What is Keyword Research?
Keyword research is an important aspect of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In Keyword research, we hunt a list of keywords that is relevant to the website. To acquire such a list, the owners of the website need to find their target audience and search engine. What do people search into Google when they are looking for their products, services, and types of businesses or organizations? And what do they tend to find? With the help of keywords, website owners can use those keywords in their content so that the content becomes attractive and high-quality traffic comes to their site. Keyword research in SEO is a never-ending process, so you got to keep it up-to-date and change it on a regular basis.
Why is Keyword Research Important?
Perfect and proper keyword research in SEO is important because it will make sure what terms your audience searches the most. Many businesses/organizations only use one set of words to describe what their website is all about, but their audience uses a completely different set of words. Just because of a mismatch of words, the potential customers couldn’t find those websites. For instance, a marketing department of an organization decides to give its product a unique name. This can be a very smart decision by the marketing company as the people will remember your product’s name more easily.
Once You’ll start working on it, you’ll understand that it is not necessary to optimize for words that people don’t use. Keyword research makes sure that you use the same words as your target audience and this makes boosts your effort of optimizing your website more worthy. In addition, you can find out what your audience is searching for and then create quality blogs that will answer all of your audience’s queries.
How is keyword research done?
There are eight crucial steps while implementing your keyword research. Here, we’ll show you step by step process and give you tips on starting your own keyword research:
Direct Your Mission:
Before anything else, the first step includes thinking about your mission. Reflect on your questions such as: What is the primary goal of your business or organization? Who are you trying to reach exactly? What promises do you tend to fulfill on your website? Take your time and write down everything about your mission. Remember, a targeted audience will make your mission more general. Once you’ve managed to do that, you have finished the first step in your keyword strategy.
Make a List of Keywords:
The second step includes creating a list of keywords. It should be preferably done in a spreadsheet such as Excel or Google Sheets. With your mission being decided, try getting into the heads of your audience. You should have the answer to the questions such as: What people are searching for? What type of search term they will be using while looking for your product/service? Does my product solve the targeted audience’s problems? Write down all these problems and their solutions. If you have a clear mission in your mind, you’ll have a pretty clear image and a unique selling point.
Research Your Keywords:
After you’ve created the keywords list, it’s time to focus more on your keywords. Luckily, there are some tools that would make your keyword research a bit easier. The first tool is Google itself. Google the keywords you have already found and then check the Google suggestions while you’re typing. Those are the questions people actually asked Google related to your website. You can also find the ‘related searches on Google’s result page.
Use Long-Tail Keywords:
When people begin with keyword research, they focus on very popular ‘head’ terms. Unfortunately, those keywords are mostly taken by large organizations/businesses. On the other hand, long-tail keywords have one disadvantage i.e. getting less traffic, and one advantage i.e. There’s less competition too. Therefore, it’s comfortable for you to rank for those keywords. Moreover, long-tail keywords have a higher conversion rate as they tend to focus more on a specific topic or product. Remember, a long-tail keyword is more focused than a head term and is often longer than a normal keyword.
Study Your Competition:
Your competition depends on your keyword. If your competition is high, you’ll have a tough time ranking for your competitive head terms. If you have a little competition, it’ll be easier for you to rank for more of your head terms.
It’s harder to rank when you’re competing against sites that have a strong image. It all depends on your content. If your competition has poor content, you have a chance to outrank them. It means you should make your content attractive.
Take a Closer Look at Search Intent:
Today’s SEO strategies are all about revolving around answering the questions people have and providing them the solution to their problems. Whenever a person enters something into a search engine, he/she is on a quest for something. Each search needs to be fulfilled.
Try to find out the intention your audience has when they type a certain keyword into the search engine. Are they looking for something? Do they have an informational intent? Do they want to buy something?
Find out which kinds of intent apply to your key phrases and add the findings to your spreadsheet.
Establish a Keyword Strategy:
Now that you’ve data collected, you can establish a keyword strategy. If you’ve followed all the steps above, you should have a good amount of key phrases in your spreadsheet and information about the search intent of your audience and competition.
Now you have to determine a keyword strategy. If you have a marketing budget, go ahead and focus on the head terms. If not, try long-tail keywords first. A bunch of long-tail keywords can attract a lot of traffic. Once you’ve done that, aiming for head terms will become easy.
After that, think about the type of content: What is my audience looking for? What was the search intent for my key phrases? Can I create any new content that isn’t there yet? This will help you decide on the type of content you’ll be creating.
Start Constructing Landing Pages:
Creating awesome landing pages is important if you want to get traffic to your website. So, you need to build landing pages according to your search terms. You don’t have to create the page immediately. Your keyword strategy will help you prioritize building a good landing page. For your important key phrases, you’ll create articles that provide the best possible content about that keyword.
Tips for keyword research in SEO
Keyword research may sound pretty straight forward but we know it requires a lot of hard work. When put into practice, you might get stuck into some common issues. Here, we’ll provide you with some tips to make it work!
Prioritize Your Keyword Research:
You must have a question going in your mind about the keywords limit. Well, there isn’t any exact number of keywords you should have but you need a lot of them. However, the keywords should not be more than 1000. Even if you’re a small business, you’ll probably end up on hundred keywords.
But there’s no need to create pages for all of these right away. You can add content slowly. Prioritize your keywords and think about what keywords you want to rank first. If you think long-tail ones, then go with it and if you think popular head terms, then start with it first.
Add Related Key Phrases to Help Google Understanding Your Text:
A related key phrase is concepts and words that broaden and deepen the understanding of your focus key phrase. They even help Google in understanding the topic better that you’re talking about. Using related key phrases can paint a complete picture of your key phrase in the article that you’re writing.
A focus Key Phrase and its Synonyms only Need one Page:
In the past, each of the keywords got its own landing page. Today, however, search engines are so smart that they use search intent to give searchers the best answers to their respective questions.
Search engines also understand the difference between keywords so you don’t have to create landing pages for all variations of a keyword, like synonyms.
Checkout Results for Singular and plural keywords:
Should you be aiming for the singular or the plural keyword? Well, this depends on the query. As Google is learning more about the search intent of the query, it is able to guess what you’re looking for. For instance, if you search for shoes, you get a different result than if you search for shoes. Apparently, Google thinks that in the first case, you’re looking for a definition, in the second case it believes you’re intending to buy the shoes.
So make sure you know what you are offering on your page and that it solves the query and results that Google gives on that query.
Use a Key Phrase Only Once:
Beware; you should not use your exact focus keyword more than once. If you do, your rankings might suffer. Google has a hard time differentiating between content that’s very alike. Therefore, it might rank very similar pages or posts lower.
If you have already used the same or similar keywords/key phrases on various pages and posts, then you must edit or redirect some of your content.
