The process of understanding the kind of language people use when searching for your products, services or content is called keyword research. Keywords research comprises of analysing, comparing, and ranking these keywords in the best order that suites your business. Keywords research and identifying them is the first fundamental strategy in content SEO.
SEO keywords research is without a doubt the sole strategy to find out what people are searching for in search engines. Every site owner needs to understand this fact to avoid creating the type of content that doesn’t get any search traffic. Unfortunately, many website owners make this mistake; that’s why more than 90% of web pages don’t get any traffic from search engines like Google.
Research about your niche
To better understand how you can optimise your pages, it is best to study your niche first. You need to dig deep and learn every aspect of your niche or topic. This step is beneficial and can open new strategies to define new keywords you usually wouldn’t know about.
Understanding your niche will be helpful when you want to create specific content for your readers. It will provide you with the right tools and the needed keywords to cover the related topics. You could also seek help from the best content marketing services in Melbourne if you are located in Australia.
- Your customers can provide you with a wealth of firsthand information about how they found you online and what type of keywords they used to land on your website.
- Put yourself in the shoes of your potential customers. Think out of the box and imagine how you’d react to the product you’re trying to sell if you were the customer.
- Join communities online that cover your niche. Forums and social media networks are excellent places to start. Read what people are talking about and consider the suggestions they’re offering.
Set your goals
Any business plan needs to start with an end goal. You need to ask yourself questions like:
- Who are you?
- Who your website is for?
- What distinguishes you from the others?
- can you define your brand’s story?
- What value would you provide to your audience?
Answering these questions at the start of your journey can give you the required understanding of your goals and what your brand has to accomplish. Is your goal to increase your social media followers? Or do you want to reach a specific number in revenue on a set date?
It’s crucial to define your goal. It gives you the confidence and the correct path to choose your SEO keywords strategy. Hence, the keywords should agree with your goals and your brand identity. You can implement thorough content marketing strategies through these smart SEO keywords research tips.
Write down related topics
After defining your goal and your brand’s end purpose, you need to chop up your niche into smaller, more specific topics. Write down a list of all the possible topics that stem from the main topic that you want Google to recognise.
For example, if you’re a tech-related brand that specialises in computer hardware. Some topics that are related to your brand can be:
- Ultrawide monitors
- desktop Nvidia GPUs
- Gaming keyboards
- Wireless mice
These topics need to cover what your target audience is interested in. brainstorm the type of topics your potential customers usually search for on Google in your niche category. Then, these topic lists can be narrowed down to define your final keywords for your subtopics.
Following our previous example, they can be something like this:
- Best ultrawide monitors for web developers
- Affordable midrange Nvidia GPUs
- Best budget gaming keyboards in 2022
Make a list of seed keywords
After narrowing down your main topics to subtopics, you can assemble a list of your related seed keywords. These keywords need to cover your subtopics in your niche and, more importantly, target whatever your audience is searching for.
Seed keywords, or in other words, focus keywords, are essential to your progress and will become the building blocks of your keywords research as your brand will be recognised through these seed keywords.
A smart strategy to approach this step is to understand how individuals search online. Think about how people might search for the kinds of services you provide and put that in simple words in your SEO keywords list.
Take advantage of keyword research tools
This might sound like an obvious step, but so many website owners make the mistake of jumping to these kinds of tools before the previous steps. Keywords research tools don’t make miracles as so many assume.
They are handy tools provided that you do your homework first. So, the best strategy to approach these tools is to define your goals, topics and seed keywords first. Then you can use them to polish your keywords and pick the most suitable ones according to the metrics these tools provide.
Google keyword planner is a useful tool for beginners, but it lacks most features that other tools provide. Other tools like SEMRUSH and ahrefs are among the best tools you can use in your keywords research.
These keywords research tools follow a different strategy to calculate keywords difficulty, monthly search volume, global volume, and other useful metrics that can help you choose the best keywords for your business.
The below screenshot shows the ahrefs tool layout.
SEMRUSH layout looks something like this:
As you can see, the numbers in these tools are different but don’t let that confuse you. You wouldn’t go wrong with choosing either of these tools. SEMRUSH and ahrefs, among other tools in this category, can provide a lot of feedback and useful search terms alongside additional hints on different keywords you haven’t included in your list.
One of the great features of these tools is their user experience. It’s as easy as copying and pasting your topic or seed keywords in the search bar to get suggestions of alternative keywords.
Understand search intent
Behind every search, there’s a purpose. There’s always a logical reason behind what people search for, and it is defined as search intent. Understanding this step can play a huge role in your keyword research.
Search intent is divided into three groups: informational search, comparison search, and buyers. Understanding how people search is very crucial for any keywords research. It will give you the ability to appropriately target the relevant keywords for your business to target the suitable group among the three.
Informational search is generated by people looking for specific information about a topic. It is difficult to identify this group’s intent behind the search. A student might search for information about a topic for their school project. Or someone is killing time online while waiting for their flight. It is difficult to turn these users into customers.
This group tend to use one or two keywords when searching for specific information.
Comparison search is done by those who are a step closer to buying your product, but they still haven’t made up their mind. They usually search for reviews about different products they’re interested in or looking for a better deal. Investing in this group can benefit your business, but it takes time to generate revenue.
This group search intent is a bit more specific. They look for reviews and comparisons between similar products.
Buyers are a group who have already made up their minds about their purchase. They are just doing a final search to find the best product for the best price.
Implement long tail SEO keywords
Long tail keywords is a conventional name to describe a set of search terms that are longer than your seed keywords. Your seed keywords’ purpose is to promote your main topic or niche, but long tail keywords target your subtopics with more description.
Aligning your long tail keywords with your audience search intent is a lot easier than your focus keywords. You can get ranked for these kinds of keywords faster because they are not as competitive as the seed keywords.
examples for a long tail keyword in the technology niche are as follows:
- Top 5 most affordable ultrawide monitors for web developers
- best CPU for gaming under $300
Long tail keywords narrow down your subtopics to target specific audience. Even though they get less traffic, they bring more revenue and increase conversion rate.
Long tail keywords usually get fewer clicks, but since they are focused on a specific topic or product, they often get a higher conversion rate.
Analyse your competitors
Understanding your competitors is a crucial step in your plan. No matter how great you do on your keywords research, you wouldn’t get the desired results without investigating your competition.
With a little stroll around their web pages, you can learn many things from your competitors. How they organise their products, their URLs naming strategy, content quality, but what’s more critical for us is their keywords strategy. You could find a lot of keywords and new phrases that you could implement in your web pages as well.
Keywords research tools can provide you with a wealth of knowledge concerning your competitors. You just need to copy and paste the URL of your competitors to get a list of all the keywords that are bringing them traffic from search engines. You could easily implement those keywords to your liking.
Another useful takeaway is identifying the highly competitive keywords you are most likely not going to rank for. But among these high difficulty keywords, there are some less competitive search terms that you can use and get the recognition you need.
Conclusion
Keywords research for SEO keywords purposes can be overwhelming and time-consuming. But with the correct approach, you can get a lot done with reasonable efficiency. Having an overall plan is a must, so you know where and how to start your research. Using the insight of your customers, understanding search intent, or diving deep into your competitors’ websites with the aid of keywords research tools can be an excellent way to start your SEO keywords optimisation process.
Recent Comments