SEO Keyword Research

You might think it would be a simple task to find the best keyword phrases for your website. I mean how hard could it be? You know your business, right? But knowing your business might be the problem itself!

Most people pick a few keyword phrases right off the top of their head, give them some thought for a while and maybe even come up with a few more good ones as well. A few enterprising people will even take advantage of some of the professional tools available and discover a few more choice keyword phrases. But that’s pretty much it as far as keyword research goes. seo keyword research

They add their phrases to their ‘keyword’ meta tags and page ‘descriptions’ and maybe even take the time to optimize their pages and build some links with the keywords in the anchor text. The whole process takes a few days or maybe even a week or two and that is about it for seo keyword research.

A month or two later they begin to see some results if they are lucky. If they don’t have any real competition they might even get a significant boot in their traffic from their seo keyword research. But they are not alone in their niche and if they are making an effort to build their traffic you can be sure their competition is not far behind in the SEO race.

Back and forth it goes with the competition and in the long run everything seems to even out over time and nobody really gets very far ahead of anyone else. That’s because for the most part everyone is making the same fundamental mistakes.

Wearing The Wrong Hat in SEO keyword research

This mistake is so widespread that it could almost be called a universal mistake. I can’t imagine anyone realizing the error of their ways without years of experience and introspection and even then it would be a gradual process of realization at best… The reason is that this understanding is just not in line with the way the average person thinks. We just don’t naturally step outside our selves and look back to see what is going on, and that is what it takes.

Think of it this way… You provide a service that solves a problem, right? That’s what you do, it’s part of who you are. You were raised that way. Then at some point you grew up and took over, you chose your path and got you where you are today, right? So you wear a solution hat. Lets say your a landscape contractor and you have some heavy equipment like a Cat 7 Bulldozer with a 12′ blade and 2,000 h.p. and can move 30 yards of earth in a single hour. What ever, right…

So there is a huge rain storm and peoples yards are washed away over night. Houses buried in mud and so on, you know. Big problems. This disaster is all yours. People everywhere need your service. So you put up a webpage and optimize it wearing your hat. You have the exact solution and start thinking of keywords for your webpage.

Cat 5
12′ soil moving blade
30 yards earth capacity per hour

So your prospect comes home to a house and swimming pool full of mud, their yard a disaster and in dire need of your service. But they sit down at their computer wearing their hat…  a problem hat. They think for a moment and type a search into Google…

Mud slide
swimming pool repair
landscape disaster help

Now that is a terrible example. But you probably see what I’m talking about. If you can’t take off your solution hat and put on their problem hat, you will never get the right keywords no matter how hard you try SEO keyword research. You might come close, but close does little or no good in SEO.

SEO keyword research

Filed under: Designweaver

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