What is Keyword Research?
Keywords are just the words that people type into Google and other search engines when they’re looking for something on the internet.
Your keywords are the search terms that Keyword Research determines you should concentrate on—those that have the most potential to bring the highest number of the most relevant users to your page. Once those keywords are chosen, the idea is that when people type those words into a search engine, your website appears near the top of the page.
If you go about the journey of designing and developing a website without Keyword Research, you are setting yourself up for failure. With Keyword Research, you are starting out on a path to a successful website that actually helps your business!
Keyword Research begins with understanding your customer
We worked with a client last year, a spine surgeon here in Wichita (who wishes to remain anonymous). He wanted a website for a new practice. Let’s imagine (like many small business owners) he worked with your average company that doesn’t understand the difference between a website and a website that is designed to work and produce leads for its owner.
Let’s imagine the client elected to skip keyword research or, more likely, the ‘website designer’ or IT company that was building their website never even brought it up. What would they have likely built that website around?
Spine surgery? Certainly.
Back surgery? No doubt.
Disc degeneration? I’m sure.
Cervical spine? Definitely.
Welcome to one more website relegated to a dusty corner of the Internet and one more frustrated business owner who you hear saying “my website hasn’t brought me a single piece of business.” (We hear this a lot at Matthew Rupp Consulting).
The power of really good keyword research
Take a look at the Research we did for this spine surgeon (right here in Wichita). This report shows us that building a website around “spine surgery” would have not been wise, because while that particular term gets an enormous amount of traffic (165k searches a month in the U.S. alone), it also has enormous competition (647 sites with a combined 15,300,000 pages) that have an average PageRank of 3.2—which is very high.
“Back surgery” also has incredibly high search volume; approximately 165,000 searches a month, but like spine surgery, it has 661 sites competing for that specific term with over 5 million pages—all competing for the keyword ‘back surgery,’ with an incredibly strong PageRank to boot.
This is not a mountain a new website can climb.
The right way to begin your website project:
We help our clients identify keywords (the terms people use when searching the Internet) with “moderate/high search volume” with “low/medium competition.”
Shouldn’t every website about spine surgery be optimized for high value keywords like “spine surgery” and “back surgery?” Of course. But, here’s the magic – what else can we optimize for in order to increase your chances of being found?
We will take a second look at the keyword research, and find some pieces of true gold to help make your website more valuable.
“Sciatic nerve exercises” gets over 22,000 searches a month in the U.S. (granted that’s not sexy like 165k, but it’s still respectable), but it also only has 330 pages competing for it—which a low PageRank of only 1.9 on average.
“Scoliosis in adults” gets 6,600 searches a month with only 355 competitors. “Scoliosis in adults” has an average page rank of 1.8. Also very low.
“Spinal stenosis exercises” gets 4,400 searches a month with less than 300 competing sites also with a very low PageRank.
Those 3 keywords alone represent 27k searches a month and have very low competition.
Is it realistic that a spine surgeon who has a rich, full site would have pages that cover sciatic nerve exercises, scoliosis in adults, and spinal stenosis exercises? Of course, but narrowing down exactly what to cover and how is a question best guided by competent Keyword Research.
Is it feasible that somebody searching Google for one of those terms are a good candidate for our spine surgeon? Absolutely!
All keyword research is not created equal!
If you are currently using a developer or an SEO company, ask to a see a recent sample report they provided to another client before you commit.
Shortly after starting Big Sky Party Rentals, years ago, we made the mistake of wasting $250.00 dollars on ‘keyword research’ from a company here in Wichita. This is what we got – Don’t let this happen to you!
Click here to visit Google Adwords tool. This is another incredibly powerful, free tool from Google.
Matthew
If you would rather focus on running your business and turn this over to a team that lives for this kind of stuff give us a call today at 316-285-0729.
If you are ready to crush your competition online and really make your website a valuable piece of your business schedule a no obligation strategy session with Matthew Rupp today.