Keyword Research Fundamentals

By Michael Finnegan

Account Executive

Whether you’re interested in promoting your site through search engine optimisation or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, keyword research is one of the most fundamental steps in the process. The chosen keywords will form the basis for the entire campaign as they will determine factors such as overall cost and the level of potential visibility to achieve, depending on existing competition for these terms.
 
First question to ask is what terms would my target market use to describe my product/service? This will help identify some basic terms that will form the basis for your research. Once you’ve identified potential terms it also helps to highlight any synonyms that might also be used.  For example, if I offer “pay per click services” I immediately recognise that this is frequently referred to as an aspect of “search engine marketing”.  This already gives me two categories of terms that need further research.  It is also important to identify any common misspellings or variations in spelling, for example “search engine optimisation” is often spelled “search engine optimization”.

Keep in mind that if your brand is not very well established with your target audience, brand related terms will not be sufficient. In that case you need to identify how your product or service is described in terms of features or benefits.  Also try to identify what keywords your competitors are targeting. Use the View Bids Tool on Yahoo! to identify exactly who is bidding on your chosen terms and how much they are paying. While this tool is not available on all search engines, including Google, you can make assumptions based on the results found on Yahoo!.

Once you have identified all areas of your business that potential customers would likely search for, you need to get a concrete list of terms that are actually being searched on. All of the major search engines have keyword research tools that are free to use. The Yahoo! Keyword Selector Tool returns a list of related terms plus the number of searches conducted for each in the previous month. Google’s Keyword Tool generates a list of potential keywords to use but does not detail information on the number of searches conducted or maximum bid price. 

It is useful to compile a list of keywords and their search volumes for each topic and each search engine in an Excel file.  Again, this is easier to do for Yahoo! since you are given the number of searches.  However there are a number of common criteria that will help you to select you keywords. You need to consider the following: are they too competitive, too generic or too specific?

Firstly, if certain keywords are too competitive, for example if major competitors are bidding aggressively and your budget is limited, you may want to focus on less competitive and therefore less expensive terms (with less volume) that will convert better for you. 

In general, generic keywords tend to be highly searched for, but are more competitive and more expensive to buy. Very often generic keywords do not convert to sale, resulting in a poor conversion rate and high cost-per-conversion. For example if you are a small retailer of walking shoes the keyword “shoes” may be too generic to buy. Negative keywords can help prevent unprofitable clicks, so if you don’t sell “sports shoes” this would be an effective negative keyword to use.

Keywords, therefore, need to be more specific. More niched keywords could include “walking shoes” or “hiking shoes”. However, the more niched the keyword, the less users will search for them.  Try not to be too specific – the term “brown leather hiking boots” may seem appropriate but was not searched for last month according to Yahoo!’s Keyword Selector Tool. 

You should now have a comprehensive list of keywords ready to test on the PPC networks.  You will only know if the keywords generate clicks/conversions after a sufficient period of testing with different adtext and matching options. You must also keep in mind that keyword research does not stop once the campaign is up and running. Seasonality, offline marketing activities or new product introductions drive online demand and necessitates continuous research and testing to fully optimise your keywords and PPC activity.