Keyword research is the foundation of any search marketing campaign. Without this important step, your campaign will lack the focus needed to drive it forward. Keyword research helps you to get into the mind of your ideal target audience. And when done correctly, keyword research can help you put your message in front of high-intent search users.
If this sounds like a lot of pressure to place on one step of your search campaign, that’s because it is. And before you think that you can get this step out of the way and then be done with it, remember that the best campaign strategists revisit the keyword research periodically.
What exactly is keyword research?
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of keyword research strategies, let’s look at the purpose of this task. Before any search campaign can begin, you need to know what your customers are searching for.
Remember that you are an expert in what you are offering. But your ideal target customers might not even know that you have the perfect solution to their problem. Instead of searching for your product directly, they are searching for information.
Take Buffer as an example. Before a customer knows that Buffer exists, they might search for “schedule social media content”. They will then find multiple solutions to their problem. The challenge for Buffer is to make sure their website appears above competitors such as Hootsuite and SproutSocial.
Keyword research is about exploring the different terms and phrases relevant to your company and what you offer. You can then look at historical search data to determine which offer the best opportunities.
Short head and long-tail keywords
Keywords can be short one-word searches, or they can be longer phrases. The short searches will typically get more search volume, as they are more generic. These are often described as short head search terms. The long phrases will have fewer people searching for them, but they might be incredibly niche and value. These are often referred to as long-tail search terms.
If you own a used Toyota dealership in Canterbury, an example of a short head term relevant to your company would be “cars canterbury”. A long-tail phrase would be something like “used toyota prius hybrid for sale canterbury”.
While the “cars Canterbury” search term might bring in more traffic, the long tail term is more specific. The person searching for the long tail phrase would be considered a “high intent” browser. They have already narrowed down their search to a specific car.
Where to gather keyword information
There are plenty of tools available to make the work of gathering keywords much easier. Since Google is one of the largest search engines in the world, it makes sense to start with their data.
Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is designed for planning PPC search marketing campaigns, but the information can easily be applied to SEO campaigns.
If you are running PPC ads through the Google Adwords network, you will have access to bidding information and historical search trends. You will be able to see the average number of monthly searches for a term, the bidding range for PPC listings and if there is high, low or medium competition for the term. A high volume and low competition search term that is relevant to your company is the dream discovery.
You can use Google Keyword Planner to discover new terms that are related to your sector. This is an excellent way to understand what users are searching for. So, if you aren’t sure how your customers find you, this is a great place to start.
Paid SEO keyword research tools
There are plenty of paid tools available to help you uncover new keywords. Some will gather and process their own data while others rely on data from Google. SEMRush, Ahrefs and Moz can all help you to delve into the search data to find out what your customers are searching for.
These tools can also allow you to nosy into your competitor’s rankings to find out how their users find them. If you’re new to the market and want to get a head start, this is an excellent place to begin.
Free SEO keyword research tools
There are plenty of free tools available to help you get to grips with keywords.
- Wordstream will allow you to find the right keywords to target based on your website or a competitor site.
- The Ahrefs Keyword Generator will come up with up to 150 keywords for every seed term.
- Answer The Public is excellent for identifying long-tail keywords which make excellent blog post titles.
- The SEOStack Keyword Tool is a chrome plugin that works directly from your browser.
A note on keyword intent
A key part of keyword research is learning how to be discerning. Not every keyword will be relevant to your company, so it’s important to be able to identify and understand keyword intent.
A common problem businesses face is that they believe that ranking for anything is better than ranking for nothing. So this might lead them to pursue keywords that aren’t right for their business. It might be easier to achieve a ranking position for these keywords, but this strategy is unlikely to bring in any relevant traffic.
By understanding the intent of the search user, you can focus on the terms that will be most profitable for your business. Searches can typically be categorised in the following ways:
- Transactional searches
- Navigational searches
- Informational searches
Transactional searches are carried out by those ready to buy, while the other two types of searches are usually still in the research stages. While all types of traffic can lead to a sale, it’s the transactional searches that will drive the high-intent traffic to your site.
If you need help devising and executing a keyword research strategy, I would love to help. Get in touch for a quick chat!
