How To Do Keyword Research for Your Small Business Website Domain Names

There’s the free way using some nifty Google tools, or you can buy keyword research software.  I use paid keyword research software because it is more robust and faster. I’ll show you both free and paid keyword research techniques.

Free Keyword Research Tools – 3 Steps

Step 1:  Google Keyword Tool

Go to Google’s Keyword Tool.  At the top left you insert a starting keyword.  For Jones and Jones it might be Seattle Personal Injury Lawyers (for their personal injury microsite).

When you click “search” Google generates a list of similar (i.e. synonyms) keywords based on people who pay for Adwords (PPC).

Google Keyword Tool Search Results

You can then see the global monthly searches (average over preceding 12 months) and the local monthly searches (recent month).  Generally, if you’re doing geographic-based searches, the volume will be much less.

What I mean by geographic-based search is if you include a city or state (or province) in your search term, then the search volume will be lower.  But if your business is local, then you only wish to see the local search volume.
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Note: If you get an account with Google, then far more keyword results will list after signing in.  Once in the Keyword Tool, “Sign In” and then do your search again for a full list of results.

IMPORTANT

Large cities will be competitive for pretty much most industries and markets.  If you’re targeting large cities, you’ll need to use longer-tail keywords (longer phrases).

BUT, this is the beauty of the fleet concept for Web presence.  You can build sites targeting both large and small cities.  Most localized businesses target a surrounding business – so why not build sites targeting all the surrounding areas?  That’s what I do.

I prefer using EXACT search results.  The default that Google uses is “Broad” which means your keywords are found anywhere in a search, in any order with other words.  I like to see and base my decisions on the exact search people use – especially when researching for a domain name.

To switch to “Exact”, once you have generated list of keywords, scroll down and look for “Match Types” on the left column (see screenshot above).  There you can click “Exact” and the keyword list will regenerate.  You’ll see that the search volumes are much less, but now you know the volume for the exact search phrases.

If you want to see search volume in descending or ascending order, simply click the title at the top of the respective column.

To alphabetize the keyword column, click at the top of that column.

Keyword Research for Small Business is Relative

When you start your keyword research, you’ll have no idea what is ample search volume for your specific business for choosing a domain name.  Do numerous searches and drill down.  Input a variety of keywords to see the search volumes.

Get familiar with all your potential keywords.  Note down the keywords that are potential keywords for a microsite.  Remember, the higher the search volume, the higher (generally) the competition (see Step 3 below about assessing your competition).

Volume Figures

It’s impossible to say what kind of search volume is good.  Every business and location is different.  However, for local business search results, I’ll consider terms with as low as 5 to 30 searches each day (150 to 900 per month).

Put together a short list of 10 to 50 possible keywords.

NOTE: your sites will attract traffic from searches other than searches using your keywords.  In fact, if you build up your site, you’ll attract traffic from searches you never imagined.

A huge percentage of searches are unique and unknown.  This means the search volume figures are not indicative of the traffic you’ll necessarily get.

The next post in this series is Step 2 (of 3) in doing keyword research.

Related posts:

1. Free Small Business Marketing Guide – Entirely Online
2. How to Choose Domain Names for Your Small Business Websites