Want to make sure that your customers find you online?
Why keyword research is important?
Then you are going to need some great keyword research.
What is keyword research?
Keyword research is a practice by Search engine optimization(SEO) professionals for finding and analyzing search terms. Users enter keywords into search engines when looking for services, products, or general information. Keyword research can reveal doubts to focus on, the recognition of those queries, their ranking challenge, and more.
The queries that are asked by the users in search engines are of three types –
- Navigational Search Queries
- Informational Search Queries
- Transactional Search Queries
SEO professionals first research keywords and then create web pages around these keywords to obtain better rankings in search engines. Once they find a distinct segment keyword, they expand thereon to search out similar keywords. Keyword suggestion tools like ubersuggest usually serve the process. Just like the Google Ads Keyword Planner, which offers a thesaurus and alternative keyword suggestions. The first-party data of Google also aid this research through the likes of Google autocomplete, and related searches.
Why Keyword Research is Important for SEO?
Keyword research provides helpful insight into the queries that your audience is exploring on Google. The insight that you can get into these actual search terms can help your content strategy.
To achieve the most high-grade SEO results, it’s important to optimize a website’s content along with backlinks for the most suitable keywords. It’s not bad to look for related keywords that have low competition but still a high number of searches. This makes it simpler to attain a greater rank in search engines which usually ends up in higher web traffic. The negative aspect of this exercise is that the website is optimized for alternative keywords rather than the main keyword; the main keywords could be very difficult to rank because of high competition.
Therefore, put it simply, keyword research is market research in the 21st century.
How to Research Keywords for Your SEO Strategy
Step 1: Make a list of relevant topics based on your knowledge about your business.
Think about the topics you would like to rank for in terms of generic buckets that you simply think are necessary for your business, then you may use those topic buckets to come up with some specific keywords following the process.
Think, what type of topics would your target audience search for that you would want your company, business or product page to get found for?
Step 2: Fill in those topic buckets with keywords.
Now that you’ve got some topic buckets you wish to target, it is time to spot some keywords that make up those buckets. These are keyword phrases you think are crucial to rank for within the SERPs (search engine results pages) because your target customer is presumably conducting searches for those specific terms.
Keyword Research Methodology
Depending on where you see, there are as few as just a pair and as many as 18 or more types of keywords for you to employ. We are going to describe four common keyword types and illustrate how each can increase your rankings and optimize your SEO efforts.
Understanding the Keyword Types
Short-Tail Keywords – As the name infers, these types of keywords are short, usually less or equal to three words. These are more generic and are accustomed to bring a range of users to your site.
Long-Tail Keywords – These keywords are longer and more specific compared to short-tail keywords. Use long-tail keywords to attract a more audience searching for specific products or services.
Fresh Keywords – Fresh keywords offer an explosive search volume surrounding a subject or word that’s popular. Fresh keywords don’t remain popular for long, therefore you will have to observe their effectiveness and make subsequent alterations after the hype surrounding the keyword has ended.
Evergreen Keywords – Evergreen keywords are relevant all the time. Even some years after you publish an editorial focused on an evergreen keyword, it’ll still be authoritative, whether or not your article might need some minor updating now.
Another smart way to muster with keyword ideas is to decide which keywords your website is already ranking. To do this, you will need to have website analytics software like Ahrefs, Google Search Console, and Google Analytics ready in the Traffic Analytics tool.
Step 3: Understand How Intent Affects Keyword Research and Analyze Accordingly.
Like I said in the previous step, user intent is now one of the foremost crucial factors in your ability to rank well on search engines like Google or Bing. Now, it is more essential that your website is capable of addressing the inquiry a searcher is intending to solve than simply leading the keyword the searcher used. So, how does this influence the keyword research you do?
It’s easy to take keywords for face value, and unfortunately, keywords can have many diverse meanings underneath the surface. Since the purpose behind a search is very much important to your ranking factor, you need to be more cautious about how you interpret the keywords you target.
Let’s say, for instance, you’re researching the keyword “how to start a blog” for an editorial you would like to form. “Blog” denotes a blog post or the blog website, and what are the searcher’s intentions behind that keyword, that will influence the course of your article? Does the searcher want to read how to start a private blog post? Or do they need to grasp the way to launch a website domain for the needs of blogging? If your content strategy is simply targeting people fascinated by the latter, you’ll have to make sure of the keyword’s intent before committing thereto.
It is not a bad idea to only enter this keyword yourself into a search engine to verify what a searcher’s intent is in a keyword and see what sorts of results come up. Ensure the sort of content Google is closely associated with what you’d intend to create for the keyword.
Step 4: Research related search terms.
This is a productive step so you will have already thought of it while doing keyword research.
If you’re trying to think about more keywords that users could be searching about a specific topic. You would like to require a glance at the related search terms once you fill in a keyword into Google. After you type the phrase and look into the depths of Google’s search results. You will observe some suggestions for searches that are associated with your original input. These keywords can ignite ideas for other keywords that you may prefer to take into consideration.
Step 5: Use keyword research tools to your advantage.
Keyword research tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, Moz and Ubersuggest often come up with relevant keyword ideas. These keywords are supported by exact match keywords and phrase match keywords based on the ideas. This exercise might provide you with alternatives that you might not have considered.
Final words
Understand that there are no “perfect” keywords, only those that have high search volume. With this in mind, it’s up to you to design a strategy that may facilitate you to rank pages better.
The best keywords for your SEO strategy will take into consideration relevance, authority, and volume. You wish to know highly searched keywords that you can reasonably compete for based on:
The level of competition you’re up against.
Your ability to provide content that exceeds in quality what’s currently ranking.
And … You’re good!
Shahid Shahmiri is a digital marketer who helps online businesses grow with smart marketing tactics to improve sales and leads. He is passionate and driven to grow businesses online and is responsible for analyzing marketing, SEO, growth and managing promotional and media channels.
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