I was looking through some archived news stories the other day that dealt with research.  Specifically, I'd flagged a group of articles dating back for several months that had to do with keywords and how to optimize a site for a set of keywords.  Today I ran across a similar article at Link Building Blog that caught my eye.

It raised a point that I think a lot of people forget when they're trying to use keyword optimization techniques:

The reason I recommend using broad match is so you can find the keywords that people are searching for that you may not have thought of before. To do this accurately though you will need to watch your referrers in your server logs and analytics software.

Instead of simply deciding on a group of keywords to optimize for, it's extremely important to know what people are actually searching for.

You may think your site is all about dogs.  So if you sat down and came up with a list of dog-related keywords you might come up with something like this:

• dogs
• dog breeds
• dog training
• dog toys
• breeding dogs
• dog care

You get the idea.

But maybe people are searching for "poodle training"… or "german shepard training"… or any number of a whole host of other keywords.  Analyzing server logs, analytics software, and keyword research can not only help you discover new keywords to optimize for, but it can also help direct your content generation.

Maybe a lot of people are finding your site by searching for "breeding huskies".  Or maybe, through your research, you've discovered that there just isn't a lot of content out there for the phrase.  This is an excellent opportunity to expand the scope of your site.  If people are looking for information on breeding huskies, why not provide them with that information?

As the article at Link Building points out, it's important to track conversions on all of your keywords.  This is especially true for new ones.  If you publish content on breeding huskies and see that it's not converting well, try something else.  Worst case scenario… you've got a lot of content that's available for traffic alone.  Maybe your information on breeding huskies doesn't convert well.  But once those husky breeders reach your site, they might be converted by something else.

So while it's important to develop a set of keywords to optimize for, don't forget to include keywords and phrases that people are actually searching for in your mix.  Because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how well your site is optimized for "dog toys" if no one is looking for it.