Keyword research can be defined as the process using which you research popular search terms that people type into search engines like Google. And you can include them tactically in your content so that your content appears on the first page of Google search.
Keyword research plays a significant role in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The keyword research involves choosing a specific topic for your content that is mainly focused on a set of few targeted keywords that you want your article or blog to rank for.
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Recognizing your buyer’s persona and buyer’s journey to buy is a good business initiative and can help you to decide which are the keywords to be targeted for writing the content. The buyer’s journey is significant for many teams in your company, not just for your marketing team. Your sales team will have an easy time deciding how to deal with a potential or prospective customer if they can discover where they are in the customer’s journey.
As every user has their own unique journey, finding out what their demographic, goals, and intent are can yield several keyword ranges for your purpose. Which is why it is important to design a content map. Your content map plans your buyer personas and your customer’s journey stages on the map and will show you which customers or purchaser’s journey stages you may require to write extra content for.
Let us have a look at a B2C journey: A user who wants to buy racecar parts will have a different search behavior compared to a user who is looking for a racecar toy for his kid. But, as they have similar keywords, it is important to understand your buyer personas so that both parties can easily find these terms.
Keyword Research Process
Once you get your defined personas, you must create a plan for the keywords for which you already rank for and the keywords you want to rank for. A simple easy structure to follow in this regard is the PIE method. Here, PIE stands for Protect, Improve, and then Expand.
The Protect part is concerned with those keywords for which you already rank and want to keep locked in their position. Some of the examples would include popular brand names or keywords that are associated with your products and services. Generally, they are a later stage so conversions with these keywords are extremely valued.
The second part, i.e. the improve portion deals with the opportunity keywords where you rank in the 2nd to 10th Google search results pages. These are the keywords that you can rise in authority with few adjustments to the pages.
Finally, expand is for the opportunity terms that work well in PPC but does not have any visibility organically. These are keywords that do not appear in the top 10 of Google search results. They also include new campaign keywords that you want to add to your collection.
By categorizing them in this way, you can prioritize your time depending on the gaps that you find using this analysis. From there, you can start your keyword ideation.
Best Practices for Keyword research
- People Also Ask and Searches Related to
Along with discovering how to do research with Google keyword planner, here are a few ways Google gives us some clues. First, we have the search box. This provides you clues to keywords closely related to your search that customers are looking for. They are time sensitive as Google shows them based on search volumes and recent trends.
- Competitive Content Gap Analysis
Google Keyword Planner has a unique feature where you can submit a landing page and find the keywords related to it. If you have a certain topic in mind, you can enter the top competitors for that specific term and see what additional keywords they linked that page with.
Keyword discovery tools
These are many free and premium keyword discovery tools that will help you to find new keywords related to your business or website for boost your earning. Some of them are:
- Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is great for helping you find new keywords. To start, just enter the phrase or keyword in the tool. Let us assume that we are researching about Social Media Marketing. So, input the phrase and click “Search.”
- Google AdWords Keyword Tool
The next tool is the Google AdWords Keyword Planner. If you have a Google account and an AdWords account, sign into those once you start using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to find better results.
- Keyword Analysis using Moz
If you have a Pro Membership in Moz, then you will have access to a nice tool known as Keyword Difficulty and SERP Analysis. This tool shows the percentage of difficulty for each keyword, providing an idea of how hard it will be to Google ranking for those specific keywords. You will also find the top10 sites for each keyword, with its domain authority along with the number of root domains related to it. The latter is a piece of important information that will help you in deciding which keywords to focus on.
At a time, you can put in five words, and you can now choose between the keywords, subdomain, root domain, or page. You are searching for an industry-related keyword that is not too specific or popular that will convert the traffic of your site to customers.
Keyword research can be a daunting task. But remember, keyword research is the foundation of your content strategy. All your customers are not the same. So, creating content for the right audience and reaching them at the right time requires keyword research.