What is keyword research?
Keyword research is the process of finding and selecting keywords that are relevant to your business or website. The purpose of keyword research is to help you understand what people are searching for online so that you can better target your content and marketing efforts. If you’re not looking to hire an SEO company to do your keyword research then stayed tuned for the reading below.
Why keyword research is important
Keyword research is one of the most important aspects of SEO. It is how you determine which keywords to target and how you determine your strategy for ranking well on search engine results pages.
Unfortunately, many businesses do not do keyword research properly and they make common mistakes that can hurt their rankings. In this article, we will discuss how to do keyword research properly and how to avoid making these common mistakes. We will also discuss the different tools that can be used for this process.
What to keep in mind
One of the most important things to do when doing keyword research is to target long tail keywords instead of short tail keywords. Short tail keywords are those that are just one or two words long. They are very general and there is a lot of competition for them.
Long tail keywords, on the other hand, are much more specific and usually three or more words long. There is less competition for these keywords, so they are easier to rank for. businesses should be targeting long tail keywords as they usually have an easier time ranking for them.
How to do keyword research
There are a few different ways to do keyword research. The most common way is to use a keyword research tool. There are many different tools available, both free and paid. Some of the more popular ones include Google Keyword Planner, Wordstream, and Moz Keyword Explorer.
If you decide to use something free like Google keyword tool, to start finding the right keywords you need to enter a seed keyword. This is just a starting point, like how to do keyword research. After you hit enter, Google will give you a list of related keywords and their monthly search volume.
What you want to look for are long tail keywords that are roughly 4 or more words long and that have a decent search volume of at least a few hundred searches per month. You also want to make sure that the keyword is relevant to your business. keep in mind, if you find keywords that are long tail but have low search volume this is also ok because a lot of these keywords will combine turning it into lots of monthly search visitors.
For example, as your website grows, if you target 1 low search keyword, Google will also rank you for hundreds of other similar search terms, which means you can get thousands of visitors to your website every month.
Once you have found a few potential keywords, you can then start to implement them into your website and content. Remember to use them naturally and do not stuff them into your content as this will just hurt your rankings.
Consider search intent
Another important thing to consider when doing keyword research is search intent. This is what the person searching is looking to do. Are they looking to buy something? Are they looking for information?
You need to make sure that your content matches the search intent of the keyword. If you’re targeting a keyword that has commercial intent, then your content should be focused on selling a product or service.
If you’re targeting a keyword that has informational intent, then your content should be informative and provide value to the reader.
See what keywords your competitor is ranking for
If you’re still not sure what keywords to rank for or have run out of ideas, check and see what your competitors are ranking for. There are a few different ways to do this. One way is to use a tool like SpyFu. Another way is to just do a Google search and then scroll down to the bottom of the page and look at the related searches. This will give you an idea of what other keywords people are searching for that are related to your initial keyword.
To finish off, doing keyword research can be a time-consuming process, but it is worth it as it can help you improve your website traffic and rankings. Just remember to target long tail keywords, use relevant keywords naturally, and to research your competition. If you do all of this, you will be well on your way to ranking higher in search engine results pages.
Avoid these common mistakes
When doing keyword research, there are a few common mistakes that businesses make. One of those mistakes is not being relevant. This means that the keywords you’re targeting should be closely related to your business. If they’re not, then you’re likely to get a lot of irrelevant traffic which won’t convert into customers or sales.
The second mistake is not doing any research on your competition. This is important as you need to know what keywords they’re targeting and how well they’re ranking for those keywords. This will give you an idea of how difficult it will be to rank for certain keywords and whether or not it’s worth your time and effort.
Bonus tip
If you’re looking to hire an SEO agency or a SEO Sydney based agency, consider us at Whitehat as we have 7+ years of experience in doing tens of thousands of hours of keyword research that would help our clients to rank on the first page of Google.
Recent Posts
Get your FREE 30 minute Digital Marketing Consultation.
Learn how you can grow your business by unlocking the full potential of Digital Marketing.