Getting back to SEO, focusing on keywords

I believe that the most important step to get right in any SEO effort is to come up with the right set of keywords you want to focus on. Everything you do after that initial set of keywords will sink or swim based on how well you've done this step. Down the road you'll be optimizing this list and adjusting it based on real world results, but you need a solid foundation at the outset or you risk wasting a lot of time swimming in the wrong direction.

<warning>
This post is a bit rambling, as it is basically a lot of repetition and consolidation. Nonethless, it does cover a good amount of ground in coming up with your primary SEO keywords.
</warning>

I started this process by going back to my previous due diligence to find the most important keywords and phrases I had at that point:

• calling from
• international code(s)
• calling international
• international call(s)
• calling code(s)
• how to call from
• international dialing
• dialing code(s)
• dial international
• international dialing codes
• international phone calls
• international telephone
• call from usa
• calling uk

This list came from some very basic research, and should be a great starting point.

Refining the keywords

Walking through a number of SEO related bookmarks I've collected over the years, I started my refining process by hitting up the Seo Book Keyword Suggestion Tool. Plugging in the above keywords gave me some new keywords to consider:

• telephone country codes
• country code lookup
• country code(s)
• international dialing codes
• international calling codes
• country calling codes
  

Next up I ran all of the above keywords through the Free Keyword Suggestion Tool from Wordtracker. At this point I began to break out the single plural and singular cases (e.g. code vs. codes). After this process, I now have this as my definitive list of keywords (the number of estimated searches in parentheses):

• country codes (441)
• international dialing codes (236)
• telephone country codes (182)
• country code lookup (139)
• country code (128)
• international calling codes (118)
• international calling (101)
• list of country codes (68)
• international dialing (65)
• country phone codes (60)
• how do i make an international phone call (58)
• country calling codes (56)
• international country codes (56)
• country calling codes (55)
• international telephone codes (45)

I also signed up for a free 7 day trial of the paid Wordtracker to see how those results differed, which you can see below:


It turned out that the results I got (for my specific case) were very similar to the free version. There's a lot more you can do with the paid version, in maintaining your and tracking your data, but in my case this won't be necessary for a while. I was also happy to see that these results were very similar to the results from the Seo Book Keyword Tool (the previous step):


Now that I had a fairly solid set of keywords, sorted in order of estimated searches, I went back to the trusted Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Assuming you can trust it, this should tell you how many searches Google is seeing for phrases you provide, and searches like it:



Plugging in every keyword I've come up with up to this point, I now have the following list, sorted by average searches per month:

• country code (301k)
  
• country codes (110k)
  
• international calling (110k)
  
• international call (74k)
• international calls (74k)
• how to call from (60k)
• international dialing (40.5k)
• country phone code (18k)
• usa country code (18.1k)
  
• international calling codes (14.8k)
• international dialing codes (14.8k)
  
• international dialling codes (14.8k)
• calling country code (12.1k)
• country telephone code (12.1k)
• international dialing (12.1k)
• telephone country codes (12.1k)

At this point, I went back to the the Keyword Tools over at Seo Book to see what other goodies exist for me to play with.

<digression>
You'll notice there is no science to this process. It's a lot of back and forth, trial and error, refining and further refining. In the end, it's all a crapshoot that only makes sense in reverse.
</digression>

I first tried out Trellian's Free Search Term Suggestion Tool. Running through the keywords I've gathered, I have another list to play with:

• country codes (723)
• country code (409)
• international calling (389)
• international dialing codes (295)
• international dialling codes (234)
• international calling codes (192)
• international call (186)
• international country codes (129)
• telephone country codes (89)
• country calling codes (64)
• international dialing code (61)
• usa country code (54)
• country telephone codes (44)
• country telephone codes (32)
• list of country codes (14)

I then checked out Google AdWords Traffic Estimator, which really gave me no new information, other then how much I'd need to plan to spend if I were to use AdWords:


Next I tried out compete.com's free Search Analytics service to get an idea of what words are driving traffic to the competition. The conclusion from this research told me that I was mostly on target with with my keywords, though those sites are getting a lot of specialized niche searches (e.g. country codes russia). I'll focus on that down the road.

After all of this work, I've come up with two tiers of keyword phrases that I should be targeting SEO efforts at:

Tier 1:

• country codes
• country code
• international calling
• international dialing codes

Tier 2:

• telephone country codes
• international call
• how to call from

Down the road

A few other things I plan to check out down the road, once the foundations are in place and I'm getting some data to play with:

• http://www.wordze.com/ - No free trial, so I'll wait until things are looking promising, and I want to go further in coming up with the ideal keywords.
• https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal - Will keep coming back to this, especially the "Website content" feature, to gauge how well I'm targeting the keywords I need to focus on.
• http://tools.seobook.com/competitive-research-tools/ - For better competitive analysis as the site picks up steam.

Next on the agenda will be integrating these keywords into the site.