KEYWORD EXPLORATION
CHAPTER FOUR: KEYWORD EXPLORATION
Now that you know how to appear in search results, let's figure out which strategic keywords to target in your website's content and how to create that material such that both users and search engines are satisfied.
The power of keyword research comes from gaining a deeper understanding of your target market and how they search for your information, services, or products.
Keyword research offers you with targeted search data that can assist you in answering queries such as:
- What exactly are people looking for?
- How many people are trying to find it?
- What format do they require that information in?
In this chapter, you'll learn tools and strategies for uncovering that information, as well as tactics for avoiding keyword research pitfalls and creating effective content. When you discover how your target audience searches for your content, you open up a whole new world of strategic SEO!
Ask questions prior to conducting keyword research.
Before you can assist a company in growing through search engine optimization, you must first understand who they are, who their consumers are, and what their goals are.
This is where many people cut corners. Too many people skip this critical planning phase because keyword research takes time, and why waste time when you already know what keywords you want to rank for?
The answer is that what you want to rank for and what your audience truly wants are frequently diametrically opposed. Focusing on your audience and then using keyword data to refine those insights can result in far more successful campaigns than focusing on random keywords.
Here's an illustration. Frankie & Jo's (a vegan, gluten-free ice cream store in Seattle) has heard about SEO and wants to improve how and how frequently they appear in organic search results. To assist them, you must first gain a better understanding of their clients. You could do so by asking questions like:
- What kinds of ice cream, pastries, snacks, and so on are people looking for?
- Who is looking for these phrases?
- When are people looking for ice cream, snacks, sweets, and so on?
- Is there any seasonality throughout the year?
- How do people look for ice cream?
- What are the words they use?
- What kinds of queries do they pose?
- Are mobile devices used for more searches?
- Why do humans want ice cream?
- Are they looking for health-conscious ice cream or simply to fulfill their sweet tooth?
- Where can you find potential clients - locally, nationally, or internationally?
Finally, and here's the kicker, how can you help create the best ice cream content to cultivate a community and fulfill what all those individuals are looking for? Asking these questions is an important planning step that will help you guide your keyword research and create better content.
What terms are people looking up?
You may have a way of explaining what you do, but how does your target audience find the product, service, or information you offer? Answering this question is the first and most important stage in the keyword research process.
Identifying keywords
You've probably had a few keywords in mind that you'd like to rank for. These will be things like your products, services, or other themes covered on your website, and these are wonderful seed keywords for your study, so start there! Enter those keywords into a keyword research tool to learn about average monthly search volume and related keywords. We'll go over search volume in further detail in the following section, but it can help you determine which variations of your terms are most popular among searchers during the discovery phase.
When you enter your seed keywords into a keyword research tool, you will start to find more keywords, common inquiries, and themes for your content that you would have missed otherwise.
As an example, consider a florist that specializes in weddings.
When you enter "wedding" and "florist" into a keyword research tool, you may find highly relevant, highly searched for related terms like:
- Bouquets for weddings
- Bridal bouquets
- Florist for weddings
When you're researching keywords for your content, you'll probably realize that the search volume for those terms varies substantially. While you should absolutely target terms that your audience is searching for, it may be more advantageous in some situations to target terms with lesser search volume because they are significantly less competitive.
Because both high- and low-competition keywords can be beneficial to your website, learning more about search volume will help you prioritize keywords and select the ones that will provide your website with the greatest strategic advantage.
Diversify!
It's vital to realize that pages rank for keywords, not entire websites. We frequently see the homepage ranking for multiple keywords for large businesses, but this isn't normally the case for ordinary websites. Many websites generate more organic traffic to pages other than the homepage, which is why diversifying your website's pages by optimizing each for particularly valuable keywords is critical.
How frequently are those terms looked for?
Identifying search volume
The more labor necessary to get higher results for a certain term or keyword phrase, the higher the search traffic. This is sometimes referred to as keyword difficulty and occasionally integrates SERP characteristics; for example, if multiple SERP features (such as featured snippets, knowledge graphs, carousels, and so on) clog up a search's result page, difficulty will rise. Big businesses frequently dominate the top 10 results for high-volume keywords, so if you're just getting started on the web and targeting the same keywords, the uphill struggle for ranking can take years.
The larger the search volume, the more competition and effort required to achieve organic ranking success. If you set it too low, you risk not attracting any searches to your site. In many cases, it may be most advantageous to target highly specific, lower competition search terms. Long-tail keywords are what we call them in SEO.
Recognizing the Long Tail
It would be fantastic to rank number one for the term "shoes"... or would it?
It's great to work with phrases that receive 50,000 or even 5,000 searches per month, but in reality, these popular search terms account for only a small portion of total web searches. In reality, keywords with extremely high search volumes may imply equivocal purpose, which, if you target these terms, may put you at danger of attracting visitors whose aims do not match the content on your website.
