The SEO Keyword Research Series – Part Six ‘The ‘Key’ Word is Traffic?' In Part five of the SEO Keyword Research Series we looked at 'Is this Keyword Commercially Viable?’ This showed you how to measure whether your keyword is commercially a good enough for your site. The fourth important ‘Key ‘element considers if the keyword or phrase will provide you with the suitable levels of traffic to your business. After all, if you do not get the traffic then you will never make the sales you want. Each keyword or phrase generates a different level of traffic. Some will provide a high level whilst others will provide a low level. Unfortunately, over 90% of keywords have almost insignificant levels of traffic to them. Additionally, people will pick random keywords for their site when they first establish resulting in poor traffic levels. It is therefore important that you find the right keywords to ensure that you do get the traffic. Few people fully realise the difference between finishing first and seventh on the first page of Google. The majority of people will choose to pick the number one ranked site. Less people will choose to pick the other websites on that page. The breakdown is as follows: • • • • • • •
Number 1 – 42% Number 2 – 12% Number 3 – 8% Number 4 – 6% Number 5 – 5% Number 6 – 4% Number 7 – 3%
So, how do you measure the amount of potential traffic you will receive from a keyword? This is relatively easy to do through Google Adwords. Here you can add the keyword or phrase and then hit search. This will show you how many searches are completed on a particular keyword or phrase OR derivatives of those keywords. You can then change the search criteria depending on the geographical requirements or competition levels. You could then work out how many hits a keyword could produce if you were number one on the search results page. For example, say you were selling camping stoves. Globally there are 18,100 monthly searches for ‘camping stoves’. If you were number one on the search for this you would receive 42% of that number. This is over 7600 hits. If you were fourth you would get 4% of the traffic which equates to approximately 724 hits. This is a massive change of 1049%. Alternatively, there are 49,500 global searches for ‘stoves camping’. These are the same two words in teh opposite order but could improve your traffic by over 273%. You can see how using this tool could prove useful in assessing which keywords are ‘key’ to you generating targeted traffic. Additionally, there are software packages that you buy that will provide the information you require although it may be beneficial to manually do this initially. I hope you can see that this, in conjunction with the other three ‘key’ elements, is essential for you get the ranking and success you require in your online business. Thank you for reading and good luck. Jon-Marc