The ABC of SEO - Step 1 - Do Your Research!

I had an interesting meeting this morning with a great company - they're extremely clued up on their product and understand the value of SEO.

They're doing the right thing by talking to a few agencies and having PPC training - they beat themselves up terribly as they feel they don't know enough but in my view, they're way ahead of most similar sized companies in that they're open minded and eager to understand SEO to a level where they can make business decisions about the search strategy.

They recently had some PPC training (from another agency) and it never ceases to amaze me that many, many agencies still talk about keywords without understanding if there's any search volume (or demand, if you prefer) for that particular keyword.

What is the point of ranking for a keyword that no-one searches for? It beggars belief that a search agency would suggest ranking for, as an example, "Apple iPad case Derby" when there's absolutely no search volume for that search term.

The single most important aspect of search marketing is understanding which keywords are relevant to your business. You could spend months, years and thousands of pounds ranking for a keyword that has absolutely no value! It's no different to having an advert in a magazine that has a circulation of zero.

We conduct this keyword research as a matter of course before we have any strategic conversations with our customers - without it, we're completely in the dark as to the size of the market, the competitiveness and so on.