Keyword research is a necessary foundation for any SEO strategy. When you target the right ones, you can bring in highly profitable customers. Picking the wrong keywords or targeting ones that are too broad can significantly affect your ability to cash in on your marketing efforts. Because of all of this, it is important that your or your marketing specialist spend enough time thoroughly researching the right keywords to use in your SEO campaigns. Here are a few simple ways that you can improve your keyword research to garner better SEO results in the end.
Look at Your Competitors
This may seem like a simple step. However, many business owners get so caught up in the keyword research process that they forget to go back to the basics. Evaluating your competitor’s website and identifying what keywords they’re ranking for can do wonders for adding more keywords to your SEO marketing plan. If it’s working for them, then it can easily work for you. Instead of reinventing the wheel, simply copy its design.
To do this, first identify who your key competitors are. You may already know this, but you might have to do a little research online to find out, especially if your business is online or an ecommerce site. See what keywords you are ranking well for and how that stacks up against other sites. If you can, use an online tool to assess their backlink strength for their ranking keywords as well as your own. Doing this will give you a better view of how your competitors are performing well and what you can do to improve your own SEO performance. If you don’t want to go through the effort of trying to assess what your competitors’ SEO strategies are, it may be a good idea for you to hire an SEO company to do the heavy lifting for you. You will likely find that the ROI is worth it in the end.
Focus on the Long-Tails
Many people get caught up in the numbers of what certain keywords produce. The reality is that the higher the number of searchers, the more difficult the competition will be. Instead of playing the game of investing more resources than your competitors, take the smart route. You should focus on the long-tail keywords that can improve your ecommerce traffic without a whole lot of financial resources. The best part is that long-tail keywords tend to result in more targeted clients that are more inclined to pay for your products and/or services.
There are several ways to identify long-tail keywords that will work well for your website. First, you can go off of what your competitors are using, as previously discussed. Another simple method is to type your shorter keywords into Google and see what Google complete suggests. This is often a good indicator of what phrases people are searching to get to sites like yours. You can also check the Google suggestions at the bottom of the search engine results page to get ideas for other long-tail keywords to use.
Additionally, you may want to consider using more thorough online tools or companies to help you find specific keywords or phrases that will work for you. For example, a tool can help you see what phrases you might already be ranking for and how you can utilize your existing rankings and make improvements to your website. Use tools like this to supplement your existing SEO strategies and make your work more thorough and advanced over time.
Evaluate Your Profitable Keywords
A great place to start looking for more keywords is doing an inventory of the ones that are currently driving traffic to your website. It’s a great idea to pull a whole list of these keywords and order them alphabetically. You’ll get a real good idea of some trends that are profitable for your business. Take these trends and lookup even more keywords surrounding them, especially long-tail keywords.
To get started on evaluating your profitable keywords, make sure you have Google Analytics set up for your website. You can use Google Analytics to see how much traffic your site is getting, where visitors are coming from, and what they are doing once they’re on your site. This data is especially useful in seeing if there are any main keywords that people use to search and find your site. Using this information, you can build long-tail keywords off of shorter keywords are phrases that are already popular for your brand.
Use Keyword Tools
If you’ve been doing your keyword research solely by hand, it’s time to upgrade. There are many keyword research tools on the market that you can take advantage of. These tools will allow you to run a keyword test on many different websites. For example, you can throw in your website address and receive a list of the keywords that are driving in the most traffic. You can throw in your competitor’s website and see what their profitable keywords are. These tools turn an hour’s worth of work by hand into a five-second task.
Whatever method you use for your keyword research, it is a smart idea to keep track of your keywords in a spreadsheet, whether that be via Google Sheets or a shared Excel spreadsheet with your marketing team. You can also use Google’s Keyword Planner, although this is often a tool used for Google Ads. You can still use Keyword Planner to track which keywords you want to use for SEO, and you’ll get a good idea of how competitive those keywords might be to target.
Every business should be working to improve their company’s SEO marketing plan. At the basis of that plan is good keyword research. Although it can take a little time and effort, doing adequate research for your keywords, especially competitive keywords, will always payoff in the end. When you utilize the tips above, you’ll be well on your way to discovering more profitable keywords to target with your SEO marketing campaigns.
