Google keeps updating its algorithms, keeping you on tip toe, but one factor remains pretty consistent for optimizing your website searches: “Keyword Research”. This is essentially the first step of any SEO campaign.
Putting it another way:
Keyword Research helps you understand your target audience, and keywords are like the road signs for your SEO campaigns: indicating whether it is the right path for you to carry on and if you are making any progress or not.
Now, let’s get into the nitty-gritties of keyword research.
Why Is Keyword Research Important?
Keyword research is a way to get valuable insights about what exactly your target audience is looking up for on search engines. Therefore, you need to understand what your audience’s needs.
Here are some useful strategies and tactics that will help you build strong content and do your keyword research like a pro.
Brainstorm and Make a List
Keyword research is about understanding what your customers are looking for within the particular topic you choose to write on. For that, you need to:
- Analyze what keywords your competitor ranks for
Looking up for keywords your competitor ranks for is usually the ideal way to start your keyword research. Your competitors will give you enough ideas to keep you busy for days or even for months.
- Study your niche comprehensively
The more you know about your topic, the easier it gets to rank on the first page. A good way to start studying your niche is to browse relevant groups, industry forums, and Q&A sites. Beyond this, your customers are a great source of keyword ideas.
- Use keyword research tools
Here are seven free keyword research tools to kickstart your SEO campaign if you are tight on your budget and want to search for winning keywords.
- Google Search Console
- Google Trends
- Keyword Generator
- Answer the Public
- Keyworddit
- Keyword Surfer
These free keyword tools are good if you are just starting out, but if you are eager to expand your online business or website, paid tools are worth spending your money on in order to keep up with the competition.
- Diversify
Remember that the entire website doesn’t rank for keywords – pages do. You will often see big brands ranking up for their homepages. But this isn’t the case for each website, which is why it is always better to diversify your website’s pages optimizing each for unique and valuable keywords.
Get Strategic With the Search Volume
Understanding the search engines and figuring out how they work is crucial. It is because searches may differ by location, season, or region. Here are a few tips that will help you in the long run.
- Take advantage of your competitors’ missed opportunities. How can you do that? Simply prioritize (high-volume) keywords that your competitors aren’t ranking for.
- Knowledge about seasonal events and trends always comes in handy. For instance, if you know that your customers will search for a particular shopping event or day, you can strategize and prepare your content in advance, and it will get a big push around those months.
- Another good way is to target specific regions and locations and narrow down your keyword research. Geo-specific research is a good way to target your audience.
- Look up to the SERP! SERP is another good way to get a better gauge of the searcher’s intent.
- To boost your search engine traffic a little more, you can optimize your pages through synonyms and closely related terms.
Key Takeaway
Long-Tail Keywords Are Secret to Getting Tons of Traffic
Long-Tail keywords can dramatically drive tons of high-conversion traffic to your website. One thing to keep in mind is that you cannot determine the keyword popularity by the length of words in a query as short search queries can also be long-tail keywords.
Questions Always Win
Discover what type of questions your potential customers ask in your space and add all those questions and answers to an FAQ page. This strategy can yield substantial organic traffic to your website.
Final Thoughts
The secret of keyword research lies in understanding your audience and target market and how they are searching for your content, products, or services. The more insight you have, the easier it gets to rank on top and retain your position.
