SEO Tip: Keyword Research

SEO Research and Monitoring

A big part of the job of anyone who practices search engine marketing should be monitoring and research. Research is figuring out new content for your site, and if it's worth the time to create. You can come up on the first page pretty easily for some searches, but who is searching for that? Sometimes you need to come up first for something because it's your product or brand name. In this case it's called a "Navigational" search. This is when someone is searching for a particular thing. If you're site relies on navigation searches (does lots of off-line advertising for instance) than it's a good idea to use this keyword in the most important keyword locations to ensure that you are on top for it. Most businesses don't have to optimize hard for navigational searches, but some do.

The other type of search is "Informational". This is probably the most common search that people optimize for. A good example is "current time in Jaco Costa Rica". It probably started off with someone wanting to know "current time in Costa Rica". Then maybe they wondered if the time in Jaco is any different. Either way this is someone who is trying to learn something specific. They're probably looking for a page that says "The current time in all of Costa Rica is GMT -6 or the same as Central Standard Time. Which means from about November to March it is the same as "Central" (similar to Chicago) and from around March to November it's the same as "Mountain Daylight Savings" (similar to Denver when it's on daylight savings time)." Not that all terms like the ones above are worth optimizing for. Adding a little extra relative content to your web site never hurts though, and we have a great tool for that.

Monitoring is another very important step in the SEO process. By knowing where you were and where you're at now you can better figure out where you're going. Sometimes I get an idea to add a page to a web site just because I see that one of my sites came up when someone searched for it. If I see that it came up in the 18th position for a term that I didn't even optimize for I can certainly come up on the first page for it in the future. If I start getting a lot of traffic from that term, I can start researching related keywords and expanding. If you keep our tips in mind, write naturally, and update your content often, I'm sure you'll find more of these informational searches pull up your site. When they do they give you more fuel for keyword research.

As always we are happy to help you better your web site. If you would like more information on how to setup monitoring, or advice on choosing keywords, please feel free to comment here or contact me at sales@cr-sg.com. Pura vida!