SEO Tips: Do Keyword Research BEFORE You Launch a New Website

Just a quick post today on the importance of doing SEO and keyword discovery BEFORE you launch a new business or website.

In the new data-driven world that we live in, you can find out what people are searching for on Google, Yahoo and elsewhere before you decide what to call your website and what content to put on it.

Why do keyword research first?

Because you can tap into what people are already doing online. In other words, if you know that 5000 people per day are searching for a particular keyword phrase that is relevant to your product or service, you want to know that BEFORE you launch, right? If you can design a page specifically targeted to that group’s wants and needs, you have a better chance of turning them into customers.

To put it metaphorically: Find out where the fish are biting and drop your line in that pond.

Keywords to SEO

Once you have an idea of the search terms (often called “keywords”) that people are using, you can design a webpage that will bring them directly to you, rather than simply hoping they will find you through word of mouth, social media, pay-per-click or some other means.

A quick and easy way to begin is to use a Free Keyword Tool that will give you a rough idea of how often people search for a given term. Do a search, look at the entire cluster of results and ask yourself:

“When a person types this phrase into google what are they looking for?”

If the phrase seems useful to your business or service, then make a note of it, and find other phrases that might also indicate a need for what you do. Once you have a sample of words and phrases, you have a basic idea into the mind of your particular market. You can hire an SEO to verify your intuitions, to dig deeper if necessary, and then design website content and programming that that will be compelling to both your end user and to the search engines….