Keyword Analysis
What is Keyword Analysis?
In short, a Keyword Analysis
is the total number of unique searches on the Internet that are relevant
to your website. Keyword Analysis is defined by the top-level or root
keyword that is generally most relevant to your business. If you own a shoe
store, "shoes" might be the top-level keyword for your market. "Shoes" of
course is very general since there are many kinds of shoes for men and
women. Top-level keywords may contain thousands of vertical Keyword Analysis
s. Initial analysis on "shoes" will produce hundreds of verticals (running
shoes, nike shoes, bridal shoes, golf shoes, etc.)
Understanding Keyword Analysis
Selecting the right keywords and phrases is critical to the success of any
search engine marketing campaign. A thorough analysis of your Keyword
Analysis
(s) will ensure proper keyword selection.
Analysis involves the following:
Comprehensive Vertical and Lateral Keyword
Analysis
Vertical and lateral keyword analysis refers to the discovery process you
can go through to determine which Keyword Analysis
s are relevant to your website. A vertical analysis looks at all forms of
the word (singular, plural) and all the popular variations that are used in
combination as a keyword phrase. A lateral analysis queries hundreds of
other websites that deal with similar markets and extracts those keywords
from the title tags, META tags and body text. The most frequent keywords end
up at the top. Example is the best way to explain vertical and lateral
keyword analysis. Let's take the keyword search "basketball" as an example:
|
Vertical |
basketball
basketballs
ncaa basketball
history of basketball
basketball pictures
basketball shoes
basketball drills
basketball rules
nba basketball
basketball camps
basketball court
dimensions college basketball
basketball history
college basketball
recruiting
basketball cards |
|
|
|
Lateral |
sports
basketball
michael jordan
nba
jordan
ncaa
chicago bulls
sports news
slam dunk
vertical jump
hoops
increasing vertical jump
australian basketball
lenny wilkens
free throws |
|
|
|
Qualify relevant keywords for target audience
Qualifying keywords before making a final decision is where expert
subjectivity is applied to catch what the technology cannot. After
conducting a comprehensive vertical and lateral keyword analysis, we are
left with an exhaustive list of keywords.
Most will be relevant to your site, but many will not be.
It is important to remember that these keywords represent actual searches
made by actual people. Qualifying for relevant keywords involves a thorough
review of your Keyword Analysis
and making sure all of the keyword searches are reflective of your target
audience.
Total Keyword Popularity and Competing URLs
It is important to make an evaluation of how popular a keyword is (i.e. how
many times is a keyword predicted to be searched in a 24 hour period) and
how it's popularity compares with the total number of competing URLs (other
sites that are returned by the search engines for the same keyword
searches). An analysis of this relationship will tell us where it is smart
to optimize and where it is foolish.
The results of this analysis is cross referenced with your website content
to determine the right page selections for optimization.
