Date: 24 Feb 2010 Comments: 0

Keyword Research! A lot like ski jumping. Or not?

Keyword Research – Write Original Copy

It has been a while since the last post here at Latus SEM.  The rumors that we attempted to high jack the Olympic ski jump competition in Vancouver with our renegade team were not true.  While it was a brilliant rumor, no one in our offices has ever gone skiing, gone jumping or for that matter ever wore funny goggles while skiing and jumping.  What we have done is some top notch keyword research.  And oddly enough our return to the blogging world brings with it a post on keyword research tools!

The task of keyword research is not easy and it is certainly not quick.  You can get lost for hours researching competitor sites and typing various keywords and key phrases into the engines to see what pops up.  And as non-scientific as that strategy may seem I think it is the best place to start.  Think about each page on your site and the goal that page has.  If there is no goal – no conversion or next step you want a visitor to take after viewing that page – then it has zero reason to exist.  Once you’ve determined the goal for a particular page think about the language you want to use.  Yes, it is important to make it search engine friendly and you’ll brainstorm ideas by viewing competitor sites.  The next step is to write compelling, unique content using those keywords and key phrases that will benefit visitors.

Write Content, Place Online, Study Data, Re-Write Content

Look at it this way – you want a new visitor to your site to either learn something completely new about your product / service or you want them to have a piece of info they already know presented to them in an original way (and become Returning Visitors).  This is a difficult goal to achieve.  Being totally original is not something that is flipped on and off like a light switch.  Chances are you’ll go through several drafts of copy before settling on the best option and placing it online.

Keep in mind that placing it online is not a save and forget action.  You need to study your analytics for how people are coming to the site and how they’re interacting with these pages.  If the keywords you thought word work are not doing so then spend the day re-writing.  If people are bouncing from a page you thought was awesome – re-think how awesome it may not be and figure out through a combination of data and user testing what can be done to improve.

I’m well aware how people have short attention spans so the Latus SEM Keyword Research Extravaganza will be broken up into a couple parts.  Because I know you want to give full, undivided attention to additional tools and suggestions for using keyword research and tools to improve your website.