The Continuing Story of Keyword Research

At the beginning of every SEO campaign, keywords and phrases are researched for targeting traffic and rankings. Most campaigns conduct very thorough research, slaving endless hours over Google’s Keyword Tool and mentally battling over whether to pluralize or not to pluralize. In the end, a small but significant list of keywords are optimized for a website with the intention of increasing targeted traffic, search engine rankings, and the always infamous return on investment. But is keyword research a one-time event or an continuing process for your campaign?

Keyword research is a crucial process in SEO, but many campaigns do the necessary research and, once the campaign is launched, utilize the same keywords throughout the duration of the site’s life. Keyword research should be a continuing process. What is popular today many not be popular next year. Maybe you are not in an industry where change happens too often and that is understandable. But the language around your industry may evolve as society evolves around it. What may be the popular term for winter blankets a few years ago certainly didn’t include “snuggy”. My point is that almost no business has complete control over the conversation around their niche. It is better to be adaptable than to go the way of the dodo.

If you stay on top of what is popular today in terms of what people are typing into the search engines, you’ll be in control of your own destiny when a terminology shift occurs in your industry. If your SEO campaign reacts to the market and re-evaluates keywords every few months, your search engine optimization will always be optimized in the truest sense.