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The two parts to keyword research (and possibly a third)

Posted on March 27th, 2008.

There are two parts to keyword research, finding keywords and the evaluation of them. Sure, it’s a great start to find keywords which you want to target, but it’s not enough. Some keywords are good and some bad, and that’s what you need to find out. You aren’t going to gain anything from your keyword research if you don’t find out which keywords are worth using.

Finding keywords

Finding keywords is the easy part, and won’t take you long at all. I’m going to save the actual process of finding keywords for a later tutorial, but it’s pretty simple. Essentially, you’re looking to find things which people type into search engines.

Many people think that they know what keywords people would use to find their site, but in fact that’s usually not the case. You need to think carefully about the words people are going to type into a search engine.

Evaluating keywords

This part usually takes a little bit longer.

When you’ve got your list of keywords, you have to separate the good ones from the bad. It’s time to get rid of words which are of no use to your website, and keep those that are.

You want to keep keywords which you can rank for, and for which there is little competition (or at least competition you can beat).

You also want it to be worth your while targeting those keywords. That means that people need to be using them.

Implementing your new found keywords (a third step?)

I was wandering whether to include this part or not, because technically it isn’t really keyword research, it’s the actual use of keywords. However, I think that I better mention it.

You’ve found some great keywords which are relevant to your site and you can rank high for them. That’s not where it ends, as you actually have to use your new found keywords. You need to write content which contains them, and get links to your site which includes them in the anchor text.

Keyword research is made up of two parts. There’s no point in finding keywords and implementing them. You have to find keywords, evaluate them and use the ones which will actually bring people to your site.

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