Every successful plan requires extensive research, so does an SEO plan. Before we dive into creating meaningful content for our business, it is vital to make sure that this content is indeed ‘meaningful’. This is what makes ‘Keyword Research’ an important step for SEO.
In this article, we will talk about:
- What is keyword research?
- How to do it?
- Important Tips
- Top keyword research tools
What is keyword research?
In simple terms, keyword research is finding out what your users are searching for online. An example would be a person searching for “pink shirts for dogs” on a search engine.
The process of keyword research involves figuring out the terms that people are searching for online and making sure that they are relevant to what you do. But why?
The answer is very simple, if you don’t know what your customers are searching for, you will never be able to form a bridge between you and them.
Before we design our content, it is important to design it by incorporating important keywords in our content. These keywords are like a guiding map, which makes sure that our target audience finds us.
How to do it?
A successful keyword strategy involves a few steps. Let’s try to understand these steps.
Brainstorming session
Nobody knows your business better than yourself. You know about your business goals and you also know your problems. As a result, first and foremost, you should make a list of topics related to your business that aligns with your goals.
Let us take a practical example:
Suppose you sell temporary hair colors, what are the terms that can help you connect with the right people?
- Temporary hair color
- Hair color
- Temporary hair dye
- Temporary Hairstyle
- Hair dyes
Once you have figured out the initial few topics that you can work around, you can start with the next process.
Make a list
The next step involves coming up with some specific long and short keywords that you think your customers can search for.
In this case, it could be:
- Best temporary hair dyes
- Natural hair dye
- Safe temporary hair color
- Best temporary hair color
- At home hair colors
Follow your instincts and don’t worry too much about this list as it’s only temporary. This list requires a lot of research and refining before we finalize it for business use.
The research step
Once you have a list that you can work with, we can start the process of actual research. For this process, we can utilize a variety of tools.
Interestingly, the search engines themselves can give you a lot of answers to your questions. Searching for terms on search engines gives a lot of suggested terms that you can add to your list.
Wikipedia is also an interesting way to gain valuable keyword terms for your content plan. The “contents” element of Wikipedia covers various related terms to your topic that can be useful.
Google’s keyword is one of the most famous keywords research tools out there. These tools not only provide suggestions but also give deep insights into our keywords.
These insights are important and help us in the refining process of the keyword strategy. Things like “keyword difficulty” and “search volume” can be easily found out with the help of keyword research tools.
- Keyword difficulty signifies the level of difficulty to rank for that keyword.
- Search volume means the number of times a particular keyword is searched online.
Important Tips
1. Focus on Intent
A bulk of users ending up on your website because of a keyword will not guarantee an increase in conversion. The intent behind the search is also an important factor. This is the reason why, when you are deciding upon a term, it is important to understand why the user is searching for that term.
Google will deem your content fit for its SERP (Search Engine Results Page) if your content is relevant to the keyword a user is searching for.
2. Understand competition
Here’s an interesting fact: Long-tail keywords have low levels of search volume but usually have low levels of competition. This means that it is easier to rank for a long-tail keyword. A good keyword plan should consist of a balanced mix of short and long terms.
Keep a check on the keywords that your competitors are using at the same time neglecting. With a proper plan, you can end up creating a mix of keywords that can help you rank better for these terms.
3. Seasonal and Local
The geo-demographic factors are an excellent way to create a unique strategy. If you are a local business or are looking at a specific location, aiming for local words will help you target the correct audience set.
At the same time, seasonal keywords should also not be overlooked. For example, the festival season can show high levels of traffic for terms related to gifts. If you research seasonal keywords in advance, you can plan your content strategy accordingly.
Top keyword research tools
Nowadays, there are a variety of keyword tools that can be used to make an effective list. These tools not only help to understand the insights of a keyword but also give suggestions of keywords that we might have missed out on. It becomes easier to analyze the level of difficulty, competition, and search volume of a specific term and choose the keywords according to the business goals
This tool will help you understand the search volume of a term with the help of a relative time filter. This can help you understand and plan your seasonal keywords in advance.
Reddit is an excellent platform that can help us understand what our target audience is talking about. This tool will help you discover the relevant threads with your keywords as well as help you understand the language of your targeted audience.
You can opt for 10 free queries a day with the help of this tool. It segments your keywords into interesting sections like exact matches, phrase matches, questions, and broad matches.
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