Professional keyword research

Next March will be 6 years since I started doing keyword research. Like everyone else, I used Wordtracker or KeywordDiscovery.

I had the routine down pat: Collect keywords from KD or WT (usually a combination of both), select the best performers for SEO, weed out the hyper-competitive keywords, and optimize each page for the chosen phrases. Voila. That's been working well for quite a while — despite the source of the keywords being somewhat iffy.

However, I've recently started shaking things up a bit (like we all should at least every 5 years). Now I think my routine of keyword research was backwards.

Now, I use KD and WT and every other collection of queries I can get my hands on, because I'm just collecting all the possible phrases I can swoop into a client's PPC campaign ad group. Doesn't matter if they're long-tail or not. All keywords are equal in Google.

I write the ad very carefully so that it will attract ONLY my target market.

And they're off!

We soon find out which phrases are performers and which are duds.

In effect, we're letting the market decide whether what we have to offer is what they were looking for. If a phrase gets plenty of impressions but never any clicks, we have to look into what else the phrase means. You might be inadvertently using a term that's linked to a popular video game and not even know it.

Anyway, once the client's visitors have voted with their clicks, whether from PPC or organic search, it's obvious what to optimize the website for.