Effective Keyword Research and Analysis

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Effective Keyword Research and Analysis is exactly the opposite of what you think.

In the 1980’s a Canadian psychologist Dr. Lee Pulos produced a book/audio tape that I luckily stumbled upon while perusing the many self-improvement books on the very wide shelves in your local book stores. This one was fascinating and original. I still remember and use what I learned from this brilliant book/audio tape about “The Qualities of High Performance People”. Thank you Dr. Pulos.

How is that related to SEO?

Dr. Pulos hit on an important, very “human” concept that translates to our business of Search Rank Analysis (tracking and reporting). The concept is simply obvious. Psychology studies the unhealthy. He proposed brilliantly, to instead study the successful!

In SEO we gravitate to what is wrong. We look at what is not working (unhealthy). Or we look at the keywords we DON’T RANK FOR. (everyone wants to rank for everything) Therein lies the nature of our human problem. Stop doing it backwards!

To be really successful, why not study what should work? A “healthy” approach to SEO is to start with the basic keywords/phrase that you MUST rank for. What is your Brand? What is your Business Name? What Products do you sell?

Then lets do the SHOULD RANK FOR keywords/phrase…I lost you. Wait…the SEO problem:

Let me present a small, insignificant, but simply great example. I am a mountain biker. My mountain bike needs frequent repairs. I like to fix things myself. When I need a part – and that means a very specific part (which is true for an unbelievably wide range of industries, right?) – searching online is an absolute disappointment when I’m trying to find the closest bike shop that stocks my part something. No. I dont want to buy on eBay and Im not alone! (OK this is a hyperlocal SEO story that I could have mentioned in the first sentence – but this is still a relevant method for non-local SEO as well)

A hyperlocal SEO solution in a nutshell:

Lets first organize our marketing effort in a healthy way. First we need the keywords we MUST rank for – then those keywords we SHOULD rank for. We then optimize simply and accordingly. Everything else will follow in an almost zen-like way. Well it does for me.

If you get this concept, your online marketing campaigns should become almost effortless in comparison to the “conventional method” where you start with what you “want”.