Keyword – Just the name itself is easy to understand. It’s a word that is key to finding an article, website, or piece of content tied to what you want to know. You have millions of people in the world competing over the most precious keywords that will dictate how their business performs. But aside from this superficial knowledge, what do we know about the advanced use of keywords? This is why we made this article in 3 easy steps that will help you learn everything you need to know about keyword research. So, let’s get right into it.
1. What Are Keywords and How to Make Them
Keywords make the basis of your SEO campaign. Choosing your keyword will dictate how well your article performs in the wild west of the internet. It will dictate how easy (or hard) random people will find your content. This will impact on-page SEO, content promotion, and email outreach. This is why no successful SEO campaign will start with anything other than the keyword choice. Look at it this way: You are a sailor in the ocean and a polished keyword is your compass. It will tell you where salvation is (in this case profit) and it will lead you there. What also comes in handy is the fact that they will tell you whether you are making progress toward that goal or not.
Keyword research is your best shot at connecting with your target audience. You need to perform extensive research into the key terms that interest your potential target group. After you have decided to stick to a few potential keywords you can start with a deeper analysis. What will attract people more to what you have to offer? What is it that they are searching for, what vocabulary do they use, and what are their most popular phrases. For example, you won’t go far if you use American-English vocabulary if your SEO is focused on Sydney.
You need to make a brainstorming session where you look over all of the related topics that your target base will search on the internet. Some of these topics include:
- Email marketing
- Traffic for your website
- PPC
- Social media
Keep in mind that these aren’t keyword terms themselves.
Crafting a high-quality keyword is all about reading deep into the substance of your niche. If you are trying to prove yourself in the coffee scene, going for keywords such as “brewing”, “coffee preparation”, and “roller grinding” are all strong candidates, but even these can have differing results.
2. What Are Your Tools?
Photo by NisonCo PR and SEO on Unsplash
Multiple tools at your disposal will assist you in crafting the perfect keyword. One of the best and most reliable tools in the keyword information category that you can get is Google’s Keyword planner. You can find out more about it here. There are numerous tools available to you, but there is 1 major difference between them and Google’s Keyword planner – that is that the latter gets its information straight from Google. This is a vital distinction. Keep in mind that 92.96% of all global traffic comes from Google Search, Google Images, and Google Maps. This is an outstanding amount of search reliability that the internet has on Google. It means that whether you like it or not, you will have to adapt to Google’s system and algorithm if you want to succeed. All of this means that the information is the most reliable you can find on the internet. But… It comes with a problem. Google’s Keyword planner is made to assist buyers with their Google ad campaigns, and not with SEO practices.
Then there is ExplodingTopics. Think of them as an improved version of Google trends (big words, I know). Exploding Topics is primarily used to dig through the annals of the internet to find every bit of information available to you regarding specific keywords, most notably, those that are currently rising in popularity.
Another option would be Keyword Surfer. Keyword Surfer functions by giving you analytics about every search that you make in Google. It’s a neat Google extension that is easy to install and easy to manage. Making it a great, reliable tool that can appeal to even those who aren’t too well-versed in the industry.
SEMRush is our final choice for today. It’s one of the most efficient tools for keyword analytics available on the free market. It doesn’t waste time, its defining quality is efficiency by giving you the exact keywords that a website ranks for. It is the ideal tool to scout competition that is also using Google (which means practically 100% of your competition) and you can integrate their best-performing keywords into your own.
3. Strategies for Choosing a Good Keyword
We made it look easy for choosing the correct keyword, but in reality, there is no go-to strategy for what keyword to pick. No tool or system will tell you: “Yes, pick this one”. Instead, you need to weigh in the deciding factors when choosing a keyword, and after you’re done, you need to pick one that fits the criteria the most. These deciding factors include:
1) Search Volume
The more people searching for a given keyword the better. This is the easiest way of understanding search volume. Now, depending on your industry and keyword niche, you can have varying results about the traffic you’re getting. Always remember that there will be more people googling “burger joint near me” than “mineral deposits in Uganda”. Quite a drastic example, but you get the point. Don’t be discouraged if you aren’t getting enough organic traffic for your niche. It highly depends on the number of clicks for the industry standard, and you should compare yourself to those numbers instead of abstract standards.
2) Difficulty
If you are starting out in the business, your goal shouldn’t be to contest the biggest keywords from the start. You need to start small and work your way up. Once your website starts growing in authority and you have attracted a significant amount of organic traffic, you can slowly increase your reach.
3) CPC
Cost-per-click is a mechanic that tells you one important detail – Are the people searching for this word actually spending money?
It’s nice to know whether a lot of people are searching for a specific keyword, but that doesn’t matter the least if the target group is not actually spending money to get what they want.
