Is keyword Research Necessary for Webpage Content?
The fundamental reason for keyword research is to find popular (regularly used) phrases people enter into the search engines to find information.
But it is merely a starting point…
The days of creating webpages optimized for one particular keyword phrase are pretty much over. As the internet has evolved search engine users have become savvier; they have learned to use longer search phrases to find the information they are looking for. This is in part due to millions of webmasters who have pretty much saturated the internet with junk pages optimized for short keyword phrases.
Add to this the latest search engine algorithms which seek to provide users with more relevant results, and pages optimized for only one keyword phrase are pretty much ignored.
Current search engine algorithms look at all the phrases on a webpage and try to determine the theme of the page. Search results are based on displaying webpages which match the theme of the search phrase.
In order to give your webpage a recognizable theme you need to use a primary phrase (let’s call it the page topic) in the normal SEO fashion backed up by related phrases of similar meaning. That’s not the whole story though, the search engines also look at how the page is linked to, what sort of phrases are used in the link to the page, and what phrases are used in close proximity to these links.
Essentially they are seeking to establish the relationship between the theme of the website, the theme of individual webpages and the theme of all pages which link to them.
When it comes to keyword research you have to do the traditional research using your favorite paid or free keyword research tool and find a primary keyword phrase which is used regularly in the search engines (preferably with little or no competing pages).
Once you have a primary keyword phrase you need to find other phrases which have the same meaning or are related. The easiest way to do this is to use the Google Keyword tool, simply enter your main keyword into the “Keyword Variations” text box. Make sure the “Use synonyms” check box is checked and click “Get More Keywords”.
You will be presented with a list of phrases which Google thinks are related to your main phrase. All you have to do now is filter these keywords to eliminate the non relevant ones and then try to use the rest in your webpage content.
The bottom line however is to write webpage content which is easy to read and which makes sense. Don’t add a related phrase just for the sake of it. Only add a keyword phrase if it contributes to, and fits in with the flow of the article.
Finally, if one or more of the phrases you have used will make a good “in context” links to other webpages on your website, create the links to them using the phrase as the link text. The “in context” links will give your previous pages a slight SEO boost, and reinforce the thematic relationships between the pages and your website as a whole
Tags: keyword research, keyword tool, keywords, search engine optimization, SEORelated Posts
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