Has it ever occurred to you that you may have keywords on your site that mislead search engines? Have you ever thought about the different meanings of the keywords you are trying to rank for?

Now that Google is delivering more personalisation in search results, there is much more to understanding search behaviour, intent-based search, and how that should affect keyword research. You need to be taking into consideration things like how prior queries influence future queries.  

If you sell telephones, you have to actively go out of your way to ensure you don’t have certain things appearing in your site otherwise the search engines could get confused about what you’re talking about.

One of the most important things is work out is how to do keyword research without knowing the behavioural aspects of people actually looking for your product. The focus needs to be on these personas - what kinds of things are they likely to search on, in sequence - before they type in telephone. If you understand that behaviour in sequence, then the better you can do your keyword research and determine how you’re going to put the words on your page.

Personalised search is nothing new as Google has been personalising search results for some time. It just now appears that Google is looking for more ways to deliver users a personalised experience.

1. Use Keywords

This may seem obvious, but make sure you’re using keywords not only in your content, but in your titles and updates. If the right keywords are in the title, then those keywords are also more likely to appear in any ensuing Tweets, Facebook updates, etc. If someone searches for those keywords, they will be more likely to find your content in a real-time search. The same goes for your own Tweets/status updates. Even if you are not sharing an article, if you want your update to be found, use relevant keywords.

2. Talk about Timely Events

Simply mentioning events that are current will put you in the direction of those results, provided the right keywords are in play. Provide legitimate conversation and put yourself on more people's radars, without throwing links at them every time.

3. Have Lots of Followers

If you have a lot of followers or friends on social networks, or even just readers of your blog, you are going to get more people sharing your content. The more people sharing your content, the more your content will be making its way into real time searches.

4. Promote Conversation

Whether on your blog or on a social network - try and spark some conversations. Talk about topics that people are interested in. This is tied to number 2. The more conversations you are involved with, the bigger the impression you will make in real times searches.

5. Include Calls to Engagement

Buttons like Tweetmeme's and Digg's can be put in articles to show the amount of retweets/diggs your article has had - acting as a meter for engagement. The buttons provide a "call to action" to share your content. People can digg or retweet your story with a simple click, and you're one step closer to being found in real-time search.

Twitter has begun rolling out location-based trending topics. The product, officially called Local Trends, will currently only reach 1 percent of users today but everybody should access to it soon.

Here’s what we can tell you so far:

•    Local Trends allow you to set a specific location, so that you can see the trends around you. Most of the time, this would be your wherever you’re based, however it will be able to change if you travel elsewhere.

•    Clicking on Local Trends gives you a list of different cities and countries in which you can view trends.

•    You can access these trending topics from Twitter.com, on the right-hand column.

•    A full rollout should occur sometime next week, if testing goes smoothly.

We think this is a logical and smart move, especially in the wake of the rise of location-based service. It is good news for small and mediums sized businesses that use Twitter, as they can reach the local area rather than competing on a global scale.

We have recently been working with a client to improve their conversion rate and one of our recommendations was that they make their keywords location specific (within 25 miles.) They are now dominating the traffic searching within that area – which just happens to be over 150,000 searches every month.

You might assume that top search terms would be good choices for keywords, as logical as this seems - it doesn’t take into account other competition.

By providing descriptive terms, you will attract a better quality of traffic. A phrase like ‘travel book’ will result in more conversions that ‘book’ because it will appear to people who are specifically looking for a travel book. Providing a term like ‘travel book India’ will result in even more conversions.

If you have a low conversion rate, then the majority of visitors who click into your website won’t end up buying from you – what’s the point in 100 clicks but no customers?

By focussing on very specific keywords, you will achieve much higher quality clicks. This will lead to a significantly better conversion ratio and a much higher ROI.

According to Google, it is a good idea to create a list of search terms that consumers might use when performing an Internet search for specific goods and services.

With Google’s conversion tracking tool and Google Analytics, you each track each of your campaigns and if you are disappointed with the clicks an ad draws then you can make the necessary changes.

You may be wondering why keyword research is so important and why it has such an impact on your website’s success. Well, keyword research is an essential process that needs to be applied for you to promote your business properly online and to make sure the right customers find you.

There are a number of different Keyword Research Tools out there that you can use to find out your most competitive search terms and search terms that you are more likely to rank for. I recommend that you use the keyword tool called Google Adwords. It is simple to use and gives you a clear list of relevant keywords that are related to the search terms that you are looking for; it also shows you the advertiser competition for that keyword term and the search volume for the previous month and the average searches per month.  Google Adwords also allows you to download the keywords onto an Excel Spreadsheet which give you the option of managing the keywords and choosing the best keywords for you to use on your website. Therefore this is an extremely useful tool and can prove to be highly beneficial to your website.

The main objective of your website is to rank high in the major search engines; and the reason for this is to provide your business with much more online traffic which will, in turn, achieve a boost for your business. And to rank high on search engines, having the correct keywords that are most relevant to your business is of upmost importance.

There are many websites out there that have great products and content but eventually fail because of the incorrect or unpopular keywords that are used throughout the site; this means that their potential customers will struggle to find them because they would be ranking for the wrong keywords. This means that you need to do the correct research and make sure that your keywords are related to your website/business and make sure that your content is original and easy to read which will help you be found by your potential visitors on search engines.

So, in conclusion, and to answer the original question, keyword research is so important because it helps your business to succeed on the World Wide Web and helps your potential customers to find your website through the world renowned search engines.

Keyword Research is the key to success, follow these tips and you will have the online traffic your company needs for success!