Is your website targeting the right keywords? How can you be certain?
SEO keyword research is an extremely important aspect of your search engine optimization campaign. Based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Corporate Conversions specializes in advanced SEO keyword research and SEO competitive analysis. We can tell you what prospective customers are searching for and drive these prospects to your site. If your site is targeting the wrong keywords, prospective customers will never find you, and search engines will index your site for terms that are not related to your core service/product offering, resulting in meaningless rankings. By targeting the wrong keywords, you not only put valuable advertising dollars at risk, you are also throwing away all the time and energy you put into getting your site to rank for those terms to begin with. If you want to stay competitive, you can't afford to do that.
A misconception is that generic terms are the most important for rankings, even if the term you're going after has little or nothing to do with your site. Imagine a local shoe store trying to be ranked for the term “Nike basketball shoes”. Sure, thousands of searchers probably type that phrase into Google monthly, but they're not doing it looking for a small town shoe store that serves only a local population. Being ranked number one for a term few would associate with your site is a waste of time and money, particularly if you are paying Adwords. Your site may see more traffic, but customers won't stick around.
The purpose of keyword research is primarily to understand the semantics of what search engine users are searching for as it relates to your product/service offerings and geographic location. For example, if you are an aftermarket auto parts distributor located in Coopersville, Michigan, your first thought might be to optimize your website related to the Coopersville geography. However, investing a small amount of time in keyword research may reveal that a majority or plurality of searches related to aftermarket auto parts are based on Grand Rapids, Muskegon, or Grandville, all of which are larger cities within a reasonable proximity to Coopersville. Knowledge of this will impact a variety of things, from html coding, to Adwords placement to link building.
SEO competitive industry analysis is critical because placing links to your website on prominent industry blogs, websites, or association websites is a critical component of SEO. After studying the characteristics of certain association websites, Corporate Conversions sometimes recommends that a client joins the association simply to get their URL listed on the association’s site. In general, it helps us greatly to have a client’s input on prominent industry websites.
Additionally, understanding the strength of your competitors' organic rankings affects which keywords we will recommend targeting. Taking the example above, we may find that page 1 of Google is filled with strong competitors for "Grand Rapids auto parts." However, the competition may be relatively weak for "Muskegon auto parts." Based on budget and speed to market, it may be advisable to attack the Muskegon market first. At the very least, we can provide the intelligence to help make this decision.