Use Keyword Research to Evaluate Keyword Phrases for a Web Page of my Local Business: SEO Advice Part 1

How do I use keyword research to evaluate potential keyword phrases for a web page of my locally-focused business?

I asked local SEO consultant Miriam Ellis to help me choose the best keyword phrases for the Chicago management consulting page of my nonprofit’s Chicago-focused website, www.SCOREChicago.org.

In this post, the first in a series of four, she advises me by asking three questions to help me analyze various keyword phrases.

(In the next post, Miriam helps me evaluate competitors for keyword phrases.  In the third, she recommends principles to select the best keyword phrase.  In the final post, she instructs me on how to use local terms, like city names, to tell the search engines that this page relates to a local market.)

MIRIAM: (1) How Do Your Customers and Prospects Ask for this Page’s Services and Products?

This is a time to draw on your hands-on experience. When people are looking for SCORE’s consulting service and you speak to them, what do they call it? Do they say, “I need free business advice”, “I need free small business advice”, “I need free business counseling”, “I need small business counseling”, or maybe “I need a business counselor”. Make a list of the terms your experience dictates that your customers and prospects use.

PEG: The consulting team believes prospects would use terms like “management consulting,”  “business management consulting” or “small business consulting.”

To identify phrases that website visitors to our consulting page have have actually used to land there, I also went to our Google Analytics account to create a list of entrance keywords for the page.  Here are the top ones:

Based on this analysis, I’m adding keyword phrases like “small business consultant,” “business consulting firms,” and “Chicago consulting firms” to the list of potential phrases.

MIRIAM:  (2) Are You Right about those Keywords?

To find out how many searchers use those keywords and phrases, go to a keyword tool. I recommend using Google AdWords External Keyword Tool.  Type in the various terms.

PEG: Here’s the data Google is showing for global monthly search volume for several of my keyword phrases.

management consulting:  246,000
small business consulting: 27,100
business management consulting: 27,100
business consulting firms: 4,400
small business consulting services: 1,600

In this small sample, ‘management consulting”‘ comes out on top as the most searched-for term in our short list.

MIRIAM:  (3) Can You Compete for those Keywords?

Now go to Google.com and do some “allintitle” searches to see how many pages with these phrases in their “title tags” Google has in its index.

A page’s title tag is the website code that describes your page’s title to search engines.  It appears in the upper left hand corner of your browser window.  This is the code snippet that Google most commonly uses as the first line in your search engine listing, in search results.

The title tag should not be confused with the main heading in the text of your page. You may choose to make your title tag and main page heading the same, or, they can be different. At any rate, the title tag is widely considered to be the strongest element on any page for informing Google as to the focus of that page.

To do an allintitle search, just type in a phrase like this into Google’s search box (do not use quotes):

allintitle: small business consulting

Look at the blue bar running below the search box, right above the AdWords column, and you will see the number of allintitle results for each term.  This gives you top competitors for the keyword phrase.

We are looking for phrases that got the highest number in search volume/traffic and the lowest number in competitive websites using those keyword phrases.

PEG: Here’s the same list, where I add the allintitle results in red, showing keyword competition in conjunction with search volume, in orange:

management consulting:  246,000 global search volume — 4,320,000 competition
small business consulting: 27,100 global search volume — 133,000 competition
business management consulting: 27,100 global search volume — 411,000 competition
business consulting firms: 4,400 global search volume — 9,490 competition
small business consulting services: 1,600 global search volume — 10,300 competition

And these are the ratios I computed.

management consulting:  .06
small business consulting: .20
business management consulting: .07
business consulting firms: .47
small business consulting services: .16

In the second post of this series, local SEO consultant Miriam Ellis gives me advice on how to evaluate the competitive websites for my high-ranking keyword phrases.

RELATED POSTS IN THIS SERIES

Evaluate the Strength of My Website Competition for Keywords:  SEO Advice Part 2
Choose One Best Keyword Phrase for a Web Page:  SEO Advice Part 3
Select the Best Local Keywords for a Web Page of a Local Business: SEO Advice Part 4