Keyword Research is a term utilized frequently by search engine optimizers. It’s a process where analysis and research are done to find out possible search engine keywords that you’d like your website to rank well for. This is especially important for an area like Pittsburgh.
You might think, well I know what words/phrases I want to target with my website. But what is important to understand is that some keywords just don’t get searched very often in search engines and therefore are not the best choice to target your site for. That’s why research and analysis should be done on a website. As well, you have to take into consideration what the competition for that keyword is. If it’s too tough then your site might not have a chance at getting ranked in there right away and you might be better off starting out on a term with less competition.
Okay, so we now know that keyword research is important and should be done, how does this relate to Pittsburgh? Well in Pittsburgh and the surrounding area we have a number of sub-locations. Such as Natrona Heights, Allegheny county, Butler county (just North of Pittsburgh), Mckees Rocks, etc… Each of these locations can be targeted as part of your keywords.
So how do we go about doing that? There are several ways to attack it. What seems to work best is to find out more specific keywords from general keywords and then determine which has the best traffic for the least amount of competition. There are several tools out there that can be used to do this.
Read More: Details About Pittsburgh Internet Marketing
Pittsburgh – Helpful Tools For Keyword Research
I’ve listed a few tools that will help in going keyword research. Even if you’re not a search engine expert you can use these tools and take a look yourself. Generality the tools are very simple to use.
1. One of those easy tools is Wordtracker. It’s a simple tool to use and what it does is give you suggestions as to possible keywords you might want to use from a generic keyword you enter in. Also, it gives you an estimated average search volume for the keyword suggestions. So for our use, it’s a two-in-one tool.
2. Another great tool is Google’s AdWords tool. It operates similarly to the Wordtracker tool except it gives you data directly from Google. It’s probably a good time for me to add that the Google tool only looks at searches on Google and the Wordtracker tool only looks at searches done on some smaller search engines and then estimates what the traffic would be on the major search engines. With that said you’ll want to keep that in mind when looking at the data, they give you.
3. On to the last tool I’d like to mention. It’s the Google toolbar with the PageRank meter. PageRank, if you’re not familiar with this term is an arbitrary score (0-10) that Google assigns to a website based on how many people are linking to that website or web page. The higher the score, the more people are linking to your site. But wait there is another twist to the PageRank score each link that goes to a site only counts as much as the rank they have. So if you have 2 for your PageRank and link to another site, the link to them is less in weight compared to someone who links to them from a PageRank 5 web page. Links are important as search engines evaluate them as a sort of popularity vote for a website or web page. Well, hope you understand that now, let’s get back to this tool. The tool shows you the PageRank for each site in the green meter bar. A way to use this tool is to search for a keyword you’re interested in targeting your site for and then view each of the pages in the search results checking out their PageRank. Then compare your findings to the website or web page you want to rank. It should give you an idea of how well you’ll do – as far as the linking factor goes.
Now specifically in Pittsburgh, you can use these tools by looking up keywords in WordTracker or Google AdWords tool using the keyword Pittsburgh or one of the sub-locations or surrounding areas such as Butler county or Mckees Rocks. For example, try researching the search term “car dealer in Pittsburgh”. You might find that “dealers” with the “S” on the end gets more searches and therefore might be a better keyword for a car dealer’s website in the Pittsburgh area.
Read More: Advantages of Airline E-Tickets
Well, there are lots of other tools and factors that should be looked at but these will give you a basic overview so that someone that’s not an expert can get some kind of intimation as to what keywords would be good for their website.
