When your website launches, you want to make sure you provide value for your users. Value is created through content and quality links back to your site that increase authority. A valuable website results in a more effective marketing strategy.
How do you differentiate yourself from your competitors and stick out in front of your potential customers? For content and internet marketers, a campaign for any business starts with keyword research.
Every search begins with a keyword, either long-tail or short-tail. There are over five billion searches on Google alone every day. Accurate and smart keyword research gives brands and businesses a tremendous advantage in their internet marketing campaigns.
You can’t just stick keywords onto a webpage and hope to rank in a high position on Google. Those days are over. Your content has to be about something. You have to give your users information they value. Keywords are used in website copy, blogs, social media posts, and more. Used correctly, you can rank for hundreds, even thousands of phrases.
Ask yourself what your goals are and research according to the time and money you can commit to your campaign.
The question remains, how do you find the terms and phrases that lead to increased conversions?
Understand What Your Audience Wants
The top priority for all business owners is to understand their audience. Hit the pain points and clearly spell out how your products or services will benefit them. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes for a minute.
What grabs their attention? Who are you trying to attract? What’s the demographic? Every customer searches in a different way, and with voice search gaining ground, searches become more narrowed and advanced. Industry related terms that your audience is interested in, or have a high search volume can pay dividends for your business.
If you begin to anticipate the needs of your audience, you’ll create content and incorporate high converting keywords that grow your business.
Look at Your Competition
Once you have an understanding of what your audience is searching for, it’s time to check out the SERPs. It’s a waste of time to target a particular keyword you’re never going to rank for. Although you could come across a phrase that is perfect for your company, check the first page of results. If it’s all big brands and information, rather than presenting companies similar to yours, you’ll waste your efforts.
Use tools that you have available to see what keywords your competitors are ranking for. Then, see which pages on the site those keywords are ranking to. As you look at your competition, the most important question you can ask yourself is, “Can I do better than this?”
You’re not going to be the only company that wants to target a particular keyword. When that query leads to a lot of conversions, the competition is high. It’s a matter of how you’re going to leverage that word for the best results for your campaign.
The best way to tackle the keywords you want to target is by getting very specific. You have your target audience, you have your ideal customer, and if you’re a local business, you have your targeted area.
Tackle the Keywords with Modifiers
A national SEO campaign is much different than a local SEO campaign, and you can narrow your audience to the precise areas that you conduct business. The long-tail keywords are your best bet to begin ranking.
If you’re a local home contractor in the greater Philadelphia area and you service within a 30-mile radius, target those specific counties or towns that you want to see traffic from. Targeting a term like “home remodeling company in Bucks County” or “home remodeler in Philadelphia” gives you a better chance to rank for users searching in that area, even if the modifier isn’t in the query.
Modifiers take a variety of forms. For example, while location may be an influencing factor for services in a particular area, you can target keywords based on intent and quality of a particular product.
If you’re an e-commerce site that sells women’s shoes, a modifier with intent would be “buy” or “purchase” women’s shoes. This tells the search engines that the user is looking to buy a product, and Google will display results that best fit the intent of the query.
Quality takes many forms as well. If your user is looking for the “best SEO company” or “fastest SEO tool” then make sure you give them what they want. Modifiers and long-term keywords aren’t searched as often as short-tail keywords, but the impact on your campaign can be drastic.
Use the Tools at Your Disposal
The Google Adwords Keyword Planner provides ideas, insights, and search volume for a particular query, allowing you to create keyword lists. Used by Google to help in your pay per click efforts, don’t get stuck with just Keyword Planner. You might misinterpret the information and miss out on potential opportunities. Think about the other free tools at your disposal to get more in depth knowledge about your target audience and start to rank for particular queries.
Google Trends: Offering accurate data sets, you can filter your trends based on location. Using Google Trends to find your keywords, you can explore topics, like “Keyword Research” and see where the interest is coming from. You’ll see related searched that are rising, and compare with a second or third term to see how the keywords are trending and performing over time. You’ll see the peaks and valleys, if the term is searched in your city, and see clues about words and phrases you should be targeting.
Social Conversations: For a blog post or other form of content, you can browse social platforms like Twitter to see what topics are trending. This provides insight into your audience, what they are talking about, and what they’re interested in.
Ubersuggest: Similar to Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest helps you identify trending phrases, providing additional ideas for other opportunities. The platform gives suggestions from Search, Shopping, News, and Video.
WordStream: For online advertising and preparing to set up your Google Adwords account, WordStream is an excellent PPC management solution. You’ll see data personalized to your site rather than conversion estimates. You can bring new keywords to the forefront every day by connecting with WordStream and personalizing the keywords to your business.
Wrapping It Up
While smart keywords research is a vital component of generating traffic, Google is advanced to display relevant companies and businesses to provide the best user experience. Most of the traffic (over 70%) that directs to any given page will come from searches and keywords you’re not optimized for.
These keywords can be related ideas or synonyms, but when your site is correctly set up and optimized, you’ll earn the traffic. Make sure you’re utilizing each keyword to its full potential. This means including the keyword in the content, in the title tag, and in the meta description.
You should never stop doing keyword research. Consistently check your keyword rankings to see your progress. Queries become more advanced and more specific. There are always opportunities to begin ranking for additional keywords and gain more traffic and conversions for your business.
The research is about how you can hold onto and maintain your own rankings. You never know when you can take advantage of an area where your competition is slipping. Finding the converting words and phrases through tests and consistent research will help you stand out above your competition.
Author information
Ryan Clutter
SEO & Content Strategist at 1SEO.com
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