How To Research The Most Effective Keywords For Your SEO Campaign In Six Steps
Website and blog owners understand that content precedes everything else when it comes to a good site. Though it is true that people and search engines love high-quality content within an organized website, it is also very important to select the right keywords. Keywords, when placed correctly in content, can literally make or break your website because almost every aspect of SEO depends on it. Effective keywords ultimately drive organic traffic and boost your site rankings, which in turn drive more sales and potential clients. Here’s an excellent step-by-step guide on how to do keyword research:
Step One
Create a list of relevant topics in relation to your business or niche. If you have a blog, then list the topics you blog on about most of the time. Put yourself in your consumer’s point of view- what kind of words would he or she put in search engines that would lead to your website?
Step Two
Put in the necessary keywords for each topic. They can be one word or phrases that you think will show up on search engine result pages. You can get some ideas if you already have an existing website by figuring out which keywords are being used to find your site. Hubspot Sources Tool and Google Analytics are excellent website analytics software that enable you to do a deep dive on your organic search bucket for identifying the keywords your visitors use to get to your website.
Step Three
Research additional search-related terms, or follow through to find the best keywords for each topic. Put yourself in the target consumer’s shoes and type it in Google. If you are at a loss, then you can try this- scroll down to the results and consider the related search terms at the bottom. Another factor to consider is how specific the keyword is. Common keywords are already being used by many businesses and blogs, so eliminate the most used terms and focus on your specific topic, service area, or phrases that are relevant to your site.
Step Four
Check your combination of long-tail keywords and head terms for each topic. Head terms can be one to three words, while long-tail keywords are longer phrases which usually have more than three words. Each topic should have a good balance because it provides both long and short-term benefits. Short keywords rank further in search engines but are used more by people, while long-tail keywords get you up on top of rankings based on your niche.
Step Five
See how other similar websites are getting ranked for the same keywords. You can also see the useful details such as what type of content keywords they use and their title tags and which keywords bring in the most traffic. There are currently two effective tools that you can use:
SEMrush is a tool that lets you see the strategy your competition is implementing in terms of paid and organic search, display advertising and link building. The organic research aspect allows you to see the top keywords used, monitor the changes in domain position and lets you uncover organic competition. SEMrush has a keyword research tool that also lets you see the number of results, CPC and volume, long-tail keywords and environments which you can use to build a formidable SEO campaign.
Moz Rank Tracker is a tool that stores keyword search ranking and page rankings for your later use. It encompasses top search engines such as Yahoo!, Google and Bing. It provides a report on how certain keywords have attracted people to specific sites so that you can see how you fare against the competition.
Step Six
Trim down the keywords by using Google AdWords Keyword Planner. Google’s keyword planner is another useful tool that estimates the amount of traffic and volume for every keyword or keyword phrases you are planning to incorporate into your content. Google might have taken out some of the more interesting functionalities when they released the Keyword Planner, but it still provides a lot of important information, especially when you use Google Trends to complete the keyword strategy.
The Keyword Planner should take out some keyword terms that are getting too much or too little projected traffic. You can also see how these particular keywords are projected and its trending history in Google Trends. Those low-volume terms might actually come in handy for a later benefit. You can also see how the terms you chose are trending upwards, or which ones are not worth the SEO effort in the meantime.