Keywords are the underpinning of SEO. If no one knows about your brand or what you are offering, you will not get traffic from Google — regardless of how hard you try.
This guide is for beginners and demonstrates the research structure that they can use for their websites.
To begin with, you must at least know what words your ideal/potential clients use to find organizations that offer products and services like yours. Next, consider the tips and strategies mentioned below. You’ll also find a list of the best tools you can use for keyword research. In addition, you can also use social media to do research.
Before we look at the step-by-step instructions, let’s look at what keyword research is and how it helps optimize a website.
What Is Keyword Research All About?
Keywords on your website let Google and other search engines know the nature of your business and what products and services you offer. It ensures that your website will be displayed on the search engine results page when potential customers search for products or services that you offer.
Using the right keywords in articles, blogs, or product/service pages can help you rank in the search result and drive traffic and new leads.
Also, when you rank for a keyword that matches the content of your page, your organic traffic can outperform paid traffic or promotions. Plus, after you’ve published those pages, with the right optimization, you can still get relevant traffic from them for a long time.
The number of individuals looking online for products and services continues to grow. Somewhere between 2019 and 2020, the traffic volume for the 1,000 most-visited pages increased by 22%.
Research for topics and keywords is fundamental because the higher you rank in search results, the more organic traffic your website gets. For organic results, the top result gets around 28% of all the clicks. By the sixth positioned result, that goes down to 5%.
Step by Step Instructions for SEO Keyword Research
Now that you understand the reason for this fundamental aspect, you’re all set to begin. Here is a simple process you can follow to choose key terms and phrases to focus on in your blogs, site web pages, and other marketing materials.
1. Make a list of keyword/search terms
First, make a spreadsheet and list the keywords relevant to your business. These keywords should relate to the product or service categories on your website. Also, assuming your website has a blog where you publish regularly, you would already have used some keywords related to your business.
Keep the keyword list short and simple, as an extended list can make it challenging to narrow down later. It would also be helpful to envision yourself as a potential customer looking for the product or service your business offers.
2. List down common terms or phrases your target audience might use
Find terms or phrases your target clients could possibly use to search for products or services that your business offers.
If you have information from Google Analytics or HubSpot’s Sources report, look through your organic search traffic list to distinguish keywords consumers already use to show up on your website.
This isn’t intended to be a last rundown of keywords. However, this would give you a fair idea of which keywords are important from a traffic and ranking perspective, helping you narrow down your keyword list.
3. Find related search terms on Google
There are many ways of adding related search terms to your keyword lists.
- Search a keyword (search term) in Google and look at the bottom of the page, where you’ll see a list of related search queries in bold. You can add these to your keyword list.
- For more such results, click on one of the related inquiries and look at the list Google proposes at the bottom of that second page. Most likely, you will find more search terms that individuals are looking for that connect with your business.
You can also type your keyword phrase into Google’s Keyword Planner or one of the paid tools noted below and see what other significant terms people use.
4. Use a tool for keyword research
Lastly, use tools to learn about the search volume, ranking difficulty, traffic estimate, and competition difficulty of a particular keyword, phrase or search term. Wordtracker and Ubersuggest are FREE keyword tools that you can use. Or you can use premium tools such as Ahrefs and SemRush.
Conclusion
The above tips will help newbie SEO marketers and business owners to get started with research for their websites. When done right, keyword research will help you to optimize your website for users and search engines. Plus, it will help you to create targeted content that engages readers and leads to more conversions.