Keyword research, it is the foundation of your entire SEO strategy but yet gets so little attention by many. Successful online marketers know the power of focusing due effort on finding the best keywords that will bring mass traffic and smaller traffic. In the industry you will hear the term ‘head’ keywords, these are the terms that bring in the majority of your traffic. For example if you are in the skin care industry it may a term like ‘natural skin care lotion’ and have a specific page on your site highly optimized and focused on that audience.Â
 The second type of traffic that is equally important is referred to as ‘long tail’ terms, these are the more specific keywords like ‘green tea extract body lotion’. Again, you have a page dedicated to this term and optimized accordingly. The advantage to the long tail keywords is that they are very targetted traffic, these visitors know exactly what they are looking for. The chances of them buying the product or service once they found it is high.
There is a third segment of keywords known as ‘buying’ terms, for instance ‘naturally clear foaming wash’. That is a term for a specific manufacturer and product, if I know this much information the chances of me purchasing are even higher. Make sure you optimize for specific product names, model numbers and manufacturer names in order to capture more buying traffic.
Finding the best keywords is the trick, I suggest using the free research tool from Google. Start every search with a very broad term, for example start with ‘skin care’ and then begin reviewing the results to see what terms are being searched. Take a piece of paper or an Excel spreadsheet and start copying over the terms that look to have good traffic, along with terms that are specific and then of course buying terms.
Once you have your list compiled it is time to optimize a page on your site for each individual keyphrase. That’s right, one keyphrase focus per page … don’t be afraid to let that website expand!
