Many websites attract at least 40% of their visitors from the search engines, with the remaining visitors coming from a link, or from typing the address into the browser directly. Therefore knowing what people are searching for can give you a huge competitive advantage in Google.
The primary goal with search is to attract the visitors that are the most likely to convert into a genuine enquiry. These are the visitors that have searched for a phrase that you have optimised your website to rank well for.
To attract the right type of visitors you need to know
- The keyword phrases that are currently generating clicks to your website via search
- The most popular keyword phrases searchers are using in the search engines
How to tap into your website’s keyword referrals
At least once a month you should check what keyword phrases have generated visits to your website. You can get this information from your website visitor statistics which are provided as part of your hosting. If you don’t have web stats with your hosting, you can sign up for Google Analytics for free (you just need the code added to your website) see http://www.google.com/analytics/.
Your website stats offer a great source of intelligence about how your site is performing in Google, as you can discover exactly what content is attracting people to your site. It can make very interesting reading, and you may be quite surprised at some of the phrases used. Knowing this information will tell you a) what keywords you are ranking for and b) which keywords are the most popular. You’ll also get to see keyword trends over time, and this will generate ideas for new content like articles, blog posts and offers.
Discover the keyword phrases people use in the search engines
There are a number of ways to find out which keyword phrases people are typing into the search engines. This information is extremely valuable, as you may discover that people are using completely different words than you expected, or at least different combinations of words.
One of the best places to start your research is with Google. If you want to tap into the wider search space check out the Google’s Zeitgeist feature at http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist/index.html.
Google also has a very impressive tool called ‘trends for websites’ which shows the traffic trends for major websites. Want to know what kiwis have been searching in the last month? Wonder no more – just click on http://www.google.com/insights/search/#geo=NZ&date=today%207-d&cmpt=q
To research specific keyword phrases check out the Google AdWords keyword tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. From this site you can enter in phrases and see how many searches a phrase gets in a month (and you can tailor the results to New Zealand). Other keyword tools include http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/ and http://www.wordtracker.com/ which both have free trials available.
If you’d like more help with keyword research or improving your rankings in Google call us on 03 366 3340 or email info@tmlwebdesign.co.nz
