How to perform effective keyword research

Keyword research is the foundation of any search marketing campaign: paid or organic. I’ve spent some time discussing the benefits and practical uses of search marketing, so now I’d like to go back to the basics and show you how to actually do the keyword research.

Your goal is to find a list of terms that is:

1) Relevant to your hotel

2) Popular with searchers (potential guests)

3) Obtainable in your competitive space

In my experience, the best way to do this is with a 2-step approach.

Begin with brainstorming. As Alicia wrote earlier this week, you want to get everyone involved: from your General Manager to your front desk staff. What words describe your hotel? your guests? your experience? Come up with as many terms as you can.

Next, get technical. Use keyword research tools to determine which terms are popular and how competitive the market is for them. In a future post, I’ll share the best keyword research tools, but to begin try using Google’s free keyword tool.

Enter your keywords into the box, and click the button to get suggestions. Using the controls, you can sort by search volume (popularity) and how strong the competition (in PPC) is.

Example of Google keyword search

You will need this information in the future, so open up a spreadsheet where you can save your research. Organize the terms by categories – “keyword themes.” Under each theme, put your longer, 2-4+ word phrases. In this example, if “San Francisco Hotel” is one of our themes, we would place longer phrases underneath it:

Example of keyword theme spreadsheet

The final result will be very useful in your search marketing campaign. For organic optimization, use one keyword theme for each page. For paid search marketing, you’ll want to create a new ad group for each theme.