Like a foundation for a building, there is one aspect of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that is more important than any other. Without this foundation, you may be wasting all your time and resources. Proper keyword research should be the basis of your optimization.

Keyword research is the practice used by SEO professionals to find actual “search terms” people tend to enter into the search engines when conducting a search for a specific thing. Keyword research is a very vital procedure in SEO. It’s where search engine optimization starts.

Keyword research determines which keywords you should be targeting with the SEO. Most people think that they know which keywords they should target. Instinct can be a great resource, but it can also be misleading and is almost always not enough. For example, “search engine optimization” gets an estimated 16,000 searches a day while “search engine marketing” gets an estimated 8,800 searches a day. If your gut tells you to target “search engine marketing”, you may get great rankings, but it would only get you half of the traffic that you could have had if you had targeted and ranked well for “search engine optimization”. There are also keywords that you may not be able to rank well for without a lot of time and significant amount of link building regardless of how well you optimize your site. In addition, there are keywords that other people will use to search for what your site offers that you would never even think of. So, in addition to letting you know which keywords are more popular, the research can also provide new keywords to target.

Drawing on the analogy in our search marketing parable, optimizing your website without first doing keyword research is like trying to pick apples from a tree without first checking to see if there are any apples on it or if the apples are within your reach. You could end up putting in a lot of effort but going home with little fruit from your labor. So it’s a key component of search engine optimization.

Without good keyword research, your search engine optimization efforts will be like firing a gun into the dark. You may hit something, you may not. You may choose keywords that are not searched for or keywords that are way too competitive for your site at that time. It’s best to know what you need to be targeting.

Related posts:

1. 4 SEO Mistakes You Must Avoid

One Response to “Why is Keyword Research Critical To SEO?”

1. Web Design Hyderabad says:

   November 15, 2009 at 11:26 am

   Nice post !
   would you write article for our seo blog ?
   http://www.localseo1.com , please let me know thru my website contact form

   cheers, Josh