The SEO community is a hive of debate. Sometimes it seems that you can’t get SEO experts to agree on all the fundamental questions. It may seem that no sooner does one expert publish their solution to a knotty SEO problem than another launches a reply, denouncing the foolishness of such a simple answer. It can appear that you will find a passionate supporter for every SEO technique somewhere in the community, and not too far away will be a passionate opponent.

So it is at risk of inciting a riot that this article concentrates on keyword research as the most crucial element of search engine optimisation.

There are many important elements of SEO. There isn’t a single technique that will provide a quality boost for your ranking on its own. Nothing about SEO works as a wonder drug. However, keyword research has a huge impact on the path the rest of your SEO campaign will take. In fact, it can have a huge impact on your business full stop.

The reason keyword research is so important is because it’s about more than search engine behaviour. Keywords are the most solid evidence you can find when researching the way your users think. Even extensive user surveys won’t be quite as reliable as the information people give out when they’re not aware of being watched. While your users may tell you that they come to you for quality service or bargain prices, keywords will tell you that they come to you when they’re bored or that they come to you only when they’re after something very specific. Sometimes, keyword research can tell you that your users aren’t who you thought they were.

Keyword research should be a foundation stone for your SEO campaign. In a thorough campaign, it should come in even before site design is considered. This is because keywords can help you structure your site so that it’s the most effective. Your keywords can tell you how your users group different terms, allowing you to set related pages near each other and to set up paths. This can allow you to more easily steer users when they do arrive on your site.

The keyword research stage can also set the form for the rest of your SEO campaign. For example, if you find that your users tend to use long-tail keywords in their searches, you will have to include many specifically-optimised pages to target those long phrases. At the same time, the relative lack of competition may mean that you can afford to compete on ten or twenty phrases, rather than the one or two high-competition keywords you originally focussed on. You can talk to us at SEO Consult about optimising for short or longtail keywords.

Keyword research can affect your whole online personality. Businesses have been known to change their angle of attack after finding that their target users are more professional or more relaxed than they thought. This leads to the whole personality of a site being altered to better suit the user and can affect the type of content you go for later down the track.

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