The Basics Of Keyword Research

When trying to boost SEO, promote an ad, or complete any kind of marketing task, you probably use keywords to help reach a wider audience. Sometimes it seems like your keywords are not helping you as much as you’d like, or you are not reaching your desired audience. Keyword research can help you find what keywords you should be targeting to meet your goals.

What Is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is the process of finding what terms your target audience is searching for, analyzing them, and optimizing them for your own content. Keyword research can help you unlock what your audience needs and wants, and help you reach them more efficiently.

Why Is Keyword Research Important?

If you want your audience to be able to easily find you, keywords are crucial. Adding the right keywords can help boost you in search rankings and on social media, and help give you insight into what your audience is looking for. They also help you stay competitive- the easier you are to find, the more likely you are to grow your customer base.

How To Do Keyword Research:

Think of some terms that are important or relevant in your industry. These can be vague, as you will narrow them down later. Some examples would be “social media marketing”, “eCommerce”, “small business”, “online shopping”, or anything that you feel fits your industry. You can also use tools like Ubersuggest or Google Keyword Planner (found on your Google Ads account) to find new, relevant keywords by entering your domain or a current keyword. After you do that, you’ll have a breakdown of how often that keyword is used, and the success rate when used in various situations.

After you find some keywords that you want to explore, use Google Trends to see the projections and trend history for each keyword. If a keyword you are thinking of using is currently low-volume but is projected to grow soon, this can be a great opportunity to get ahead of the curve. While using popular keywords can be a great asset as well, you might get lost among everyone else using it.

Take into account the SERP (Search Engine Result Page) features when you are choosing your keywords. An easy way to do this is to simply Google search your keyword, and see what snippets come up. There are several types of SERP feature snippets- Image Packs, Paragraph Snippets, List Snippets, and Video Snippets. If a keyword has a lot of images, you should write an image-heavy post to get placement in search rankings, If it includes a lot of Paragraph Snippets, you should focus on exceptionally well-written content that offers the searcher what they are looking for. For List Snippets, create a list in your content. For Video Snippets, create a short, high-quality video. Knowing what the SERP features for your keyword can be a huge asset to boosting your content.

See what keywords your competitors are using. While you do not need to use all of the same keywords as they do, it is good to look into what they are using and how their keywords are performing. There are sites such as SEMRUSH that allow you to analyze your competitor’s keywords easily.

Keyword research is crucial if you want to drive traffic. There are plenty of keyword research tools to help you, so find what works best for you! Have you done keyword research? What are your favorite tips and tools?