With any internet marketing marketing strategy, keyword research should be the first thing you do before you kick off your campaign. Doing proper keyword research will help you boost your search engine optimization (SEO) organic rankings higher on the search engine result pages.
Keyword research is very important, but the same as with most internet marketing activities, there’s a few pitfalls that you should avoid at all costs. Find below a short explanation on the don’ts of keyword research to avoid so that you get the best results with your campaign.
Keyword research don’ts
Always look at your competition: Even though it is very important to target popular keywords with high search volume, it is just as important to consider the competition that is also targeting the same keywords. The more competition you have, the harder it will be to get a ranking for that keyword. You can use the free tool of Google Adwords to analyze the best keywords that are being search for but aren’t targeted by other businesses.
Don’t focus only single keywords: Single keywords such as “pizza” are extremely competitive and not very specific enough. People commonly start their search with a question and include longer keyword phrases such as “Take away pizza in Bloemfontein”. Instead of going after the highly competitive single keywords, try using a couple of long tail keywords as well that targets your audience more specifically.
Don’t start your campaign without tracking measures: If you are measuring and analyzing the results you are currently getting from the current keywords that you are targeting for, you will never know if they are successful. There are many free tools such as Google Analytics that you can use to measure the results of your campaign. By measuring the results, you can can analyze which keywords are actually sending visitors to your website and blog and which ones you should exclude.