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Is the searcher interested in the nutritional value of pizza? Do you want to order a pizza? Find a restaurant where they can take their family? Google doesn't know, so they provide these features to assist you in refining. Targeting "pizza" suggests you're probably casting too wide a net.
If you're looking for "pizza," Google thinks you might also be looking for "cheese." They are not mistaken...
Were you looking for a pizza eatery for lunch? The "Discover more places" SERP feature takes care of that.
The remaining 75% of searches are in the "chunky middle" and "long tail" of search results.
Using search volume strategically
You may get even more strategic now that you've discovered suitable search terms for your site and their accompanying search volumes by looking at your competitors and determining how searches may fluctuate by season or location.
Keywords used by a competitor
You'll most likely collect a large number of keywords. How do you know which to start with? Prioritizing high-volume keywords that your competitors aren't ranking for could be a good idea. On the other hand, you might look at your list and see which keywords your competitors are already ranking for and prioritize those. The former is ideal for capitalizing on your competitors' missed opportunities, whereas the latter is an aggressive strategy that positions you to fight for keywords that your competitors are currently performing well for.
Seasonal keywords
Knowing about seasonal trends might help you develop a content strategy. For example, if you know that "Christmas box" searches in the United Kingdom peak in October through December, you may plan ahead of time and give it a major push during those months.
Region-specific keywords
You can more strategically target a specific location by restricting your keyword research in Google Keyword Planner to specific cities, counties, or states, or by evaluating "interest by subregion" in Google Trends. Geographic research can assist you in making your content more relevant to your target audience. For example, in Texas, the usual name for a large vehicle is "big rig," whereas in New York, "tractor trailer" is the favored language.
Which format better matches the intent of the searcher?
We learned about SERP characteristics in Chapter 2. That background will assist us in understanding how searchers desire to consume content for a specific keyword. The manner in which Google displays search results is determined by intent, and each query has a unique one. In their Quality Rater Guidelines, Google categorizes these intents as "know" (find information), "do" (achieve a goal), "website" (discover a specific website), or "visit-in-person" (visit a local business).
While there are thousands of different search kinds, let's take a closer look at five important intent categories:
1. Informational queries: The searcher requires information, such as a band's name or the height of the Empire State Building.
2. Navigational queries: The searcher wants to travel to a certain location on the Internet, such as Facebook or the NFL homepage.
4. Commercial investigation: The searcher wants to evaluate products and determine which one is better for their personal needs.
5. Local queries: The searcher is looking for anything nearby, such as a coffee shop, doctor, or music venue.
Surveying the SERP landscape for the keyword you wish to target is a critical stage in the keyword research process to gain a better sense of searcher intent. Look at the SERPs to find out what type of content your target audience prefers!
Google has carefully examined the behavior of billions of searches in order to give the best relevant material for each individual keyword search.
Take the search term "dresses," for example:
According to the shopping carousel, Google has established that many users who search for "dresses" wish to purchase for dresses online.
This keyword also has a Local Pack feature, suggesting Google's aim to assist searchers looking for local clothing businesses.
If the query is confusing, Google may add the "refine by" function to help searchers further clarify what they're looking for. As a result, the search engine can deliver results that will better assist the searcher in completing their task.
If you're going to target a term, glance at the SERP to see what kind of content you'll need to develop.
Tools for calculating the value of a keyword
What is the value of a keyword to your website? These tools can assist you in answering that question, and they would be excellent additions to your keyword research arsenal:
- Dreamsiteco Keyword Explorer - Enter a keyword into Keyword Explorer to gain information such as monthly search volume and SERP features (such as local packs or featured snippets) that rank for that term. Using live clickstream data, the program retrieves accurate search volume data. Check out Announcing Keyword Explorer to discover more about how we generate our keyword data.
- Bonus! The "Difficulty" score in Keyword Explorer can also help you limit down your keyword possibilities to the words you have the best chance of ranking for. The higher the score of a keyword, the more difficult it is to rank for that term.
- Google Keyword Planner - Historically, the most typical starting point for SEO keyword research has been Google's AdWords Keyword Planner. Keyword Planner, on the other hand, limits search volume data by grouping terms into large search volume range buckets. Check out Google Keyword Planner's Dirty Secrets to learn more.
- Google Trends - Google's keyword trend tool is quite useful for detecting seasonal search swings. For example, "funny halloween costume ideas" will be popular in the weeks leading up to Halloween.
- AnswerThePublic - This free tool populates frequently asked questions based on a given keyword. Bonus! This program can be used in conjunction with another free service, Keywords Everywhere, to prioritize ATP's suggestions based on search volume.
- SpyFu Keyword Research Tool - This tool provides some very interesting competitive keyword statistics.
Now that you know how to discover what your target audience is searching for and how frequently, it's time to move on to the next step: creating pages that both visitors and search engines will appreciate. Continue on to Chapter 5 (Seo on-page)!
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