Keyword Research: A Critical Step For SEO #KeywordResearchGuide #s2ep01
? Keyword Research Basics
Let's begin by reviewing the fundamental concepts and terms associated with keyword research for search engine optimization (SEO).
What are keywords?
Keywords, also known as SEO keywords, are the terms or phrases that users enter into a search engine to discover relevant information online.
These keywords act as a pathway to the organic search results and ultimately to a website that satisfies the user's query. This is why identifying the correct keywords is vital for SEO.
By identifying the phrases that people use to search for information related to your niche, you can adjust your content and optimization strategies to target these phrases, resulting in higher search rankings and increased traffic to your website.
The process of identifying keywords is known as keyword research.
What is keyword research?
Keyword research is the process of identifying, analyzing, and utilizing the phrases and terms that individuals use to search for information on the internet as part of search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.
It is a way of understanding the language and terminology used by your target audience in order to optimize your website's content for better visibility and search rankings.
?? WHY?to do keyword research?
Because it is one of the most important SEO tasks and a great way to reach more people with your content.
?? HOW?to do keyword research?
Well, this is something this guide will help you with.
You don’t have to worry, keyword research is no rocket science. Once you understand the basics and learn some proven strategies (as well as some useful tips & tricks), you’re good to go! ??
?? WHEN?to do keyword research?
Keyword research is usually?the first step of search engine optimization?of any website.
You’ll definitely need to do keyword research when you’re:
?? WHO?should do keyword research?
Any website owner, blogger, online marketer or SEO specialist.
? The Power of Keyword Research: A Critical Step For SEO
Keyword research is a crucial aspect of search engine optimization (SEO) and is considered the foundation of successful SEO campaigns.
When you understand what individuals are searching for, you can create content that provides the answers they're looking for, increasing the chances that your content will appear in search results.
Without proper keyword research, it's difficult to know if there is any demand for the content you're publishing. Without this knowledge, it's like throwing darts blindfolded - you have no way of knowing if you'll hit the target.
Failure to conduct proper keyword research often leads to poor results.
But when done right — and combined with other solid SEO processes (including?link building) — keyword research helps you to produce a repeatable content process that consistently earns traffic over time.
Keyword research benefits
Keyword research is essential in understanding what type of content to create in order to achieve your business goals and target relevant traffic.
With billions of possible keyword combinations in multiple languages, it would be impossible to target them all.
However, people tend to search for similar phrases and terms, allowing you to group keywords together. When executed correctly, keyword research helps you identify the most effective keywords for your specific website.
"Winning" keyword research helps you to find phrases and topics which:
You can see how these factors play together in the diagram below:
1. Discover valuable keyword phrases and topics
You think you know what you want to rank for, but are you certain? Do you know all the ways people are searching that might lead to your website?
For example, if you sell "wholesale camping tents" this might be a good term to target. Keyword research can help you uncover other relevant terms such as:
If you run a camping tent business, how valuable would ranking on the first page of Google be for each of these terms?
You might have been able to guess some of these, but a smart keyword research strategy can help you uncover thousands of these keyword opportunities at scale.
2. Find keywords with sufficient search volume
Truth be told, while there are billions of possibly relevant keyword combinations out there, not all of them are worth going after.
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In the camping tent example above, would it be worth it to create content for each of these keywords? To find out, it helps if we attach a search volume to each keyword phrase.
We'll cover this in greater detail later, but "search volume" is roughly the number of times these phrases are searched for in Google each month.
As you can see, search volume can vary wildly from one phrase to the next. Our original phrase, "wholesale camping tents", has decent search volume, but we've discovered "3 person camping tents" blows it out of the water.
At the same time, "single layer camping tens" doesn't seem very popular by comparison. On the other hand, if your business sells these types of tents, earning only a few clicks a month might be hugely valuable.
This is a good time to talk about the?"long tail" of keyword research, and the 80/20 rule. Only about 20% of the keywords people search for will be popular "head" terms. The majority of keyword phrases will be less-frequent, long-tail keywords.
3. Find keywords you can actually rank for
Finding popular keywords is great, but it's a double-edged sword. That's because the more?popular and valuable?a keyword is, the more?competition?there is to rank #1.
The key is finding the sweet spot of keywords that are valuable to your business, but not so competitive that you don't have a chance of ranking for them.
"3 person camping tents" may be a great keyword phrase, but because it has such a high monthly search volume, it's likely lots of established and popular sites are also trying to rank for it.
If you're a smaller site just starting out, this can make it difficult to rank for your most desirable keywords.
The trick is to find those keywords with?high demand?and?low competition. Let's look at our table of keywords one more time, but also add a column for "Keyword Difficulty."
Surprise! "Wholesale camping tent" is actually the least competitive of all the phrases we've considered so far. "3 person camping tents" has more volume, but it is also harder to rank for.
There are other considerations we should include while building a keyword list, including language, seasonality, and click-through rates. We'll cover these in more detail in the next episodes of #KeywordResearchGuide.
4. Crafting a complete content strategy from keyword research
Once you have a list of relevant keywords to target, you can create a plan for building content around those keywords. This is your content strategy or content roadmap.
With keyword research, you can start to answer questions like:
So far, we've touched on finding keywords for a single topic or page. Using this guide, we'll walk you through a process you can use to discover hundreds or thousands of relevant, potential topics. We'll also cover powerful competitive analysis techniques so that you can uncover?all?the valuable keywords that every one of your competitors ranks for, allowing you to craft a completely dominating content strategy.
To be continued...
Thank you for learning with us. This episode is based on?the Keyword Research Guides?by Moz and Mangools.?Remember, you could always follow all of the episodes for this subject from the document below:
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