Bloggers Workshop

This post is the first in a series on conducting effective keyword research. These posts will show you how to research and choose effective keywords, so your website can achieve higher visibility and draw more targeted traffic.

Many website owners believe that keyword research is simple, and that they are using the correct techniques for researching and choosing keywords. However, people often make common mistakes that can impact their ability to drive traffic and achieve online success. Understanding these mistakes is an important part of building an effective keyword research strategy.

Here are the six top mistakes people make when conducting keyword research:

1. They do not choose correctly targeted keywords. Choosing untargeted keywords is a bit like throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what will stick. Although this may bring in traffic, you can be sure that many of the people who visit your site will not be interested in the products and services you have to offer. If they are not specifically interested in your niche topic or subject matter, they will quickly leave your site and go elsewhere.
2. They expect immediate results. Building targeted traffic through organic search engine listings is a long term process. When your site is new, you need to have a bit of patience when using keywords to bring in the types of visitors who will buy your products or services. Many website owners expect keyword research and usage to yield  instant results, and give up when they don’t see floods of traffic coming in after a week or two. Remember, search engine marketing is not a race – it is a marathon. Those who persevere are the ones who achieve long term success.
3. They don’t conduct keyword research with list building in mind. Many bloggers and website owners write keyword based content that gives visitors all of the information they need. As a result, visitors derive the maximum benefit from the site on the first visit, and never return. Effective keyword research should focus on selecting keywords that arouse curiosity and interest, instead of simply giving away valuable information. Your keywords should make visitors hungry for more information, so they will be compelled to subscribe to your opt-in list.
4. They target too many keywords. New internet marketers often think that more keywords will bring in more traffic, but this isn’t necessarily the case. Unlike Google Adwords campaigns, which can bring in substantial traffic through the use of dozens of keywords, organic search engine traffic fares best with a small number of well-chosen, highly targeted keywords. It can take quite a bit of content centered around a particular keyword to propel your site to a first page ranking. Focus on getting great results from a few keywords, instead of mediocre results from a massive keyword list.
5. They do not track keyword results. Keyword research is of little use if you do not track results to find out which ones are working, and which ones are not. Proper tracking allows you to refine your keyword strategy as you go along, so you can consistently build more highly targeted, responsive traffic.
6. They rely on only one keyword research tool. Although there are many good keyword research tools available online, they all tend to produce different results. If you rely on a single tool, you may be missing out on valuable keywords that could produce more traffic and improve your internet marketing success. It is a good idea to use multiple tools, and import the results to a spreadsheet to eliminate duplicates. This will help ensure that you find the best keywords possible for your search engine marketing strategy.

Learning to avoid these mistakes will help you achieve search engine marketing success in less time, and maximize your sites potential for making you money. When you understand how these mistakes can negatively impact search engine optimization efforts, you can easily propel yourself ahead of 99% of the other internet marketers out there.