Don’t Sweat the Technique When It Comes to the Fundamentals of SEO Keyword Research

As a #seospecialist, it’s easy to get caught up in analytics and technical details and forget the primary purpose of any website: to provide information and value for visitors.

Doing this depends on the words, phrases and nomenclature of the audience you’re going after. In other words, it requires the right keywords. And how do you know what those are? By doing keyword research, of course.

An essential part of any #seo strategy, keyword research needs to be at the center of all copy you write. And it’s a lot easier than you might assume.

Just read on, and I’ll tell you everything you need to know.

What is Keyword Research??

In case you haven’t guessed already, keyword research is the process of identifying the terms your target audience is using in search engines to find products, services and information.

Once you know the terms your audience is using, you can use them to create high-quality content that will provide value to visitors and keep your page at the top of search results.

Why is Keyword Research Important?

If no one is looking for the information your webpage provides, it’s not going to get any traffic.

This is a lot more common than you may assume. A 2020 study by ahrefs found more than 90% of webpages get no traffic from Google – you don’t want to be in that silent and unexplored majority.

Performing effective keyword research will help ensure there’s search demand for your content, helping more people find your website.

More than that, keywords play a major role in determining how search engines like Google will rank your page. And there’s a direct correlation between ranking highly on search results pages and generating more traffic.

How to Perform Keyword Research

Step 1: Determine Your Goals

Before you start brainstorming keywords, it’s important to consider what you’re hoping to accomplish. Who is your target audience? What are you trying to get them to do? Learn more? Fill out a contact form? Make a purchase?

Step 2: Brainstorm an Initial List of Words

Set up a spreadsheet in Excel or Google Sheets and make a list of every word and phrase you can think of that your target audience could use in a web query. Think about what problems they’re trying to solve and what language they might use.

If possible, loop in product managers, the sales team and anyone else who may have useful insight into the mind of your customer. Like in all brainstorming operations, there are no wrong answers.

Your goal is to come up with as many “seed” keywords as possible.

Step 3: Research Your Keywords

Now that you have a list of keywords, it’s time to figure out which of these generate the most traffic.

Using a tool like Google Keyword Planner or another keyword planning tool, look into which keywords are getting the most clicks. Try and identify which ones your competitors are going after.

In general, you want you to pay attention to three elements when researching your keywords:

• Relevance, or how well your keywords match search intent
• Authority, which refers to how trustworthy Google deems your website in regard to the keywords you’re targeting
• Volume, which indicates how many people are searching for each term

Step 4: Determine Your Strategy

Once you’ve decided which keywords you want to go after, it’s time to plan how you’ll go after them. A lot of this will depend on the competition for each keyword, which will depend on your niche.

Certain industries will have more competition than others. And more generic keywords are difficult to rank for, particularly if you don’t have the digital marketing budget of a Fortune 500 company.

If you’re in a highly competitive field, you may have to get creative with your targeted keywords to stand out. If this is the case, you’ll probably want to target what are known as long-tail keywords. These are highly specific words and phrases you can target to help generate clicks.

For example, if you’re in the tourism industry, you’ll find it hard to rank for a word like “hotels.” On the other hand, a long-tail keyword like “beach-front bungalow Delray Beach,” will have far fewer sites competing for it.

Your keyword planning tool should be able to help with this by providing a list of related words. Identify the words and phrases you think you can rank on the first page of search results for and then move on to the next step.

Step 5: Create Your Content

Okay, now that you’re armed with your list of target keywords, it’s time to create the content using them that will help your page rank.

In the Wild West days of early SEO, keyword density used to be paramount, so you would see webmasters jamming them in wherever and whenever they would fit, usually to the detriment of having understandable copy.

Don’t do that.

Instead, try to keep your keyword density to 1-2%, or one or two uses per 100 words. This will keep you from getting dinged for keyword stuffing, while still making it clear to web crawlers and visitors what your page is about.

Be sure to use your relevant keywords in page titles, headers and alt text where they logically fit in.

Step 6: Evaluate and Revise?

SEO is never done. Even if your site is ranking as #1 for your target keyword, there’s no reason to expect it will stay there. Between changes to Google’s search algorithm and new tactics from your competition, there’s never a time to sit back and relax.

Instead, you should regularly check your performance to figure out what’s working – and just as importantly, what isn’t.

Armed with this knowledge, you regularly refresh your content to target new keywords, update statistics or outdated information, and generally ensure you’re providing the best answer possible to your targets’ search queries.

Step 7: Simplify the Entire Process with Evisio

Successfully performing search engine optimization takes a lot of work. Or at least, it used to, before evisio seo software .

Designed for #digitalmarketers, agencies and entrepreneurs alike, it removes the tedious part of SEO, automatically generates reports and provides clear, actionable steps to help you improve your search ranking.

Whether you’re a complete SEO beginner or a veteran looking for a way to streamline your workflows, Evisio has what you need.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Contact me today for a free demo to see it for yourself at https://www.evisio.co/.