Are you missing out on valuable traffic to your website?

Keyword Research, have you done any?

One of the biggest mistakes most of us make as business people is to get too wrapped up in our own business. What do I mean?

We take for granted that because we all know our own business jargon we expect everyone else to…I always just presume that everyone knows what SEO stands for, what B2B and B2C means, not forgetting SMO! So are we guilty of it too when it comes to the all important search terms that we believe people, our potential customers, are searching for?

I want you to do some work here…

Write down a list of your keywords

Yes I want you to write down a list of just 3-4 keywords, not just single keywords but a phrase of 3-4 words, that you think people search for to find you online, let`s just concentrate on your Home page and not any other pages for now. Ok, have you done that?

Now we are going to use a little tool called the Google Keyword Planner, to use this you must have a Google Adwords account (don`t worry we are not spending a single penny!). Right now I want you to follow the next steps once you have accessed this page…

 

image of Google Adwords Keyword Planner

 

  •  Next click on `Search for new keyword and ad group ideas` and add your keywords one on each line and then hit the `Get ideas` button at the bottom of that page.

 

image of the Google Keyword Planner

 

  • From the following screenshot you`ll see that I have used 3 search terms: training venues, meeting venues and business meeting venues. 
  • I now want you to hit the `Keyword ideas` tab to bring up some interesting results.

 

screenshot of the Google Keyword Planner

 

As you can see…

  1. Meeting venues is being searched for just 170 times per month.
  2. Training venues only 90 times
  3. Business meeting venues is even worse with just 20 searches each month

Now look at the results below that…

 

picture of search results in the Google Keyword Planner

 

We can see that:

  1. Venue hire is a far more searchable term with 2,900 searches per month
  2. Meeting rooms has 1,600 searches
  3. Conference facilities attracting 1,900

So what my client thought were good search terms in their minds were not actually the phrases that people were searching for and they were missing out on some valuable traffic. So much so that since they completed their keyword analysis and optimised their content and social media for these particular terms, their enquiries have increased dramatically and bookings improved significantly!

Try it out with your keywords, but don`t stop there. With the first round of results repeat the process again and dig deeper and you may just find some even bigger gold nuggets that can help your business and improve your bottom line.

Keep an eye out for my next article which will give you another great way to find what people are searching for and how to use some valuable search terms to increase traffic to your website even further!

Let me know how you get on with this in the comment box below

Best wishes

Martin