Why Keyword Research is Important for SEO

Keyword research is one of the most important parts in digital marketing. It also impacts SEO for ranking higher in search engines and it’s not something that one can do once and considers it done. Rather, keyword research is an ongoing task.

1. What is keyword research?

Keyword research is finding the words/phrases that people search for in search engines with an ultimate goal to optimize your content around those terms. As market research has long been performed to solve the consumers’ needs and preferences, keyword research is market research for the 21st century.

Seeing as digital marketing is continuing to grow, everyone is interested in using online marketing techniques that work best for them. Below are the most popular internet marketing trends in 2019, provided by a recent survey from Smart Insights.

Although SEO is rated lower on the list, compared to other digital marketing techniques such as content marketing, artificial intelligence, big data, and social media marketing; keyword research is still the foundation of all these marketing practices.

By performing proper keyword search techniques, search engines will understand what your website / company is known for. Ubersuggest, Google Search Console, and many other online tools show where your organic search traffic comes from and what organic keywords you rank for.

Keyword research is the blueprint that supports all the online marketing techniques to be used and what drives relevant traffic and sales to your website.

2. How to find keyword ideas

Searching for keywords that relate to your website or blog is not a complicated or time consuming process. In fact, if there is a competitor that you know is getting traffic to their website, you can use SEMrush.com to find the exact keywords that they are paying to rank for. If those keywords are sending them traffic, then it’s a no brainer to try to rank for those keywords or variations of them.

You can also use Google Suggest as a keyword research tool. It’s the quickest and easiest to find out what people are searching for in relation to a specific topic.

Why should you use Google Suggest? Simply because Google’s suggestions are based on what people have searched for previously, letting you know that there is potential to attract new viewers with suggested keywords.

To dig deeper into selected keywords, use tools such as Ubersuggest and Google Keyword Planner to know details such as average monthly searches and keyword competition.

3. Keyword difficulty

After you have found a few keywords that you want to rank for, you need to make sure that the keyword you are trying to rank for is not very competitive. If you’re just starting off, you will likely not rank anywhere close to Google’s first page if the keyword is competitive.

How can you use a keyword and actually rank for it? Make it into a long tail keyword and you are likely to up your chances greatly in ranking for that long tail keyword, as there is lower competition and higher conversion rate.

4. Understanding keyword types:

Head terms

These are known as single-word keywords, that have the highest search volume and competition. Example of a head term are keywords such as “marketing” or “seo”. As the keyword is so broad, various results will show up, leading to low conversion rates.

Body keywords

Body keywords are 2-3 word phrases that still get a high amount of search volume, but are more specific than head terms. Keywords such as “online marketing” or “on-page seo” are examples of body keywords and providing a more specific search result.

Long tail keywords

These keywords are long, hence the name, 4+ word phrases that are usually very specific. Examples of long tail keywords are “the beginner’s guide to online marketing” or “on-page seo techniques to boost ranking”. Long tail keywords do not get a lot of search volume and are usually not very competitive.

5. Choosing a keyword

There is no such thing as “this is the best keyword or phrase to use“, but what you can do is check each keyword on a few factors and make your final decision. One of the primary factors should be search volume. The more people that search for that keyword, the greater the possibility of you getting more website traffic. As previously mentioned, keyword difficulty lets you know how competitive a keyword is. If you find that the keyword you want to use is very competitive, your website will likely not rank on the first page of Google search results.