Keyword Research

Before you start writing your content, it’s a good idea to know what people are searching for. Remember how you search for your business and how others search for your business could be two completely different things. This is because you know the jargon whereas your potential customer my not.

A really good quick way to do some simple keyword research is to use the Google Adwords Tool. This will give you a good representation of how people are searching for your product or service.

Here’s a search I did for “wilmington nc storage.” This shows you what keywords are being searched and how many searches are being made on Google.

Just that one main keyword has produced potentially a dozen keyword phrases (multiple keywords) that you can now write content on.

Think of keywords as fish hooks in the water. The more keywords your site is optimized for, the better chance of getting a bite.

Take a look for a moment at the Advertiser Competition column. This is based on how many people are bidding on those keywords within Google Adwords, which is where you pay for search engine traffic from Google. Learn more about that here.

This does sometimes translate into how competitive the keyword is in the organic (free) search results. The more competitive a keyword, the more work you’re going to have to do to rank for it.

For more advanced keyword research, check out Wordtracker. You can create massive keyword lists, know exactly how many sites are competing for your keywords, plus uncover even more keywords through their research tools.