Keyword research is very important when it comes to developing content for landing pages on a website. SEO.coms Shawn Barrington breaks down how businesses should go about their keyword research in this new era of search engine marketing. Be sure to not only share this powerpoint but we would like to hear your questions and feedback. Enjoy!

1. Keyword Research
For SEO & Content Marketing

2. Share Away
#SEOBYU
@ShawnBarrington @SEOcom

3. What Is Keyword Research?

4. What is Keyword Research
• Keyword research is performed to identify the
keyword phrases that we will be targeting for
your SEO and marketing campaigns.
• “Keyword research is one of the most
important valuable and high return activities
in the search marketing field. Ranking for the
“right” keywords can make or break your
website” – MOZ.com
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5. Purpose
• Identify the right keyword phrases to increase
rankings, traffic and ROI
– Informational Keywords
– Buyer Intent Keywords
• Define the ultimate goal of your website
• Research keywords that describe the purpose
and goal of each page on your site.
• Establish keyword/Topic focus
• Unify company marketing goals.
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6. Effects Of A Proper Keyword Research
3 Main Effects of Proper Keyword Research

7. Increase In Organic Rankings
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Average Rankings at December 2011 – 88.29
Keywords Driving Traffic - 984
Average Rankings January of 2013 – 7.23
Keywords Driving Traffic- 1698
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8. Increase In Organic Traffic
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9. Leads/Sales From Organic Traffic
Total Events in December 2011 – 0
Total Events In December 2012 - 230
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10. Strategy Of Choosing Keywords
Things to consider when deciding on keywords to target.

11. Factors To Choosing A Keyword/Phrase
• Relevance To The Website
– If you did this search does the website provide what
you are looking for?
• Demand
– Are people searching for this term now?
– What is the trend of this phrase?
• Difficulty
– How much competition is there?
• Ranking
– Where are you currently ranking for this term?
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12. 2 Types of Keywords
1. Head Term Keywords
– Short Phrases of 1-2 words
2. Long Tail Keywords
– Typically phrases of 3–6 words
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13. Factors of Head Term Keywords
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Very Broad
Brand Awareness
Boost in traffic for website
Low Conversion
Best when mapped to home page of a
Website
• Harder to rank for
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14. Factors of Long Tail Keywords
• Descriptive Phrases of products and services.
• Best when mapped to a deeper page on the
site.
• Conversion for these terms are much higher.
• Easier to rank
• Search Engines are evolving and are relying
more on long tail keywords over exact match
head term keywords, to determine relevance
of sites on different topics.
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15. User Intent Keywords
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Informational Keywords
Buying Keywords
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16. Informational Keywords
• Broad Phrases that imply research, or that
contain questions or phrases such as:
– “How”, “What”, “Why“, “Best”, “Reviews”, etc.
– Examples:
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SEO
What is SEO
Shoes
Steel Buildings
How to build a Steel Building
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17. Buying Keywords
• Specific long tail keywords that contain things
like part/model numbers, or phrases such as:
– “Purchase”, “Buy”, “Order”, “Cheap”, Etc.
– Examples:
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SEO Services for Small Businesses
Steel buildings in Oregon for Churches
Pre-order Apple I-phone 6 Online
Purchase BYU Text Books online
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18. Abbreviations
• Be careful of going after abbreviations that
can mean different things in different
industries.
– Examples
• CPE
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Continuing Professional Education
Customer Premises Equipment
Canine Performance Events
Clinical Pastoral Education

19. How To Do Keyword Research
Putting the Theory In Action

20. Summary Of Steps
1. Identify Potential Keywords
2. Group Like Terms Together
3. Map Keywords To Relevant Pages
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21. Keyword Identification
How To Identify Potential Keywords

22. Keyword Identification
• Build a initial list of keywords based on the
website and its goals.
– Start Building Your List by:
• Looking for possible keywords to target from your site
structure
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Heading Tags
Title Tags
Content On The Page
Internal links
Navigation menu
etc
• Look at Industry competitors sites and determine potential
keywords based on their site.
• Find Similar Terms Using the Google AdWords Planner
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23. Keyword Identification
• Review Related Search Usage
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24. Keyword Identification
• Review Keywords Driving Traffic In Analytics
and webmaster tools if available.
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25. Keyword Identification
• Gather Search Volume / Expand Initial List
– Paste terms in the Google AdWords Planner
https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/
Home
• Using the “Exact Match” feature and checking the box
for “search volume for like terms”.
• Use Keyword Suggestion tool to expand your list
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26. Keyword Grouping
Grouping Like Terms

27. Keyword Grouping
• Eliminate Keywords/Phrases that don’t apply
or have low demand.
• Identify like terms that are valuable and
support each other and group together.
• Analyze Searcher Intent and eliminate those
that don’t apply
– Informational vs Buyer
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28. Keyword Grouping
• Identify head (main) phrases
• Identify tightly related mid-level (long tail)
phrases
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29. Keyword Mapping
Identifying Relevant Pages

30. Keyword Mapping
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31. Keyword Mapping
High Traffic - Head Terms
Example: Steel Buildings
Long Tail Variations of Main Keywords
Example: Industrial Steel Buildings
Descriptive Long Tail Variations
Example: Industrial Steel Building Kits
Product Describing Keywords
Example: Industrial steel building kit 58234
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32. Keyword Mapping
• The Idea in mapping keywords, is to
map a given keyword/phrase to the
deepest page with in the site, to the
page that is the most relevant.
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33. Keyword Mapping
• What page is relevant for a what term?
– Does the keyword describe the information found
on that page?
• Look at current heading tags / URL Structure
– Do they include or could they be easily changed to include the
main term for that page?
• What page does Google see as most relevant for that
keyword?
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34. Keywords & Mapped URLs
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35. Keyword Research In Action
Rubber Meets The Road

36. Questions

37. Contact Information
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Shawn Barrington
Google +
Twitter @ShawnBarrington
LinkedIn
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