A very simple 3-step approach for keyword research for small businesses.

1. Find Relevant Keywords: Do not think like a business, instead, think like your prospects. What’s in their mind when they are searching? Make a list. Get Google’s help and widen the list.
2. Adequate Search Volume: It is great to compile a list of relevant keywords but are those keywords being searched? What is the ideal keyword volume? In my opinion, for a local business anything above 1,000 in monthly search volume is a good keyword to target.
3. Keyword Competition: Now that you have a list of relevant keywords with adequate search volume, it is time to assess how easy or difficult it will be to rank on the first page for these keywords. Do an exact phrase search for your keywords along with “allintitle” and “allinanchor” searches and analyze the results on the first page to ascertain the competition. It sounds difficult but it is actually pretty easy in reality.

That’s it, do click on the links above to see details on keyword relevance, search volume and keyword difficulty. If you have any feedback or questions then please do leave a comment below.

After finding relevant keywords and deciding on an ideal monthly search volume now is the time to determine keyword difficulty. In other words, how competitive is the keyword. In this post, I’m going to share my formula of assessing keyword difficulty where I look at four factors.

1. Exact Phrase Search Results

Open up Google and type in exact search phrase by enclosing it within double quotes. Taking the Singapore plumbers example further, type in “Singapore plumbers” and take note of the number of results returned (highlighted in red).

Exact Phrase Search Results for Singapore plumbers

This gives a broad idea of the level of competition. In my experience, anything less than 5,000 competing websites is manageable competition. For our example, there are 601 competing websites which means there is a good chance of appearing on the first page of Google.

2. allintitle Phrase Search Results

Again, in Google type in allintitle:“Singapore plumbers” (highlighted in red). The number of results returned this time is the number of pages that have the keyword in their page title (highlighted in yellow). Then take note of the number of results returned.

AllInTitle Search Results

This gives a broad idea of the level of somewhat serious competition who know basic SEO. For our example, there are only 116 competing websites and pages so the level of competition is pretty low.

3. allinanchor Phrase Search Results

Open up Google and type in allinanchor:“Singapore plumbers” and take note of the number of results returned (highlighted in red).

AllInAnchor Search Results

The number of results returned this time is the one of all the pages which are linked to by backlinks with the keyword “Singapore plumbers” in their anchor text. This is serious competition but a number like 585 would not be too competitive.

4. Analyze The First Page Results

Apart from the numbers discussed above, we are most interested in getting our website or page on the first page of Google so examining the first page results for the keyword is important. Look for the following:

• Forums or Classifieds: If there are forum or classifieds pages high on the first page of the results then it is good news as it is relatively easy to outrank them.
• Authority Sites: Pages from authority sites like Wikipedia are hard to outrank.
• High Page Rank: Also sites or pages with page rank of 4 or more are difficult to outrank. Download the Google Toolbar to check page ranks.

There you have it, the four factors that determine keyword difficulty and competition. As always, leave a comment if you have questions or additional comments.

The topic of the previous blog post was how to find relevant keywords but relevant keywords without the ideal search volume is not of much use. If the search volume is too high then the competition is likely to be intense making it difficult to appear on the first page of search results. On the flipside, if the search volume is too low then you are unlikely to get enough visitors that turn into prospects and clients.

So what is the ideal monthly search volume?

Good question but there in no straightforward answer as it depends on the type of business among other factors. In my opinion, for a local business anything above 1,000 in monthly search volume is a good keyword to target. Let’s take the example of the Singapore plumber (from the previous article) further where the terms ‘plumber’ and ‘plumbers’ got approximately 6,600 and 1,300 monthly local searches in Singapore. This makes both the keywords ideal candidates to be short-listed provided the competition is not very high. I’ll cover competition in the next post.

Google Keyword Tool Settings

Breaking Down The Numbers

Let’s just consider the term ‘plumbers’ which had 1,300 local searches. Research from Enquiro shows that 75% of searchers click the organic listings (as opposed to paid links on Google) which means about 975 clicks for organic results.

A related research from iProspect shows that the number 1 listing for any search query gets roughly 42% of the traffic and the first page captures over 89% of traffic for any given search term. The numbers are quite straightforward:

Total Monthly Searches = 1,300 approximately
Organic Search Clicks = 975 approximately
First Page Results Clicks = 870 approximately
Number One Listing Clicks = 365 approximately

Note: The number of clicks between number 2 and number 10 of the search results page will not be evenly distributed. The higher ranked pages will obviously get more clicks.

You can work out roughly what kind of traffic you’ll be getting for a particular term based on the search volume as well as your ranking. Let’s say you rank number 1 for the term ‘plumbers’ in Singapore which translates into 365 visits to your website. If your average rate of visitor to lead conversion is 10% then you will be getting about 36 leads per month from this search term alone.

This is one way you can choose which keywords to target based on monthly search volume. Next up, I’ll write about keyword competition. As always, please leave a comment if you have questions or additional comments.

Importance of keyword research in web design

Most small business ignore keyword research as an integral part of web design and development when it should be the most important thing to do to ensure your website’s success. There are a number of reasons why keyword research is ignored. First, the small businesses owners are not even aware of keyword research. Second, the web designer is equally clueless. Third, there is a misconception that keyword research is hard. After all, its got the word research in it! Nothing could be further from the truth.

In this post, I will show you how to find relevant keywords in 3 easy steps.

1. Think Like Your Prospect

Pick the most relevant keywords so think from your clients’ perspective. What keywords are likely to be typed into Google by your prospect? Identify many different variations. Let’s pretend that you provide plumbing services in Singapore. So what would be relevant keywords for you? List them out.

Plumber
Singapore plumber
Plumber in Singapore
Handyman
Singapore handyman
Handyman in Singapore

2. Get Google’s Help

Next head over to the Google Adwords: Keyword Tool and change the language and country option (highlighted in green). In this example, I have changed it to English and Singapore. Then add one or more keywords and make sure the “Use synonyms” box is checked (highlighted in blue). I have just added “plumber” to discover more relevant keywords. Lastly, enter the CAPTCHA image and click the “Get keyword ideas” button.

Google Keyword Tool Settings

Now click on the “Local Search Volume” column header (highlighted in red) so that results are sorted based on keyword volume locally in Singapore. You can also see how competitive a particular keyword is (highlighted in blue) and an option to add the keywords to a list that you can export to CSV file (highlighted in green).

Google Keyword Tool Results

3. Collect Relevant Keywords

Click the “Add” link for all the relevant keywords and a list of relevant keywords will be added to the “Selected Keywords” panel on the right (see image below). After adding all the relevant keywords, you can export the keyword list in “text”, “.csv (for excel)” or “.csv” formats (highlighted in red).

Google Selected Keywords For Export

There you have it. An easy way to find relevant keywords for your website. Please leave a comment if you have questions or additional tips.