Statistics are useful for painting pictures, however, when it comes to keyword research, they can be a dangerous trap that leads you astray. Take the recent Hitwise report. It shows considerable growth in search activity with Bing increasing by 8% whilst Google and Yahoo shrunk by 1% each. This should not suggest you suddenly drop everything and concentrate on Bing. Their share is still only roughly 9%.

Keyword length is another area that many get tied in knots over. One, two and three word keywords are the most popular accounting for around 68% of all searches. Six, seven and eight word keywords increased by around 3-4% whilst the shorter (1, 2 or 3) remained stable or dropped a percentage point.

What should be noted is that these figures represent all searches. If you are an online retailer, for example, chances are your segment is only receiving a fraction of the total share market. These statistics may be representative of your niche; chances are they are not and should be taken with a grain of salt. They do paint a picture. Search activity is up and some segments are seeing a good increase. Sports is up 36% with News and Media up 22%. They are not retail, however (okay – some of the sports searches may be).

When it comes to keyword research, you have to look at your own market and determine keywords based on what potential customers are using in your niche. If that is four or five word keyword phrases then optimize your pages for those phrases. Don’t balk at them because of statistics. They are a generalization only and show general trends – your business has it’s own trends and that is where you need to focus your keyword research.

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 5:48 am and is filed under Keyword Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.