Research
Keywords and Keyword phrases
A practical example
Let’s say you are a British Shorthair cat breeder located in Los Angeles. You sell pet-quality pedigree kittens to regular folks and show-quality kittens to other breeders. You also provide breeding services to reputable breeders, and your website has an informative section on cat color genetics.
It’s clear that you have at least two distinct audiences:
- cat lovers looking to buy a kitten of a specific breed and color;
- cat breeders looking to buy kittens for show and breeding purposes, or retain your breeding services.
Piper: British Blue
It’s fairly common for a website to address different audiences in part or most of its pages. You need to assess who the content is for, and choose your keywords for a specific page based on that.
Do the people in the first group speak breederese? Will they search for “British Shorthair” and refer to specific colors and patterns as “blue”, “silver spotted”, and “shaded”, or will they use vernacular expressions such as “gray”, “tabby”, and “white with dark tips”?
Addressing the people in the second group is easier. They are breeders like you, and use the same lingo. You still need to do your homework, though, to determine which keywords and phrases are most likely to be effective for them.
Let's run a few keyword phrases on Google and see how many results they turn up.
Kelvin: Silver Tabby
british blue (3,600,000)
british shorthair (53,100)
british short hair (654,000)
british blue cat breeders (60,200)
british blue kittens breeders (29,300)
british blue breeders (47,300)
british blue breeder (25,400)
british blue shorthair breeders (12,000)
british blue shorthair cats breeders (11,500)
british blue short hair cats breeders (41,100)
british short hair cats breeders (44,500)
british short hair cats silver tabby breeders (1,830)
british short hair cats silver classic tabby breeders (785)
los angeles british short hair cats silver classic tabby breeders (216)
british short hair cats silver classic tabby breeders los angeles (801)
california british short hair cats silver classic tabby breeders (339)
british blue cats sires queens breeders (39)
british blue cats queens (47,900)
british blue cats sires (1,440)
british blue shorthair cats sires (57)
british blue short hair cats sires (742)
british blue short hair cats pedigree (3,090)
british blue short hair cats pedigreed (490)
british blue short hair cats CFA (4,250)
CFA british blue short hair cats (4,210)
What can we infer from this partial experiment?
- “Breeders” gets you more results than “breeder”.
- Word order matters, so try different word order combinations for the same keyword phrase.
- Sire is a relatively uncommon word, so it might be useful in specific pages for breeders.
Note: I used American spelling here. Obviously, if you were targeting an international audience, you’d want to adjust your spelling accordingly.
Now, let's use the Overture keyword suggestion tool to see how people go about looking for cat breeders.
Search = "british shorthair breeders"
british short hair breeders (156)
british short hair cat breeders (30)
Search = "british shorthair"
british short hair (1507)
british short hair cat (1051)
british short hair kitten (181)
british short hair breeders (156)
blue british cat hair short (96)
blue british hair short (75)
british cat hair sale short (69)
british short hair cat breeders (30)
british hair sale short (29)
british hair rescue short (28)
british hair kitten sale short (26)
Search = "cat breeders"
Too long a list to copy here. The gist of it is that people looking for cat breeders use the phrase "cat breeders" in addition to the name of the breed and the location of interest. Also, they are ten times more likely to use the plural (breeders vs. breeder).
As we saw in Google, "short hair" is used much more than "shorthair". My hunch is that audience (a) is more likely to type “short hair” and audience (b) is more likely to type “shorthair”.
So, what decisions can you make based on these few observations?
Hey, you're the breeder. You figure it out!
The bottom line is—get the facts, so you can make an informed decision.
