Known as the most important part of SEO, keyword research is an exercise SEO professionals employ to discover the alternative search terms that people enter into search engines while looking for a similar subject.
Researching your market’s keyword demand not only lets you learn the terms and phrases to target with SEO, but it also lets you learn more about your customers as a whole.
Therefore, now I believe, I don’t need to put any extra efforts inducing you that the keyword research is one of the highest return SEO activities that is crucial for your marketing success.
It isn’t essential to get huge traffic driven to your website but even more essential is to get the right kind of or quality traffic driven to your website. The importance of this comprehension cannot be exaggerated because there’s a lot that a keyword research can do.
Keyword research lets you respond to changing market conditions, predict shifts in demand, and produce the products or services, and content that web searchers are actively seeking. This appeals perfectly for businesses and creates a mutually beneficial situation for sales opportunities.
Resources for Keyword Research
All the knowledge of keyword demand and keyword referrals come from the resources outlined below:
- Google AdWords Keyword Planner Tool
- Google Trends
- Moz Keyword Explorer
- Google Correlate
- Ubersuggest
- AdWord & SEO Keyword Permutation Generator
- Microsoft Bing Ads Intelligence
- Wordtracker’s Free Basic Keyword Demand
How to Research Keyword for Your SEO
There are various articles that provide a detailed information on how to research keywords for SEO and they are all great. All of them work for some kind of businesses. But it’s not necessary that they will go with all sizes of business. But the underlined steps will surely prove helpful for all kind of businesses.
Step 1: Create a list of important topics related to your business
To begin with, you must be crystal clear about what your company does. You must be sure of what you should be known for. How would you describe yourself to someone what you do? You must know what your most profitable products or services are, all your products or services names etc.
In short, you have make a list of all such kind of questions and then answer those question on the paper. Rather than creating just a list of keywords, these answer will let you focus on what your company actually does. The same way you can build a list of powerful keywords later.
Step 2: Seed Keywords
As a small seed is capable of producing thousands of branches, twigs, leaves, fruit and a large sturdy trunk, likewise a word is able to produce 1,000’s of similar keywords. Hence, the words or phrases that you have written down need to be researched and transformed.
Seed keywords are the one that help you find your niche customers and define your niche. Seed keywords are also useful at the time when you are promoting some of your products or services. Here you can use you own words how other people might search for it, to describe the product.
Step 3: Research related search terms
This is the most known way and a creative step you may have thought for doing keyword research. If you’re not sure of what people might be searching about a certain topic, you can simply stumble upon Google.com and enter you search term. After you enter, you will get a list of websites related to the search term. Just scroll down and at the bottom you will some suggestions for searches related to your original input. These keywords can give you an idea about other keywords you make take into consideration.
Below given is such an instant when I searched for the term “avengers infinity war”.
Step 4: Look for a mix of long-tail keywords and head terms in each bucket
Long-tail keywords are the one that consist of longer keyword phrases that contain three or more keywords. For example- “Best Chinese Restaurant in London”. Whereas head terms are keywords that are generally shorter that contain one to three keywords and are more generic.
Mix of the two is required to maintain a balance long-term goals and short-term wins. Head terms are more competitive and are searched more often as compared to long-tail keywords.
Step 5: Spy on your competitors ranking for these keywords
Being original is greatly required in a business. It isn’t necessary that something that your competitor is using will result positively for you as well. Same goes with keywords too. If your competitors are using some keywords it doesn’t mean that if you too use the same keyword it will be helpful for you too. Just for the purpose of evaluation, it’s necessary to understand what keywords your competitors are trying to rank for. Also, it can be a great way to give you a list of keywords.
