How can you identify the right keywords to bring massive amounts of traffic to your website? Most people conduct their search on Google or another search engine by typing in a phrase to describe what they are searching for. If you are lucky, those are the very keywords that will have them land on your website. If you want that to occur, you must work on your website, optimizing it and utilizing the correct search terms.

Good SEO Keywords should meet four specific criteria including reasonable competition, high relevance, strong conversion value and significant search volume. If one of these criteria is missing, your SEO will likely fall short. You want to ensure that the search terms that you are targeting are going to bring your target market to your website.

1. Competition: You want to target keywords that you have a chance of ranking at the top of Google for – but it means you will have to optimize your website.

2. Relevance: Your target keywords need to match what you offer. It should be your goal to connect with the people who are searching what you offer and sell.

3. Conversion Value: You need to choose terms that will lead to sales or engagement, not just a quick visit by curious browsers.

4. Search Volume: There is no reward in optimizing your website for terms that are not searched by people. You need to conduct a decent amount of research to find keywords that have decent search numbers.

Keyword Research – Do it Right

One of the most difficult tasks for SEO is to conduct keyword research. If you do your research well, you can uncover countless potential keywords that you can choose from. There will also be a lot of data that goes with those keywords. If you have not done your keyword research, then your target keywords are not going to be of much use to you.

Start by focusing on the important data. You can obtain that information for free with the use of the Google Keyword Planner. Important keyword data for an organic search strategy is the competition score and the monthly search volume. If you are planning a Google Ads strategy, the suggested bid for ad space is an important consideration that you should look at.

• Competition Score – looks at the amount of competition for Google ad space for a specific search term from 0 being the lowest to 1 being the highest. You can check the keyword after looking at the competition score by Googling the keyword phrase and look at the sites linked to the ads that show up – do you think that you could compete against those websites?

• Monthly Search Volume – this is the average amount of times that people search for a keyword phrase each month. This search volume can be based in any country that you choose, you just need to select the right country before you examine the keyword results.

• Suggested bid – this is an estimate of what you will pay for every click if you bid on this keyword in a Google ad. If there is a lot of competition for a keyword, the bid will be higher in relation.

• Determine the needs and problems of your audience – when a specific keyword or phrase has a high search volume in your niche then you can determine that this is information that people are looking for. You can create content around those topics to give your site a decent chance to attract traffic to your site because your content addresses their problems or needs.

• Ensuring your content is available – keyword research assists you in finding the best keywords that can be used for SEO so that you are able to optimize your content. When you content is optimized, it means better exposure and more traffic. Google will like this and give your content a higher rank and when that happens, your content will reach a wider audience.

• Finding the right keywords at the right time – some keywords are seasonal, and some are evergreen. They can be wildly popular at times or not so popular at other times. For example, people are not searching for “Christmas decorating ideas” in the summer. You need to do accurate keyword research to get the interest of your audience and write material that they will want to read.

A Careful, Calculated Balance

When you search for keywords, they should closely match your criteria. It is a rarity to find a keyword that meets all the guidelines, but there is no magical keyword that gets all the traffic and perfectly describes your website.

You need to understand your audience before you conduct any research. Know what serves the needs of your audience before you cater to Google. Google connects you with your audience, so you need to understand our audience from the start. If you want to understand your audience, you need to ask specific questions such as who is buying from me and what are they looking for? These insights will help you to create the right content that addresses the needs of your audience. Once you identify these topics you can begin to dig into the best keywords that will be the most useful to them.

If you start with foundation keywords (ones that you already have in mind), then you can start to look at variations of those keywords. You will need to use a good SEO keyword research tool and enter your foundation keyword then look at the variations that arise. Look for related keywords and use them in your content as well.

Keyword research is the most important thing that you can do for your website. Writing good quality, engaging content is what attracts your customers. When you choose the right keywords, the results will come over time. Keyword research is a process, one that you continue to conduct repeatedly, as your site evolves, and you build a base of customers. Good SEO Keywords are ones that meet all your criteria and suit the theme of your website.