Keyword research is an essential part of SEO, it is the process used for finding, analysing and selecting an extensive list of keywords. Creating a list that is relevant to target and for your website to rank for as relevant search terms that potential customers search for. The process of finding what key terms your target audience is entering into Google to find businesses like yours helps to understand what potential customers are searching for. It enables you to specifically provide them with relevant content that answers their questions that appears or ranks highly on Google results .
Why is keyword research important?
Keyword research is important because it provides you with data that answers key questions your customers are asking. This is essential to target your audience through informed content strategy, using relevant keywords and content that matches their search intention.
Conducting keyword research properly is important because it will highlight what key search terms your target audience are searching. You may think that targeting different keywords to your competitors will get you more clients but actually you are missing out on potential clients that cannot find your website ranking where your competitors are. But the most important thing to remember is to use the keywords that your target audience uses.
What is the purpose of keyword research?
Relevance: Keyword research ensures that customers that you want to find you, can. Google ranks your website based on the relevancy of the content to the keywords that users are searching. Relevancy provides more value than other websites because it more directly meets users needs.
Authority: Websites that provide helpful informative content are authoritative and as a result they rank higher on Google. Promoted content can earn social signals and backlinks to improve authority.
Volume: In order to rank on Google for specific keywords that people are searching for, search engines find the relevant keywords across the website within the content. So the keyword research helps to find a variety of keywords to use across the website and the volume can increase the ranking of the website.
How do you do key research?
- Identify key points: Start with a list of relevant topics and key factors about your business. This should highlight the services that your business offers as well as considering what your target audience are looking for.
- Discover keywords: Using the points made in step 1, identify keywords that are relevant to the topics stated, ensuring that they are the most important for your business to rank for on Google Search results. You should have a final list of keywords and phrases to target. If your website has been running with analytics tracking the data, use the analytics to see where your previous website users are coming from and what keywords they are using to find your website.
- Research keywords: The words you select for keywords could have various meanings depending who is interpreting it and in what situation. So, once you have selected keywords, to be sure that your content is ranking correctly on google, make a search using the keyword and review the results. If the results relate to what you are looking for, then this is appropriate to target, but if it is not then you would need to reconsider what keyword is most relevant to your content. Also, by searching the keywords it will provide an insight into the performance of the keyword enabling you to narrow down the list and improve the quality.
- It is important to have a larger list, so to fill out your list, type in your keyword to Google and analyse the related search terms suggestions. The suggestions can give ideas for additional keywords that Google suggests are being used.
- Keyword research tools can be used to research deeper into the keywords and phrases using your initial ideas that you have developed. This can be done easily using tools as stated in the section below.
Which keyword research tool is best?
There are various tools that you can use for keyword research including:
- Uber Suggests
- Moz Keyword Explorer
- Google Keyword Planner
- Google Trends
- Answer the public
- SpyFu keyword research tool
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