Keyword research is the foundation of SEO. By targeting the right keywords, you can reach your customers right when you want them.
For most industries, however, keyword opportunities are endless. A small niche can have 1,000+ ideal keywords. But who has the time or budget to target them all?
Well, not a lot of people. And it’s for that reason you need to develop a strategy that targets the best keyword opportunities for your goals and target audience.
What is Keyword Research?
Keyword research is a process that SEO professionals use to help find and analyse search terms that users enter into search engines like Google.
How to Find the Right Keywords
To find the right keywords, start with the broad topics most relevant to your website. You can either do this via a search bar or by using an SEO tool like Ahrefs or SEMRush.
Reference: Broad Keyword Search on Ahrefs
Then, determine what type of keywords you want to target that are relevant to your niche. Do you want to target informational, commercial, local, transactional, or navigation keywords?
If you’re looking for customers with high purchasing intent, commercial and transactional keywords are favoured.
Reference: Commercial and Transactional Keyword List
We now have a list of keywords that have a commercial or transactional intent. You can then go through this list and see which suits your business the most.
I can rank for all of the keywords above. However, not all of them are super relevant. The most relevant is “SEO Services Melbourne”, as I’m an SEO specialist based in Melbourne.
Reference: Keyword Data for “SEO Services Melbourne”
With this data, I can then determine whether this keyword is worth targeting. For this keyword, the keyword difficulty is high. Therefore, it’ll take a lot of work (and money) to rank for this keyword.
Because of this, I might select something else. Something that’s easier to rank for, for example, “Local SEO Company Melbourne”, or another niche keyword.
Reference: Keyword Data for “Local SEO Company Melbourne”
This keyword is much easier to rank for. However, it has a lower volume. Therefore, I now have to decide whether or not I want to target this keyword or the other.
The best way to decide is to create a pointing system. A system that points keywords based on volume, keyword difficulty, average referring domains, lowest ranking domain authority, CPC, relevance, etc.
Why is Keyword Research Important
Keyword research is the foundation of a successful SEO campaign. It helps you identify what your audience is searching for and helps prioritise ranking opportunities.
When you know what your audience is searching for, you know what type of content you should be creating. By performing keyword research, you understand their intent, so you can make content that satisfies it.
For example, let’s say you sell cat food for kittens. If that’s the case, keywords that include “kitten” and “food” would be beneficial, such as “What is the best cat food for kittens”.
Now that we know the keyword, we can analyse the search intent by looking at the already-ranking posts. We can then make similar content that’s better.
If you don’t perform keyword research, however, you won’t find these opportunities. You also don’t discover why your target audience is typing something into the search, meaning you won’t fulfil the intent or rank.
What is the Next Step After Keyword Research
- Organise & Prioritise Your Keyword Lists
First, you should organise your keywords into lists and map them to your website’s content.
This helps you understand which keywords are relevant to your website and which pages on your site should target those keywords.
When organising and mapping your keywords, use categories and subcategories. For example, you could have “Cat Food” as a broad category, then “Cat Food for Kittens”, “Cat Food for Large Cats”, etc. This will help organise your keywords.
Once your categories are finished, you can then focus on prioritising the keywords. Pretty much, you want to target keywords that’ll bring good results while not taking a lot of time or effort.
For example, a keyword could have a monthly search volume of 1,500 but a keyword difficulty score of 80. This will take a lot of time and money to start ranking for this.
Another keyword, however, may have a search volume of 500 and a keyword difficulty score of 20. This is a keyword you should prioritise as it’ll cost less and take less time to rank.
When prioritising, create a numbered-based system. You can base it on loads of different factors, but the main two are keyword volume and keyword difficulty. Those with high volume and low difficulty should be prioritised.
- Check Your Keywords in Search Engine Results
Just including targeted keywords in the content isn’t enough. You need to fulfil the searcher’s intent.
The best way to do this is by heading over to a search engine like Google and typing in the keyword. Whatever comes up is what Google expects its searcher wants. They determine this using their algorithm, so it’s usually pretty accurate.
For example, let’s say we want to analyse the keyword “Can cats eat bread”.
From this quick overview, we can see that when someone types in this keyword, they’re looking for blog posts. There’s no ecommerce website here.
In contrast, if we look at another keyword, like, “Wet cat food”, we only see e-commerce platforms, suggesting this is a keyword for product listings.
- Create a Content Strategy
Constructing a content strategy to boost your SEO ranking starts with in-depth keyword research.
By researching topics and themes that appeal to your target audience, you can create a plan for developing optimised content for those keywords.
In the plan, you may want to include what topics you’ll link together (internal linking), what type of content is required based on the user’s intent (video, audio, images, etc.), and who’ll complete the work.
- Use Keywords in Your Content
Optimising existing and creating new content is critical to a successful SEO strategy.
This involves updating or creating optimised content for your target keywords, using on-page optimisation techniques such as header tags, meta descriptions, and keyword-rich content.
Regularly updating and adding new, high-quality content to your site can also improve your rankings and increase your visibility to search engines and users.
- Track Your Keyword Research Results
While performing your SEO plan, be sure to track your keyword results—track metrics like website traffic, keyword positions, etc. To take this a step further, also track KPIs that matter to your business and goals to ensure SEO is really pushing the needle in your business.
- Repeat and Refine
Finally, remember that SEO is an ongoing process. The way people search for things is always changing, so you have to change your strategy to keep up. Repeat the steps in this article, change your method based on the results, and your search rankings will improve over time.
FAQs
What should be the first step after conducting keyword research?
The first step after conducting keyword research should be to prioritise the keywords based on their relevance and potential impact.
How can I create a content strategy for my chosen keywords?
To create a content strategy, you should plan how to create and publish content optimised for your chosen keywords.
What is the importance of optimising your website for search engines?
Optimising your site for search engines is vital if you want to rank for your keywords. This means making sure your site follows the best on-page, off-page, and technical SEO practices, ensuring you show up in the search results.
How should I use keywords in my content to optimise it?
To optimise your content, you should use your keywords in the right places, such as in the title tag, meta description, header tags, and body content, but be careful not to overuse your keywords to avoid keyword stuffing.
What steps should I take to promote my content and drive traffic to my site?
To drive traffic to your site, you should promote your content using social media, email marketing, and other channels. You can also use link-building tactics to improve your site’s authority, as this will boost search rankings.
Final Word
Keyword research is just the beginning of a successful SEO campaign. It’s the foundation of the plan, which can then later be prioritised for cost and time effectiveness.
Without keyword research, SEOs are left it the dark. They’re unsure of what keyword to target as well as what intent is behind them. This doesn’t only generate poor results, but it also wastes time and money.
