Optimizing your Keyword Research

Too often, when I view the source code on pages of potential client’s sites, I notice that they include keywords that are just too broad to 1) enable them to show up on 1st page SERPs and/or 2) bring targeted, interested traffic to their site. Another problem I’ve encountered is that people forget or don’t know to look at synonyms for additional, meaningful keywords.

Let me explain the first point:

I have a client whom manufacturers wonderful chocolate novelties/favors for occasions such as weddings, Easter, baby showers, Communion, etc. And their keywords, in addition to “chocolate party favors” include those terms too. But those terms alone provide little to no help in bringing the right traffic to their site.

“Baby shower” on its own could refer to hundreds of different things. Baby shower planning, themes for a baby shower, baby shower invitations, baby shower poem, baby shower activities, etc. But the chocolate maker can only fulfill the needs of ‘baby shower chocolate favors’, ‘baby shower candy favors’, and other tightly related terms. When keyword research was performed on these terms and their many variations, and then those learnings where incorporated in the site, meaningful traffic increased almost immediately.

As for the second problem mentioned – it can easily be illustrated with this example. A client asked if I could optimize his site so he would get more meaningful traffic. He happens to be a lawyer and the few keywords he had on his site all had the term ‘lawyer’ in them. But after I performed keyword research for his practice areas I realized that ‘attorney’ was a highly desirable search term too. When we added keyword terms and rewrote content to include both ‘lawyer’ and ‘attorney’, (picking each specific term based on potential traffic and how competitive the term was) traffic picked up within a matter of weeks.

Debra Rosenberg owns www.optimizedusability.com and is a Website Usability and Organic SEO consultant. She specializes in helping small and medium sized business increase their targeted traffic and is committed to affordable services.

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