The entire search engine industry, not to mention the entire Internet would probably collapse tomorrow if it were not for the existence of one simple concept – the keyword. It’s what we think of to type into a search engine to find out what we want. The psychology behind the words that we happen to choose get analyzed to death by the search engines, that decide that specific words point to a desire to see specific kinds of content. If there wasn’t a way to do this, there would be no point of there being millions of websites. Helping corporations and search engines analyze the psychology of every keyword down to its most essential components are the SEO keyword research people. They help websites find out what kind of words exactly they need to associate themselves with, and they help the search engines interpret with the right direction, the choice of words that searchers use.
To a website designer, SEO keyword research involves finding the best keyword phrases to use for the most effect. The whole point of SEO comes down to determining the right keyword phrases for a website. If you happen to sell prescription drugs online, merely to use the words “prescription drugs” repeatedly would hardly do you any good. What you would need would be to find out keyword phrases three words long that most people with prescription needs in mind would tend to use for their buying needs.
There’s more to SEO keyword research than merely picking the right phrases to get you to the top of the searches for that phrase. You need the phrases that people with buying intentions would tend to use. Otherwise, you would just attract all kinds of casual browsers who would just use up your bandwidth. What you’re looking for is to be able to sell some product. And for that, you probably need specific phrases that point to things you keep in stock – De Beers or Tanishq or three band wedding rings for example. To begin with, you won’t have such terrible competition using these words; and also, these will be words used by customers with purchases in mind. Using these keyword phrases will be a better use of your advertising dollars going the pay per click route.
The Google Wonder Wheel is a little-known SEO keyword research term. To see how this works, do a search, and on the left, under the filter options category, choose Wonder Wheel. What you see then is a visual pictorial of how Google tends to put keywords together to form phrases. You’ll see how a couple words you put in, like “wedding ring”, can make Google think of phrases three or four words long that develop on the basic theme. “Wedding ring” can become “genuine diamond wedding ring”, or” discount wedding ring”. It tells you what people in general are thinking of when they search for wedding rings, and it can help you build your website with content like that.
In the end, for the best SEO keyword research, use the Google Keyword Tool, and don’t forget the wonder wheel. It’s probably the best SEO keyword research device you’ve ever had.
