Keyword research is the cornerstone of your SEO campaign and this is the end goal for most marketers. Social media marketing, content marketing, banner advertising and many other forms of marketing are the best ways to increase conversions. This can mean the difference in large numbers of subscribers to your site, blog, newsletter or signing up for a free trial. Even though metrics may vary, the end results are usually the same — more conversions.

Specific keyword can directly impact the kind of search phrases your site gets pulled into and influences more targeted visitors to your site.

Choosing and testing variable keywords can be a bit time consuming, but in the long run it’s well worth taking your time.

Example: “dog accessories” is a large and very general keyword search. “hand-woven dog collars”, on the other hand, becomes quite specific. This gives targeted searchers exactly what they are looking for.

The best way to decide which keyword work best on your site is to check your conversion rate.

Keywords with the highest conversion rates are usually the most profitable for your business and therefore should be utilized. That does not mean that all high conversion keywords will work well on your site just because they work well on paper.

Take your time and play around with various keywords, run them for a month and see what kind of conversion rates you are getting. If a keyword that seemed to be a high conversion just doesn’t pan out, dump it and move on to other keywords.

Looking back at “dog accessories”, this keyword phrase might only convert to 7%, but how much more traffic is your site getting and how many conversions does that 7% mean to your business? “Hand-woven dog collars” might bring visitors that are going to move along in their buying cycle faster and might be easier to convert into paying customers, but you still have a large potential of leads from “dog accessories” in your sales funnel! You will have a larger pipeline to work with and a larger potential for sales.

The data from keyword conversion rates are handy for testing new keywords, but don’t rely totally on this information for making your final decision for the best keywords on your site. You need to look at the entire picture when it comes to SEO. Keep digging to find the best solutions for the success of your business, including your keyword choices.