Why is Keyword Research so crucial?
The reason keyword research is so crucial is because it is the foundation and core of your entire SEO/Online Marketing strategy. Period. Without proper keyword research you will not be attracting your ideal customers or clients.
In fact, you will either attract tire kickers or no customers since the keyword you chose had a very low keyword search volume. With proper keyword research you will attract your “right” customers and will experience an increase in traffic, engagement and of course, sales.
What is Keyword Research and what does it consist of?
Keyword research is simply a strategy to discover the most relevant and profitable keywords for your business.
It is very similar to mining for gold in that you are sifting through all the junk and garbage to find the few diamonds in the ruff. It is a slow process and can become stressful at times if you either cannot find any potentially profitable keyword or you just don’t what you are doing.
As mentioned above, it’s not always about getting visitors to your website, but about getting the right kind of visitors. With keyword research you can see what your prospects are searching for, and provide them with exactly what they are looking for.
Simple economics: supply and demand.
How do I find profitable keywords?…
Step #1: Ask yourself 9 Simple Questions
Before you go crazy and type in random search terms you “think” your potential customers would be searching for ask yourself a few simple, yet critical questions:
1. Is the keyword relevant to your website’s content?
2. Will searchers find what they are looking for on your site when they search using these keywords? 3. Will they be happy with what they find?
4. Will this traffic result in financial rewards or other organizational goals? If the answer to all of these questions is a clear “Yes!”, proceed… If not, repeat the steps above until you find a keyword that matches the above criteria. Now that you’re clear with the questions above ask yourself the following 5 additional questions:
5. How would you describe your site? – After you’ve spent some time reviewing your site and creating a list of keywords, describe your site to yourself. You may find that what you describe will be near identical to what you have written on your site. However, some customers may not understand your terminology and so you will need to look at your site from their perspective and see how they would describe your site. This will allow you to determine where to focus most of your attention on and what pages or keywords to change.
6. Why would someone choose you over a competitor? – What is your competitive advantage? This is a great question since it will help you in finding keywords that convert into sales.
7. What products or services are like yours but not competitors’? – Personal Injury Attorney might say that a Real Estate provides the same type of service, but is not a competitor since one focuses on Personal Injury and the other focuses on Real Estate.
8. Do you have a “Go-To” product or service? – Is it your most profitable product? What are your reasons for promoting one product over another? The answer to these questions will help you focus. This will help you first focus all your energy on ranking that product or service instead of the others.
9. What are your most important keywords? – This question will help you realize that you don’t have to rank for hundreds of keywords. In fact, there are only ten super important keywords. Then of course, there are the other keywords.
Step #2: Brainstorm and Create a List of Potential Keywords
Initially, you should create a list of the top 30-50 keywords you found were most relevant and profitable for your business from the 5 questions you answered above.
Step #3: While you do that, think about this…
• Type in any keywords that you feel your potential customer would type in to find a product or service that you offer
• Are the search results the types of results that you would like to show up for or are they just highly irrelevant? You will come to find in a few cases that the keyword you actually thought would attract the right customers actually is the wrong keyword since it has search results of products or services that are unrelated to what you offer in your business.
Be aware, when brainstorming for keywords don’t be biased and just select keywords that you “feel” your potential customers would type in. Instead, look at the hard data, specifically the search volume and choose the ones that get the higher monthly searches.
For example, a Lawyer may feel that the keyword “Lawyer in New York” would get more searches when in fact “Lawyers in NYC” received more searches. So, in this case you would optimize your page for the keyword “Lawyers in NYC” because it received a higher monthly search volume according to Google.
Step #4: Spy On Your Top Competitors (Reverse Engineering)
Look at what keywords your top 5 competitors are ranking for and optimizing on their site through Competitor Analysis. Create a list of those keywords and find where they are optimizing for those keywords on their website. You can do this by hitting “Ctrl”, “U”. This will allow you to view their source code and the meta tags. Make sure to look at Title tag, description, keyword tag, H1 tag. 6
Step #5: Use the Google Keyword Planner Tool to Find Highest Searched Keywords
Enter the 30-50 keywords you have selected into the Google Keyword Planner (KWP) From the results the KWP gives you, select the Top 5-10 highest searched and most relevant keywords. Select Exact Match on the left hand side of the page.
Step #6: Use Google Trends to Rank for Keywords that are Trending
Use Google trends to verify if the keyword is increasing in popularity/search volume. If the graph is on a positive trend then it is a promising keyword. But if it’s on a downward trend or up and down then you may want to review other keywords before making your final decision.
Step #7: Identify the Most Profitable Keywords for Highest Conversions
Simply put: each keyword must be dedicated to a target page. If you do not have a target page for each keyword, then you are just wasting your time. Review your keywords and assign a target page to each keyword. That being said, you can target 2 to 3 keywords per page.
Once you have assigned keywords, now you can think about tracking these keywords. The best and free way to do this is by installing Google Analytics on your site.
Read this guide on how to install your Google Analytics.
Once you have Google Analytics installed make sure to focus on:
• Organic visitors – How many searches are you receiving organically? Meaning how many searches are you getting just by ranking on Page 1 of Google for each of your keywords.
• Exact match search – Review the amount of exact matches when people are searching and landing on your target page? The larger this number, the closer you are to targeting your consumer correctly. • Phrase match – You are looking at the amount of phrase matches for this one as well. And the conclusion is the same: the higher the volume, the closer you are to targeting your consumer correctly.
• Keyword diversity – What are ALL the keywords that you are getting traffic from? If there is a minimal amount of various keywords that Google Analytics is displaying then that means you have to start doing what we talked about above, which is targeting 2 to 3 keywords per page on your site.
This way you will be able to target a variety of different keywords and increasing your chances of ranking for those keywords. Be sure that the keywords that are receiving low search volume are relevant.
If they are not, 7 then you must re-evaluate their effectiveness and pick other keywords that are more relevant and with good search volume.
To Sum Up…
Keyword Research is a necessary evil but one that has huge payoffs in the end if done right.
If you follow. these 7 steps that I have outlined for you above you will build a solid keyword foundation for your website, increase your traffic and make more sales.
As I mentioned earlier, Keyword research can take time but it is the backbone of ALL of your Website and Ranking efforts. Without a solid keyword strategy and foundation you will be wasting your time and hemorrhaging your money.
Do you have any tips and strategies for finding highly profitable keywords via effective Keyword Research?