Keyword research is a process used to identify words and phrases most appropriate to target, in order to generate brand awareness and attract a specific target audience.
Why Is Keyword Research Important?
Keyword research is important, because it ensures that your target audience matches with your website.
Researching into what keywords your target audience searches for the most and then incorporating it into your content, means that you'll be sure to reach the right people.
This leads to more of the right traffic filtering into your site, and a higher conversion rate.
Keyword research is also the first step towards 'keyword clustering' which is gaining more and more traction in the SEO world.
How To Do Keyword Research
Conducting keyword research isn’t an easy task. It takes time, effort and reflection on your brand or business. Here are a few steps to getting started though:
1. Make a Seed List
This is the first step of keyword research and involves finding keywords and phrases that relate closely to your brand or business. When creating this list bear in mind:
Keywords you use in your business
Keywords your competitors use
Related keywords found in Google searches
Keywords typically used by your target audience
2. Determine a Keyword’s Popularity
Once you have collated a list of relevant keywords, you'll need to find out their potential by taking a look at the search volume for each term - you can do this using a keyword tool.
3. Refine the List
Sure, you’ve gathered a good list of keywords, but you need to have the best.
Be wary of broad keywords - these are mainly used for international businesses
What Are Some Other Components of Keyword Research?
1. Long Tail Keywords
Long tail keywords are very specific phrases (usually three words or more) that searchers use when they know exactly what they are looking for.
There is usually less content on the web about niche or specific topics, therefore long tail keywords are easier to rank for, and are tailored to the right audience.
2. Keyword Difficulty
Understanding keyword difficulty is also an essential part of keyword research and relates to how hard it is to rank for a specific keyword.
This is based on the level of competition for a keyword and the number of people searching for it.
Tools to Help With Keyword Research
It’s not an easy landscape to navigate but there are lots of tools out there to simplify the process (both free and paid for).
AnswerThePublic is a visual keyword research tool that furnishes you with a number of searches centered on your keywords in question form, giving you valuable insight into the mind of your target audience.
It exports most of its data from Google and groups the information into Questions, Prepositions, Comparisons, Alphabetical and Related.
It also has a Search Listening Alerts feature which tracks conversations revolving around your preferred keywords. It’s easier to craft relevant content and evoke your creativity when you keep abreast of the discourse.
LongtailPro software is, as the name suggests, used to seek out longtail keywords. This SEO tool can generate up to 400 long tail words per seed keyword along with a viability ranking for each suggestion.
Its Target Keyword Competitiveness feature color codes each keyword according to its level of difficulty with green indicating easy, yellow being moderate and grey suggesting "don't even go there".
This SaaS tool also allows you to identify and dissect the SEO strategy of websites and social media accounts that are graded high on your preferred keyword. It reveals the number of external backlinks and top-ranking keywords on their domain.
This insight can help you create a winning SEO strategy.
KWFinder is an uncomplicated keyword research tool designed to appeal to anyone regardless of their budget or SEO experience. It has two search alternatives: keyword or domain.
The Search by Keyword option can narrow down search results to locations, not just by countries but cities. This unique feature helps one keep up with longtail keywords trending in a specific location.
Click on any one of the 200+ suggested keywords and the system automatically generates a SERP overview, exposing the SEO strategy of each highly ranked URL.
SEMRush is a popular SEO tool that covers all aspects of visibility management including keyword research. The software collates data from one search engine only, Google. With it, you have access to about 20 billion keywords used in 130 countries.
The research tool scopes search volume per country, keyword difficulty, alternative keyword recommendations and SERP results. It also reveals keyword variations, questions centered on that keyword as well as other related keywords.
That's a load of suggestions to keep one's creative juices flowing with relevant content.
5. GrowthBar
Growthbar is a content marketing tool that executes keyword research and generates blogging ideas centered on your seed keyword. It has a standalone web application as well as a Chrome extension.
This software furnishes insights based on the keywords entered into the Google search bar. It will display the difficulty score of that particular keyword, generate a list of alternatives and related longtail keywords that you can exploit.
In addition to that, you get an array of top-tier content ideas capable of scaling up your SERP ranking on Google.
Other tools include: Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, Google Keyword Planner, Keywords Everywhere, Ubersuggest, Moz Keyword Explorer etc.
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