There are four major traps you can fall into with keyword research:

Mistake #1: Skip it altogether.

This is a really, really bad idea.

Mistake #2: Look at your neighbor’s paper.

You can tell from the wording that this will be a mistake – and for some of the same reasons this isn’t a good idea in school, either. It happens, though. A business owner decides it’s time to get busy online and hears something about keywords being important. They go to their competitor’s website and do some poking around to discover what keywords that guy’s going after. That guy seems smart enough, so the keywords are probably good.

Trouble is, you don’t know how he got his keywords or whether they’re performing well. You’re going to be spending a lot of time trying to get Google to associate these keywords with your website; it would be a shame to chase after keywords that stink. Worse yet, you’ll be competing with that guy for these keywords – and if they stink, it’s an even bigger loss.

Mistake #3: Forget to actually use them.

Sounds crazy, but even after compiling a list of great keywords, some people just file the list away and forget to actually use what they’ve learned. It’s like custom-crafting fine marble tiles and then using a cheap laminate for your kitchen instead. You’ll want to refer to your list of great keywords constantly as you work on marketing your site.

Mistake #4: Only do your keyword research once.

Doing keyword research the right way is an ongoing process. It’s not something you can do just once and then cross it off of your to-do list forever. There are a couple of reasons for this.

Chances are, your business is multi-faceted and there are multiple ways people might go looking for your products and services online. There are multiple angles you could pursue as far as your keywords go, and it’s unlikely you will be able to go after all of them exhaustively in one attempt.

For example, consider a dental practice that’s looking to use the Internet to get more patients. Depending on what sort of specialties the dentist has, it might work to go after pain-free dental treatment, pediatric dental, restorative or cosmetic dental services, or even sedation dentistry. There are hundreds of keywords that could work for each of these niches. Doing exhaustive research on each of them could take weeks.

Rather than trying to get all of your keyword research done at one time, it’s a better idea to do thorough research on one particular part of your business and then come back and add another part later. Otherwise, you may never get past the research stage, which is useless on its own.

Another reason you’ll need to revisit your keyword research is changes in your industry or individual business. Again, for dentists, if you get advanced training on a new procedure and want to market your new service online, you’ll need to know how people are searching for that procedure. The same holds true if you get new equipment, a new product line, or some sort of new technology that
people are looking for. As conditions and offerings change in your business, you’ll want to be sure your online presence connects with the changing way prospective customers look for you.