recognise what your target audience is looking for
Let's figure out which strategic keywords to target in your website's content, and how to build that material to satisfy both visitors and search engines, now that you know how to show up in search results.
Understanding your target market and how they search for your information, services, or products is the power of keyword research.
Keyword research gives particular search data that might assist you in answering queries such as:
What are they looking for?
How many individuals are on the lookout for it?
What format do they require the information in?
In this chapter, you'll discover how to unearth that information using tools and methodologies, as well as how to prevent keyword research blunders and create powerful content. You'll discover a whole new world of strategic SEO after you figure out how your target audience searches for your content.
Before you start looking for keywords, make a list of questions.
Before you can help a company expand through SEO, you must first understand who they are, who their consumers are, and what their objectives are.
This is where many people save costs. Many people skip this critical planning phase because keyword research takes time, and why waste time when you already know what keywords you want to rank for?
The truth is that what you want to rank for and what your audience wants are frequently diametrically opposed. Focusing on your target group and then using keyword data to fine-tune those insights will result in far more successful campaigns than focusing on random keywords.
Here's an illustration. Frankie & Jo's (a vegan, gluten-free ice cream store in Seattle) has heard about SEO and would want assistance in enhancing how and how often they appear in organic search results. To assist someone, you must first comprehend their situation.
understanding SEO and would like assistance in enhancing how and how frequently they appear in organic search results. To assist them, you must first gain a better understanding of their clients. You could do so by asking questions like:
What kind of ice cream, desserts, snacks, and other foods are people looking for?
Who is looking for these keywords?
When are individuals looking for ice cream, snacks, sweets, and other such items?
Are there any trends in seasonality throughout the year?
What methods do individuals use to find ice cream?
What are the words they use?
What kind of inquiries do they make?
Is it true that more searches are conducted on mobile devices?
Why are people on the lookout for ice cream?
Are people seeking for health-conscious ice cream or just something to please their sweet tooth?
What are the locations of potential clients - locally, nationally, or internationally?
Finally, and maybe most importantly, how can you assist in the creation of the best ice content?
understanding SEO and would like assistance in enhancing how and how frequently they appear in organic search results. To assist them, you must first gain a better understanding of their clients. You could do so by asking questions like:
What kind of ice cream, desserts, snacks, and other foods are people looking for?
Who is looking for these keywords?
When are individuals looking for ice cream, snacks, sweets, and other such items?
Are there any trends in seasonality throughout the year?
What methods do individuals use to find ice cream?
What are the words they use?
What kind of inquiries do they make?
Is it true that more searches are conducted on mobile devices?
Why are people on the lookout for ice cream?
Are people seeking health-conscious ice cream or just something to please their sweet tooth?
What are the locations of potential clients - locally, nationally, or internationally?
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, how can you assist in the creation of the best ice cream content in order to foster a community and deliver what all those individuals are looking for? These questions are an important part of the planning process since they will drive your keyword research and help you create better content.
Remember, if any of the concepts used in this chapter leave you perplexed, our SEO glossary is available to help!
Definitions in Chapter 2
What are the terms that people are looking for?
You may be able to describe what you do, but how does your target audience find the product, service, or information you offer? The initial stage in the keyword research process is to answer this question.
You've probably got a list of keywords in mind that you'd like to rank for. These will include items such as your products, services, or other subjects.
Start with your website addresses, as they are excellent seed keywords for your study. You can use a keyword research tool to find out the average monthly search volume and similar keywords for those phrases. We'll go over search volume in more detail in the following section, but it might help you figure out which variations of your keywords are the most popular with searchers during the discovery phase.
Once you've entered your seed keywords into a keyword research tool, you'll start to see more keywords, common inquiries, and content ideas that you might have overlooked otherwise.
Let's look at a florist who specializes in weddings as an example.
If you type "wedding" and "florist" into a keyword research engine, you might find highly relevant, highly searched for terms like:
Bouquets for weddings
Bridal bouquets
Flower shop for weddings
When you're researching keywords for your content, you'll almost certainly come across some that aren't related.
Start with your website addresses, as they are excellent seed keywords for your study. You can use a keyword research tool to find out the average monthly search volume and similar keywords for those phrases. We'll go over search volume in more detail in the following section, but it might help you figure out which variations of your keywords are the most popular with searchers during the discovery phase.
