As you will probably have realised, the Internet is based on text in the form of keywords.  Search engines find websites based on keywords, videos on YouTube are categorised and searched for based on the keywords that producers use in the ‘about the video’ section, and even the social media craze is based on people searching for particular groups based on specific keywords.

So while every form of media on the Internet has keywords in it, some are better than others.

So, what makes a keyword special?

Take a step back.  Think about when you are searching for a product in a search engine.  There, in front of you is the search bar, and the information that you seek is tantalisingly close.  All you need to put in is the right sequence of words into the search engine, and the information that you seek will turn up.

But how do you know what keyword to choose when searching?

Here is an example:

Let’s start with something very generic.  If you search for ‘cake’, you will get a LOT of results:

Search engine - cake

Wikipedia is the first result on the page because the search engines see this as a generic search, where people don’t know what they are really looking for.  The more specific your search is, the more relevant your results will be.

The more you add to your keyword the more specific it becomes.  For example:

The base keyword ‘cake’ has 89,100,000 different results on Google.

More specific is ‘cake recipes’ which has 16,000,000 results on Google.

More specific is ‘chocolate cake recipes’ which has 5,450,000 results on Google.

Even more specific is ‘diabetic chocolate cake recipes’ which has 712,000 results on Google.

So the above is how many people are competing for those words.  Here are approximately how many people are searching for the these words:

*Based on data from the Google keywords tool

Notice as how the more specific the keyword is, the fewer people are searching for it?  This is called the ‘long tail’ of searches.  The ‘long tail’ is a huge topic, which I don’t want to go into here in depth as it will make this article lose focus, but in essence, it is represented by this graph:

Long tail search keywords

Now, looking at this, you may think that the best way to get a lot of traffic is to go for the keywords which have the largest number of searches.  While if you are at the top of the pile you will get a lot of traffic, it is quite difficult to get there and not all of it will be relevant to what you are doing.  What is easier is working on all the keyword groups under the main one.

For example, rather than going for ‘cake recipes’, go for one page on each of the ‘69 different kinds of cake’ recipes.  If each one of these has about 110000 searches, then overall, you will be targeting much more than the 1220000 searches that the word ‘cake recipes’.

Not only that, but each keyword will be easier to target, and will get there quicker.  Take another look at the graph above, if you only get paid based on being in the top 20% of the graph, getting to that point is a very lonely place to be, right up to the point where you hit the 20% mark, and then you get a flood of traffic.

Hitting multiple keywords, means that you will have a steady increase of traffic – and profits – because of a better ROI.

Using keywords like this is fine, but what does this mean for real business?

Glad you asked – all this cake talk has made me hungry.  Basically, if you run any kind of business and are trying to market online, rather than wasting all your money on competing with the big companies which are chasing after the big keywords, if you spend your time working on a longer list of smaller keywords, there will be a lot less competition, and each one of those words will have a greater ROI.

This principle is summed up by “Aim for the moon, because even if you miss you can hit the stars”.

So, lets take a look at these keywords again:

For arguments sake, let’s say that you have 10 other types of cake recipes:

• Battenberg cake recipes
• Black Forest cake recipes
• Bundt cake recipes
• Birthday cake recipes
• Butter cake recipes
• Butterfly cake recipes
• Carrot cake recipes
• Cheesecake recipes
• Chocolate cake recipes
• Coffee cake recipes

Lets also say that each one of them has the same number of searches as ‘chocolate cake recipes’ (Some will be more, some will be less, but we are going for an average).

If you have a page up for each of the 10 keywords, each giving you 110000 searches per month, this will be approximately equal to the 1220000 searches for ‘cake recipes’:

With me so far?

This kind of thing isn’t just easier for you to do SEO on a website, it is also better for the people browsing.  If you have someone who is looking for a recipe to bake a cake, if they are doing searches on the Internet, here is what they will find:

The results which come up for ‘cake recipes’ are cooking programs for national TV, and well known chefs like Jamie Oliver, and Delia Smith.

The results for ‘Butterfly cake recipes’ are mainly showing recipes for butterfly cakes.

If you were looking to bake a cake, which set of results would you prefer to see?

Even if you don’t own a website, and are just a regular human being using the Internet, this exercise will help you realise that making your search more specific is a great way to get the information you actually want.

Enough with the cake – I just want to sell products.

Indeed.  So what this means for you is that rather than having one generic page which draws generic visitors, you can have much more specific pages which will be much more targeted to what you are selling, and what the visitors are looking for.  Because you can tailor each page to the visitors, you will be far more likely to convert these visitors into customers.

This kind of use of keyword research is absolutely vital if you don’t want to lose money either for natural or paid search.  The Google keyword tool or Bing keyword tool is a good place to start for keyword ideas, but don’t forget that there are many other options, and little time.

We have a wide variety of keyword research tools available, and are expert at setting up pages for these kinds of groups.  Contact us on ‘contact (at) global-hq.co.uk and we can go over your keyword ideas and how to make them suit your market better.