When it comes to how to do keyword research, it’s just a matter of knowing how to collect the right data from the right tools. It involves analyzing the words or phrases your audience enters into search engines to find your business. This often overlooked step to producing content is a critical way to create new pathways into your website.
You may look at keyword research and believe that your intuition should tell you what people are searching for. But the problem with this strategy is that you might overlook some important words or phrases. When you take the time to perform the search, you may discover that other similar phrases garner higher levels of traffic with lower levels of competition.
The Benefits of Keyword Research
Done right, keyword research can help you:
- Develop a targeted content strategy to meet the needs of your audience.
- Drive targeted traffic to relevant pages on your website.
- Understand your audience’s behavior and create the content that they are looking for.
Without doing keyword research, you could be missing valuable opportunities to generate more business. You may be targeting a word or phrase that has good search volume, but in a different context than you intended. Let’s take a look at how to do the keyword research to enhance your search efforts.
How to Do Keyword Research in 3 Easy Steps
Keyword Research Step 1: Find the Broad Topics
Think about your products or services, and the broad categories they fall into. For example, an ecommerce store could break their list down into types of product categories, or a landscaper or construction company could focus on the types of projects they complete. Place these categories across the top row of an Excel or Google Sheets document. Let’s use the example of a construction company. They may offer:
- Additions
- New homes
- Custom homes
- Basement remodeling
- Bathroom remodeling
- Kitchen remodeling
- Living room remodeling
These are the categories that could be placed across the top row.
Keyword Research Step 2: Find Relevant Keywords With the Highest Traffic For Each Category
Next, you can discover all the relevant terms to these categories. Let’s look at the bathroom remodeling category. There are specific keywords that could be listed in that category for new bathtubs, new toilets, bathroom tiles, sinks, vanities, and more. Go ahead and fill in what you want customers to find you under related to each of the categories.
Keyword Research Step 3: Review the Suggested Words
Maybe when you type in your own keywords you find that you stumble upon some keyword gold. You might discover some words and phrases that are perfect for your website. That’s great! But don't stop there.
This is where Google Keyword Planner comes into play. Type in your categories and your brainstormed keywords, and it will help you come up with a list of suggested related keywords. It will also give you the estimated search volume and competition level for these words. The search volume tells you how many people are searching for the term. The competition level tells you the competition level with others who are trying to rank for the same term.
It’s a good idea to note these in the spreadsheet to help you prioritize their usage. You can also highlight the ones that you most want to use to prioritize your efforts.
Big Picture: You Have a Spreadsheet to Refer Back To
The spreadsheet you just created gives you an idea of the keywords and phrases you want to use broken down by relevant categories. This can be a handy tool to reference as you build out your website content and determine a content strategy. It can also become a useful way to develop blogging ideas in the future.
The pages on your website should align pretty closely with the categories that you have. If it’s not exact, you could always create a second sheet in the document with the pages and the corresponding keywords that you’d like to use for each page.
Don’t Neglect Your Business’s SEO
Figuring out how to do keyword research that benefits your overall SEO efforts isn’t complicated, it can just be time consuming. But it’s an important foundation for your search and marketing efforts. Conducting thorough, sitewide keyword research this way can help ensure that you remain on track for your digital marketing goals.
VisionFriendly.com has an experienced team of SEO professionals that understand what it takes to raise your visibility within the search engines.
If you have any questions or would like to talk with us further about keyword research or SEO, contact us today!
