Keyword Analysis Factors

How do you know which keywords are the best to target?

I think this is one of the most under-covered topics in SEO. There are many articles about how to do keyword research, that is how to get the data, but very few articles discuss how to analyse that data and actually select the keywords to target. There are three main factors to consider when selecting target keywords:

• Search Traffic- How often the keyword is searched for.
• Competition- How strong the competition for that keyword is, ie. how hard it will be to rank well for the keyword.
• Commercial Value- How likely is it that people who use the keyword will buy something from you.

For each analysis factor there are a number of pieces of data to evaluate, they are listed below. There are many different opinions in the industry about which data points are the best indicators to look at when analysing keywords. I will be covering each of the keyword analysis factors in articles over the coming weeks.

Search Traffic

• Broad match searches
• Phrase match searches
• Exact match searches
• Search trends
• SEO Traffic
• Phrase to Broad match ratio
  

Competition

• Number of results in Google (.com.au for Australia) for the keyword
• Number of results in Google for the keyword in quotes
• Number of results in Google that contain the keyword in the title
• Strength of the first page of results in Google, looking at:
• Domain age
  
• PageRank
• Incoming links to the page
• Incoming links to the domain
• Incoming links from .edu and .gov domains
  
• Existence of the keywords in the title, header, description and url
  

Commercial Value

• Adwords Cost per Click
• The number of words in the phrase
• The existence of money words such as 'buy'
• A subjective analysis of relevancy
• A subjective analysis of focus
• SEO Value