When discussing or researching SEO it is common to read about keywords, but the term itself can be misleading. While literally it means a single word keyword, in the majority of cases it us used to refer to keywords and keyphrases that include a string of several words. For an effective SEO campaign it is commonplace to look for keyphrases of two or more words because single word keywords are not only prohibitively competitive for most websites to rank well but they tend to generate much less effective traffic than more targeted keyphrases.

SEO Keyword Research

SEO keyword research provides a means of calculating the most profitable keywords. This means finding those keywords that are well targeted to your visitors and website, but are not impossibly competitive. By conducting keyword research, an SEO campaign can generate website visitors that are inclined to click links, read more pages, and convert to paying customers for you or your affiliate partners. The more targeted an SEO keyword, the more targeted the resulting visitor will prove to be.

Keyword Competition

Single word keywords are extremely competitive, in terms of the number and quality of sites that you would be forced to compete with. While SEO should always be considered an ongoing, long term source of traffic to a site, choosing less competitive and more targeted keywords will inevitably generate the better results. Those sites that appear at the top of the rankings for single word keywords will have been building links and generating high quality content for a number of years.

Link Building And Its Impact On SEO

Link building is the single most important part of a multi faceted SEO campaign. A lot of attention needs to be paid to garnering your website with quality, inbound links from relevant pages. Sites that have been actively partaking in their SEO campaigns will usually have managed to build a large portfolio of links making it difficult to compete in these markets. Without masses of resources to play catch up, competing for single word keywords can prove incredibly difficult.

Targeted Traffic Means Profitable Visitors

Regardless of the competitiveness of single word keywords, the chances are that they will not generate the kind of traffic that your website demands. Targeted visitors will click links, buy products, sign up for newsletters, and generally perform the desired actions of your web pages. In virtually all branches of online marketing the way to generate targeted traffic is to use targeted keywords or advertise on targeted websites. In SEO, both of these require accurate keyword research.

Targeted SEO Means Greater ROI

It’s been proven that when we are looking for something specific we use longer keywords that contain two or more words. In contrast, we use single word keywords when looking for very general information. More specifically, if we are looking to purchase a product or service we will instinctively use even longer strings in our search queries. Realistically, targeting single word keywords does not offer the same benefit as targeting a larger number of less competitive, more highly targeted keywords of two or more words in length.

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