many successful businesses more profits.
PPC Ads Affect Search Terms
Pay per click programs have a big effect on certain search terms. It doesn't matter if you use these programs or not, you should always check to see how popular the keyword is to people that use Pay Per Click. If you choose a keyword that is highly competitive, then not only do you have to try really hard to get ranked, but you also have to compete with the advertisements. You cannot underestimate how effective those advertisements are because people will use them. Since they are usually listed first or on the sides of their screen, people have easy access and could end up using them instead of a ranked page.
If you are enrolled with a PPC program and have a budget for it, doing keyword research will also prevent you from paying extreme prices on popular search terms because you can find terms that are just as successful, but don't have so much competition which lowers the price by an incredible amount.
Ness writes for MakeAWebsite. If you need help in choosing the best host for your website, visit their site for reviews of well-known hosting providers.
