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If you’re serious about getting your site ranking well on Google, then it is essential that keyword research is conducted before preparing all the content for your site.    You should have a pretty clear idea as to the sort of topics you want to include on your site but until keyword research is done then you will not know how competitive a particular term is – that is how many other pages on the web you are competing with for that particular term and also whether people are actually searching for a given term.  It is possible to conduct your own keyword research using Google’s AdWords keyword tool. 

You will need to have a Google account which can be the same account for all the various services Google has to offer, but you do not need a billing account to make use of the keyword tool.  From this tool you can enter a word or phrase (or multiple words/ phrases) that you’re interested in and use various filters such as local (UK) searches, terms closely or more broadly matched to your starting word plus other parameters. 

The list you are presented with will feature you original phrase(s) plus a list of alternatives you may not have considered.  For example, running a search for lemon meringue the first 10 alternative phrases are:

The columns show the level of competition on a scale from 0.01 (low) to 0.99 (high) – on the AdWords tool you will only see low, medium and high but by exporting the data you will see a more exact figure – and the number of searches conducted monthly worldwide and locally.  Between these various figures you can assess which are the best terms to target from the way people search and which variations have the lowest competition.  The ideal is low competition and lots of searches!  Trying to get a good ranking for just a single word is really asking for the impossible but some of the very popular words can be used with a location e.g. Plymouth, Cornwall etc. which is fine if your target market is locally based.

If you are looking for a very popular term you may want to consider Google AdWords which enables you to set the keywords you want to be found for and your site will appear under sponsored links when someone matches your keywords in their search.  You only pay when your entry is clicked on (Pay-Per-Click) and you can set a daily budget which, when it has run out, your entry will no longer appear on the list.  This can also be a way of giving your site prominence early on when a new website is launched and before it has had chance to get fully ranked on Google.  You would use the Adwords tool as a way to asses the best keywords to use and get an assessment of how much you would have to pay to get near the top of the sponsored links listing.

What must be remembered, though, is that the content for your site has to be written with readers in mind and not search engines.  Keyword research enables you find the best phrases to use and assess the competition but should not be used at the expense of having meaningful content for your site visitors.  Also, the data you see/download is an indicator and not absolute.

You can check out Adwords, and the keyword tool, at the Google Adwords pages. You need to have an Adwords account to access the keyword tool although this is free.

If all this seems a bit bewildering, this is a service we offer and we also have access to some other keyword tools which can be run as a cross check to the data from Google.