The need to re-tune keywords is something that every business will come across sooner or later, whether it is in a small way or a big one. Most businesses will encounter this quite some time after their site is first optimised. Industries change, tags change, and the keywords you used to rank for have gone out of fashion.

This can be guarded against by regular analysis of a site’s stats and tracking changes in the industry, and is just one of the reasons to keep an SEO expert on board. You can talk to us at SEO Consult about continued SEO analysis. Sometimes, however, a keyword will be off track from the beginning, and this will need to be detected and altered within the first few weeks after initial optimisation.

Monitoring the success of keywords is one of the things which can’t really be done until your site is optimised and live. The main keywords for your search engine optimisation campaign might have been carefully chosen after weeks of thorough research, but it is only after the site has been re-launched that you can tell how effective your keywords are.

The effectiveness of your keywords can be measured in at least two ways. The first, and most noticeable, is traffic. If your keywords are boosting your ranking and your traffic, they could be considered to be doing their job. Traffic, however, isn’t the only outcome SEO should aim for when it comes to your business. The other effect keywords should have is conversions. If users are being drawn to your site but not benefiting your business, time spent on search engine optimisation is pretty much wasted.

Sometimes it’s the unexpected keywords that produce results. For example, a computer repairs site used the key phrase ‘computer repair services’ as the main keyword for their home page, with ‘computer repairs’ as the secondary phrase. This approach seemed logical at the time, but after a few weeks of testing the secondary phrase produced more traffic and ultimately more results.

More traffic doesn’t always produce more results, however. A good SEO plan should increase your traffic, but if it doesn’t take the aims of your business into account it may turn away as many users as it attracts. Some of the issues that are at the heart of a high traffic/low conversion rate problem are mis-focussed keywords, incorrect target user analysis and poor internal structure. The last of these is an internal problem that can be resolved with a little tweaking, but the first two may require a rethink of the expectations your keywords may be nurturing in users.

The period after your freshly optimised site is launched should be used in developing an analysis of your statistics. It is important to define exactly what a conversion is for your site, and to lay out structures for analysing the behaviours of your target groups. When analysing your stats, be prepared for the possibility that your keywords may need altering. Sometimes a little tweak is all you need to increase your site’s profitability exponentially.

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Tags: Keywords, Search Engine Optimisation, seo, Statistics

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Keyword Research and Search Engine Optimisation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.