A practical Keyword Research and Competitor Analysis Process for Business(A complete step-by-step guide with free SEO tools.)

Keyword Research and competitive analysis are the 2 most crucial basic objectives you must overcome in building an effective inbound marketing strategy for your brand.

These simple but critical activities involve finding words your ideal user will likely type into a search box (like Google’s), on one hand, and getting insights on phrases, channels, and strategies your competitors are already using to successfully get people’s attention on the web — on the other.

The best way to begin is to start with seed keywords, that is, making a list of words and terms that can more accurately describe your brand, product or service. Then using Google’s search features to get more useful ideas and validating them with trusted and reliable tools — to gauge their market value and traffic potential.

Now, after coming up with a good list of keywords or you’re short of more ideas. Here is a simple process to help you match on!

1. Google Suggest: Start keying your seed terms to see other terms Google is suggesting. Mind you because Google is suggesting to them, it means people are actively using them in search. And because they long-tail keywords ( 4 words or longer and so most descriptive), they have low competition and thus easy to rank. Use ubersuggest to automate this process.
2. People Also Ask and online communities: This section of the search results page is also important in the SEO keywords selection process. It gives you insight into the minds users through the questions they ask online. Information that can inform your brand and product positioning, and influence the type of content you produce. You can also head over to online communities, forums, social media groups or wherever your ideal audience hangs out online. Watch for threads with high user engagement, watch out for works used repeatedly, especially in asking questions. Your product or service might just turn out as the right answer to that problem. No time? To make this step faster, just head over to answer the public and some ol’guy will spit you with questions.
3. Competitor Analysis: Am yet to see a law that states “YOU CANNOT SPY ON YOUR COMPETITOR”. Your rivals present challenge, and of course a unique opportunity. Running your keywords in a Google search and analyzing the successful guys that show up goes a long way in helping you craft a successful inbound marketing strategy for your business. Knowing what works and what doesn’t helps you focus resources on your strengths while capitalizing on your competitors' weaknesses. Look out for competitors Keywords in urls, title and meta description tags, headings, first 100 words of the body content. A tool like Spyfu should come in handy here.

Keyword Research and Analysis Tools for Business.

Now you have a healthy list of keywords to begin with, now here are some tools (mostly free) that should be of great help in helping you solidify the keywords you choose to focus your search engine marketing campaign on.

1. Keyword Everywhere
2. Wordstream Free Keyword Research Tool
3. Google Trends
4. Keyword in
5. Google Correlate
6. AdWord & SEO Keyword Permutation Generator
7. Google Keyword Planner
8. MOZ’s Keyword Explorer
9. SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool
10. Ahrefs Keyword Explorer
11. Soovle

These tools are user-friendly and will help you get thousands of keyword ideas in seconds, plus they give you an idea of the number of people using the “keywords” within a given month.

Finally.

So before I check out, keywords tell search engines and web users what your site is about, its the juice in your message “the need”. That which keeps your target audience awake at night, as regards your business. So it’s a task that must not be left to chance.

Except you’re selling bread, everyone is not your customer.

Get to know yours.

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For a complete practical easy-to-follow guide: I share a complete actionable keyword research and competitor analysis process (A complete step-by-step guide with free SEO tools.). A simple process that has had a major impact in my/clients inbound and content marketing strategy.

I hope this helps, let me have your views. Let me know below.