Once you've entered your seed keywords into a keyword research tool, you'll start to see more keywords, common inquiries, and content ideas that you might have overlooked otherwise.
Let's look at a florist who specializes in weddings as an example.
If you type "wedding" and "florist" into a keyword research engine, you might find highly relevant, highly searched for terms like:
Bouquets for weddings
Bridal bouquets
Flower shop for weddings
When you're researching keywords for your content, you'll probably realize that the search volume for such phrases changes a lot. While it's important to target terms that your audience is searching for, in some circumstances, targeting terms with lower search traffic may be more advantageous because they're less competitive.
Because both high- and low-competition keywords can benefit your website, learning more about search traffic can help you prioritize keywords and choose the ones that will provide your website with the greatest strategic advantage.
We have a tool for that.
seotools offers a free tool that can assist you in finding and analyzing keywords. Give it a shot when you're ready to get your hands dirty with keyword research.
Consider using Keyword Explorer.
Diversify!
It's vital to realize that pages, not entire websites, rank for keywords. When it comes to huge businesses, the homepage frequently ranks for multiple keywords, but this isn't always the case for ordinary websites. Many websites get more organic traffic to pages other than the homepage, which is why it's critical to diversify your website's pages by optimizing each for unique keywords.
Find out how to optimize a single page for a variety of keywords.
The more labor necessary to get higher results for a certain term or keyword phrase, the higher the search traffic. This is sometimes referred to as keyword difficulty, and it can include SERP features; for example, if a keyword's result page is clogged with SERP features (such as featured snippets, knowledge graphs, carousels, and so on), the difficulty will rise. The top ten lists are frequently dominated by big brands.
results for high-volume keywords, so if you're just getting started on the internet and pursuing the same keywords, the uphill battle for ranking can take years.
The stronger the competition and effort required to achieve organic ranking success, the higher the search volume. If you set it too low, though, you risk not attracting any searchers to your site. In many circumstances, targeting highly narrow, low-competition search phrases may be the best option. Long-tail keywords are what we call them in SEO.
Ranking #1 for the keyword "shoes" would be fantastic... or would it?
It's great to work with keywords that get 50,000 or even 5,000 searches per month, but in reality, these popular search terms account for a small percentage of total web searches. In reality, keywords with a lot of searches may imply anything.
uncertain intent, which means that if you target these phrases, you risk attracting users whose goals aren't aligned with the content on your page.
Learn how to use the long tail of search to your advantage.
Using search volume as a strategic tool
You may be even more strategic by looking at your competitors and figuring out how searches fluctuate by season or area now that you've uncovered relevant search terms for your site and their accompanying search volumes.
Competitor's keywords
You'll most likely collect a large number of keywords. How do you know which one to start with? Prioritizing high-volume keywords that your competitors aren't already ranking for could be a good idea. On the other hand, you might look at your list to see which keywords your competitors are already ranking for and prioritize those. When the former is appropriate, the latter is excellent.
. The former is ideal for capitalizing on your competitors' missed opportunities, while the latter is a bold strategy that positions you to compete for keywords that your competitors are currently ranking well for.
Seasonal keywords
Understanding seasonal trends might help you plan your content strategy. For example, if you know that "Christmas box" sales in the United Kingdom peak in October through December, you can plan content months ahead of time and give it a significant push during those months.
Region-specific keywords
You can more strategically target a specific location by using Google Keyword Planner to narrow down your keyword research to specific cities, counties, or states, or evaluate "interest by subregion" in Google Trends. Geographically specific research might assist you in making your content more relevant to your target audience. You might learn, for example, that in Texas, the popular name for California, "big rig" is the preferred term for a large truck, although in New York, "tractor-trailer" is the favored term.
Which format is more appropriate for the searcher's intent?
We learned about SERP characteristics in Chapter 2. That background will aid us in determining how searchers prefer to consume content for a specific keyword. The format in which Google displays search results is determined by purpose, and each query has its own. In their Quality Rater Guidelines, Google defines these intentions as "know" (discover information), "do" (achieve a goal), "website" (find a specific website), or "visit-in-person" (visit a local business).
