How to Do Keyword Research
Beryl Odhiambo??
Certified Content Marketer| SEO Content Strategist | Helping CEOs & Executives to Attract High-Value Leads with Engaging, SEO-Optimized Content | Expert SEO blog writer, Web Content writer & Articles| Content Marketing
In this article, we lay out a keyword research process that you can follow when conducting keyword research.
These steps will help you come up with a list of search terms that you should target. That way, you will be able to implement and execute an efficient keyword strategy that helps your business get found for terms you actually want to rank for.
1. Consider Your Mission and Establish Your SEO Objectives
The first thing is to think about the mission of your business.
Ask yourself questions like: What is the primary objective of your business or organization? What sets it apart? Who is your target audience? And, what commitments do you make on your website?
Dedicate time to write down your mission explicitly. By comprehensively addressing these questions, you will have taken the initial and most crucial step in formulating your keyword strategy.
What if you are in a highly competitive market?
The market plays a big role in determining whether your chosen keywords will make your site rank high. Some markets are quite competitive with big companies dominating SERPs making it tough for others to stand out. This is because they have a lot of money to spend on making sure people notice them online (through marketing and SEO).
If you're in such a competitive market, the smart move is to start small. Begin by focusing on a specific niche or a unique thing you offer that others don't. Once you're known for that special product or service, you can think about reaching out to a larger audience. Your mission then becomes more general, matching your SEO goals. It's important that what you're aiming for in your business matches what you want to achieve with your online presence.
Let's say you're selling trips to the Caribbean, and you make sure your trips are super fun for families with young kids. If there aren't many other trips like that, you'll really stand out. Your service will be unique. So, it would be efficient to make that your main focus, your niche. That way, you're giving something unique to your customers.
2. Make a List of Important Topics
Here’s where you brainstorm the topics that you want to rank for and that your target audience is interested in.
Come up with a list of topics you think are important to your business.
Note that these topics?aren’t?keywords (yet). You will use the topics to help come up with some specific keywords later in the process.
For example, if you run a digital marketing agency. You’ll want to answer the question: ”What?topics?do customers search for that are related to my business?”
Some topics I can think of include:
You will want to also check the monthly search volume of these topics. The data and insights will help you gauge how important your topics are to your audience.
3. Make a List of Relevant Keywords
The third step is creating a list of your keywords you think people might search for, preferably in a spreadsheet. Try to?get into the heads of your target audience. What will they be looking for? What kind of keywords or search terms could they be using, while looking for your kind of service or product? Which of their “problems” do you intend to solve? Come up with as many answers as possible. These are the keywords you want to be found for.
4. Research Your Keywords
After creating your list, it’s time to get deeper into keyword research. If you are struggling to find more keywords your target audience might be using, consider using keyword research tactics and tools to make the process easier.
One of the most accessible tools is Google. Enter the keywords you came up with and take a look at the related search queries that Google auto-suggests.
You can also scroll to the bottom and check out the “related searches.”
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Other keyword research tools you can use to your advantage include:
These tools will give you all kinds of variations of your keywords, synonyms, and related search terms. Check them out and add the relevant keywords to your list.
5. Find Long-tail Variants of Those Keywords
?When you're looking for keywords, you might be tempted to focus on the really popular “head” terms that lots of people search for. But those focus keywords are usually used by big companies already. Instead, you should focus on long-tail keywords. They may not get as many searches, but they're easier to compete for because not as many people are using them. Plus, they have a higher conversion value because they focus on something specific, like a certain product or topic.
For example, if the focus term is "dog food," a long-tail keyword could be something like "natural dog food for dogs with allergies."
Some tools can help you find these longer, more specific keywords, as mentioned in step 4.
Remember to use both types of keywords. Make a list of the head terms and then add columns for the long-tail keywords and their variants in your spreadsheet. This can also help you organize your website better. The more specific and long-tail the keyword, the deeper into your site structure it should go.
6. Analyze Keyword Competition
Deciding whether to focus on long-tail keywords depends on how many other businesses are using them. If there's a lot of competition in your niche, it'll be tough to get noticed and rank with those competitive keywords. But if there's not much competition, you might have a better chance to rank for those terms. So, you need to check out the competition for proper SEO.
Start by googling the keywords you found in your keyword research. Begin with the most focused search term. The websites that appear on the search results page are your competitor sites. Are they professional or company websites? Are they similar to yours? Do you think your website fits among them? Are you about the same size and have as much influence in your niche?
It's harder to rank high if you're up against big brands. Still, it's worth checking out their content. If their content isn't great, you might have a shot at doing better than them!
Remember to take notes! Write down what you find in your spreadsheet. You can use colors to show which keywords are harder or easier to compete for if that helps you remember.
7. Understand and Analyze Search Intent for Each Keyword
As already mentioned above, user search intent is one of the most crucial factors determining your site’s ability to rank well on search engines. Today, it’s important that your SEO strategy revolves around addressing the problem a searcher hoped to solve or answering the questions they have.
How does this affect your keyword research?
The intent behind each search is very important to your ranking potential. Whenever a user enters a search query, they are on a quest for something. Every question needs a relevant answer. Therefore, you need to be quite careful about how you interpret the search terms you target.
When people type certain keywords into Google, they usually want something specific. They might want to learn about a topic (informational intent), find a website (navigational intent), research before buying (commercial intent), or buy something right away (transactional intent). This is what we call "search intent."
To figure out what your audience wants when they search, look at the kinds of websites that show up in the search results. Are there a lot of product pages? Or are there more informational pages? Maybe you see videos or a mix of everything. These give clues about what people’s search intent is for a certain query.
Find out the search intent that applies to your keyword and, again, write them down on your spreadsheet!
8. Establish a Keyword Strategy
Now that you have collected your information, you can establish a keyword strategy. If you used a spreadsheet as shown above, you should have a substantial amount of keywords plus details about your competition and search intent.
The next step is to ask yourself: How does my website compare to the others in the search results? Are you as big as them, with a similar budget for marketing? If yes, then try to focus on those headwords. If not, start with longer keyphrases. If you focus on lots of these longer phrases, you might still get a lot of traffic to your site. Once you start ranking for these longer phrases, it'll be easier to move on to the head terms.
Conclusion
Once you decide which keywords to go for, think about what content type you will create. What were people looking for when they searched those words? What do they want? But also, think about what you can create that others haven't yet, and how you can make your content better. This will help you figure out what type of content you’re going to create.