With the internet being such a big part of the world, it makes sense that it has become the biggest source for marketing a business and gathering information. Doing proper keyword research and analysis can make a huge difference on your website rankings, click through rate and potentially increase your sales.

First, we will explain what a keyword is. A keyword is a word or even a combination of words, used to identify what you are researching. Example: A mom is wanting to know more about homeschooling her teenager. She can simply go to any search engine and type in keywords like Homeschool or homeschool curriculum and find multiple websites related to this topic. Now if you are a person or business trying to market your product or service you want your website to pop up for those looking for your product or service. You want every opportunity to reach potential customers or even other businesses. Using the right keywords when optimizing your website could make the difference in whether you gain or lose a customer.

Now how do you get your website on the 1st page of search results? That is where keyword research and analysis comes in. Having the right keywords is vital to success in getting your website visible.

There are several tools that can help you determine the best and most effective keywords.

• Google AdWords keyword tool
• Google search based keyword tool
• Google insights
• Google keyword planner

These are just a few of the most popular tools available. There are tools on the market that are both free and those you will need to pay for.

When researching keywords, you want to be sure and use only keywords relevant to your business. You do not want to use overly broad phrases or keywords. One of the first things you should be looking into is the search volume. Search Volume is how many people search specific keyword per month. To get the optimum results of a Search Volume you need to be sure to use an exact match type, choose the correct geographical area, and take time to verify the last 12-month average given. Why verify? You want to verify because some tools round the numbers and we want the actual count. You want to be sure and look at Local Volume and Global volume of your keywords. The higher the search volume the more traffic your website will get once you rank in top10 for that specific keyword.

One thing you must keep in mind is who you are marketing to. If you are marketing business to business or business to customer, your keywords will more than likely be different. Also, your goals maybe different if you are doing business to business. For example, your goal maybe to offer a proposal, whereas in business to customer scenario your goal is more than likely immediate sales.

After you have gotten your data on your chosen keywords, you want to make yourself a graph showing the value of each keyword. In order to calculate this, you will take the average monthly Search Volume, that we discussed earlier, multiply it by the average click through rate (CTR) for the #1 ranking, and then multiply by the bid value that you got from Google planner.

You then will figure the keywords Match Type Ratio by dividing the broad match search volume of the keyword by the exact match search volume. By doing this you will be able to determine if the keyword is uniform or not. If you have a low match ratio it means there is little variation in the keyword search, but a high match ratio means the keyword search is less narrow and possibly ambiguous indicating the need for more search modifiers.

If a website has been around for a while you’ll be able to gather the information about:

• Current Keyword Ranking
• Potential Traffic Growth
• Google Search Analytics

The Current Keyword Ranking will help you understand how well your website performing within the search engines. The Potential Traffic Growth can be used as a tool for making choices on where you need to focus your keyword efforts for greater success. Last the Google Search Analytics can provide you with information about your current traffic, website engagement and user experience.

By using all of these tools to analyze keywords, you’ll be able to pick keywords that will help drive more traffic to your website and increase potential leads and sales.