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SEO TOPICS: Keyword Research 101

By Jason Kato | June 15, 2007

Before you jump into SEO you need to take some time to research and analyze how you want to build the foundation of your website. You need to come up with, at the very least, a primary keyword phrase and a secondary keyword phrase which are actual phrases that you think people are going to type into search engines to find your business.

Let’s say that you’re a small flower company that is just starting. You think that “flower shop” and “buy flowers” are good possible keyword phrase candidates for your website. But wait, how do you know these keyword phrases are good ones for your site and how do you know which keyword phrases are more popular?

Well, lucky for you there is a great free keyword research tool that lists all of the queries that are done on Yahoo’s web search in any given month. The results are given as a list of keywords along with how many times people searched for that particular keyword or keyword phrase. The tool can be found at:

Inventory.Overture Keyword Research Tool

The website gets a lot of traffic so if it doesn’t work just keep retrying until you get in. Once you get in you will see a text box. Simply enter a keyword or a keyword phrase into the text box and wait for the results. Note: you may type in one keyword (flowers) or a keyword phrase (buy flowers online).

A simple search of the word “flower” produced these results:

2566148 flower

147781 flower delivery

144253 sympathy flower

128857 flower in san francisco

114556 flower shop

76885 wedding flower

55989 deliver flower

35284 wholesale flower

33610 floral arrangement

32764 flower picture

30762 flower gift

28440 buy flower online

23132 flower online

22953 funeral flower

20760 flower meaning

19788 flower girl

18245 flower garden

17400 lotus flower

13557 hawaii flower

13107 spring flower

11113 type of flower

10136 flower girl basket

9387 flower field

9382 cheap flower

9335 fresh flower

9107 flower name

8440 pink flower

8408 exotic flower

7834 flower vase

7815 buy flower

Now that you have done some research you are now ready to pick some keyword phrases. It seems as if the keyword “flower” is the best choice because it had over 2 ½ million searches in the month of January in Yahoo’s search engine alone, right? Wrong! I guarantee you that if you are a small company and try to get listed for a highly competitive keyword such as “flower” you will be found on the millionth page of a search query. The reason for this is because you would be competing with all of the big flower corporations that have huge websites and have been around for years. You need to find your niche and try to convert leads from a more realistic market.

Notice that at the end of the table is the keyword phrase “buy flower” which seems much more realistic for a small flower company that is just starting. If you wanted to make it even easier for searchers to find your website you could try the keyword phrase “Los Angeles Buy Flowers.” Where do you put your primary keyword phrase? Well that will be covered in the next article in more detail but generally your keywords should be found in your title tag, image tags, and main content areas.

There are books written about keyword research and companies that specialize in their keyword research products. Please, if you have any comments or questions feel free to post a comment to this post or email me.

Jason Kato
Search Engine Optimization and Marketing
Array Systems - Web Design and SEO

Topics: SEO - Search Engine Optimization |