Keyword Research and Competitor Analysis for Better SEO Results

Keyword research is the salient part of online marketing because success in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) widely depends on it. Wrong keywords may drive you high volume of traffic to your website but it will not increase your conversion rate which is not acceptable at all. To make your online marketing campaign profitable, you need to put strenuous attention on keyword research.
Moreover, the importance of keyword research has increased after the rolling out of  Google Panda 4.1 and Penguin 3.0 update. If you want to make a good SEO strategy, you should learn keyword research thoroughly.

Table of Contents

• How to Do Effective Keyword Research ?
• How To Do Online Competitor Research ?
• What is Online Competitor Research ?
• Online Competitor Research Strategy
• Check Website
• Steal Their backlink
• Check Brand Value

How to Do Effective Keyword Research ?

There are various keyword research tools but all tools are not good. Some tools are free and some are exclusive. Google Adwords Keyword Planner is one of the most popular and widely used keyword research tools. Moreover, it is free. Today, I am going to tell you how to do effective keyword research to gain success in SEO.
There are three factors which you should use to select a keyword. The factors are-

• Average Monthly Search Volume
• Competition
• Competitors

Most keyword research experts put more emphasis on keyword competition and search volume. It goes without saying that search volume and competition are important. If you choose a keyword with high search volume and competition, you may not generate traffic by optimizing your site for the keyword because the keyword has high search volume but its competition is very high. As a result, you can’t achieve good ranking in Search Engine and lose your traffic. So, when you choose keywords for your SEO campaign, you should muster those keywords which have low to medium competition and acceptable amount of search volume.

For example, you choose ‘Web Design’ as your keywords for SEO campaign which has high competition with 165000 monthly search volume. You will get this volume of traffic when you rank in top 5 on Google for targeted keyword but as a matter of fact, the possibility of gaining this ranking for the keyword is very low. Moreover, this keyword will not ensure you driving targeted traffic at all. You had better choose ‘affordable web design service’, ‘Professional web design service’, ‘Custom web design service’ as your keywords because those keywords have medium completion and drive you targeted traffic who are really looking for a web design service.
In this way, you should a make a list of keywords at first. Now you need to decide for which keywords you should work at first. To run down the size of your keyword list, you should use third factor which is called suggested bid.
Suggested bid is estimated based on the cost-per-click which an advertiser needs to pay Google for a keyword for each click. For suggested bid, you will get a deeper idea about the competition. The keywords which competition is very high, its suggested bid will be also high. So it can be said beyond all doubt that we need to optimize those keywords from our list which have low suggested bid.

How To Do Online Competitor Research ?

Competitor research is the most important part for online marketing because you need to find your competitors’ weak and strong point to beat him. Therefore, you need to do deep competitor analysis. It is true that doing competitor research is not an easy task and it becomes more difficult on internet. If you use proper tools and strategic way, you can transform the hard task into easy task. So, I am going to tell you the secret of doing competitor research.

What is Online Competitor Research ?

Online Competitor Research is a survey about your competitor’s activity in the online market. Through this survey, you will find out that how much your competitor is active on internet marketing, how much they are spending for online advertising and what types of marketing methods they are applying. When you get all information about your competitor you can design your marketing strategy.

Online Competitor Research Strategy

I don’t want to waste you by telling too many theories. I am going to tell you what you need to do.

Check Website

Everyone check competitors’ websites to do competitor research and fail to do actual work. When you check your competitor’s website, you must know what you are looking for in his/her website. At first, you need to check the strategy of communication with people. Some websites post a video on their homepage and giving visitors a short and quick description about their company and service. Why do they do this? Well, video has huge influence on a man. Most of the time, people like to watch video instead of reading a content. Some websites post useful content to attract people. People don’t like to read content but sometimes they read useful content which solve their various problem. You need to check which method has been followed by your competitor
Secondly, you need to check onpage SEO condition of your competitor. It means you need to check its title tag, meta tag, alt tag, sitemap, robots.txt etc. These are very important to rank well in search engine and get organic traffic

Steal Their backlink

Backlinks are always play a vital role in search engine ranking. So, you need to find your competitors backlink. There are so many online tools which will provide you backlinks of your competitor. Some tools are free and some are premium. Premium tools have extra feature which will help you to analyze your competitor backlink.

Check Brand Value

Some competitor emphasize on create a brand value rather than improve search engine ranking. They use social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest etc. effectively to gain traffic and create a brand value. They do marketing their products, services and web contents through social networking websites. Some websites also use YouTube marketing and online advertising.