Judging Keyword Value

If you are planning an expensive and time-consuming SEO campaign, you can’t take chances with low quality keywords. Instead, you should attempt to start judging keyword value far in advance of publishing, so that every keyword and article ordered will bring you ROI and boost your traffic. The question is; how do you go about judging keyword value? Is it as simple as doing keyword research?

In order to truly discern how valuable a keyword is, and if it is worth paying for, you must gather as much data as possible. This not only includes keyword research as regards volume, but also the level of difficulty (as in the competition), as well as popular variations of keywords. It is also prudent to analyze keywords being used by your competitors, and to research your targeted audience’s behavior. After you gather data, you must create a hypothesis as regards what works for your key wording strategy, and then test the results.

It’s fairly easy to analyze the worth of a keyword when you’re discussing domains and URLs. In fact, this is one of the top five primary factors employed by major search engines today when determining rank. Some domains benefit from popular keywords, and some domains actually carry along loads of old traffic. Expired domains can still be worth thousands of dollars, as they still have lots of traffic coming in. In this case, it’s not just the word, but the brand (the name and personality of the site) that is worth a lot of money.

You also have to consider how relevant the keyword is to your audience. “Targeted” keywords may be worth more than just popular keywords alone to some companies, as they represent a higher likelihood of sales or click through rates. Rather than simply relying on keyword research tools, it might be smart to search for the phrase in a search engine and take note of the results. The more ads you see for PPC companies and other sponsored results, the more you can see the keywords are worth.

After you analyze this data, you must make an educated guess about the value of the keyword based on the value of one customer coming to your site. The easiest formula is to compare the total impressions with the total of click through visitors, with customer conversions. Thus, from 5,000 impressions you received 100 visitors, and three purchases. So roughly, the keyword is worth about $3.

Keywords are always “valuable” as they are the magical potions that sell products and services!