Keyword Research

Are you looking for your favorite shoes on the internet? Are you searching for some resume samples to impress your interviewers? Irrespective of what you search and whether you know or not you actually search keywords, every time you use the internet. Search engines are the essence of the internet and keywords are the words that enable you to search for anything that comes to your mind. We are sure, keyword research is something that you’ve heard a lot about. But why are people talking so much about it? Our blog will precisely clarify what keyword research is and why it is so important in today’s digital world.

What are keywords?

The words that people type into search engines to find what they are looking for are keywords. You use keywords every time you surf the internet. For example, you may type something like “women’s skirts” on Google if you want to purchase new skirts. Many people have different ways of searching for the same topic, but the subject remains the same. A layman calls keywords “google searches”. Even if it consists of more than one word, it is still a keyword. Keywords form the backbone of content marketing strategies. They are not only limited to the optimization of search engines. They are also the essence of your digital marketing.

What is the importance of keywords in SEO?

The keyword functions as a traffic bringer to the website. You need to understand the needs of those visitors, the language they use, and the type of content they want. This enables you to create content that ranks well naturally and drives visitors to your site. You can do this by talking to your clients & by visiting forums and community groups. All this can be done along with your own keyword research. Just throwing keywords on your page is not good. To get started, some basic keyword usage rules you should follow are: –

Use unique & relevant keywords on each page of your site.
Keywords should also be present on the title tag along with the body of your content.
You can also insert your primary keyword into your URL, the page’s H1 tag, meta tags, and the image’s alt text.

All of these locations help search engines understand what your content really is about. This won’t shoot your website at the top of the search results immediately. The remaining aspects of SEO are also essential. However, failing to take these basic steps can prevent you from ranking.

What are the types of keywords?

You can attract most visitors, contacts, and conversions to your product if you use the right type of keywords. Various types of keywords that you should know are given below:

Target Keywords

To achieve a top listing in search engines, digital marketers use keywords that are targeted to the product or service. A proper keyword analysis is important for deciding which keywords are to be targeted. Here are some of them: –

Product keywords
Competitor keywords
Branded keywords
Market segment keywords
Geo-targeted keywords
Customer-defining keywords

Buyer keywords

Buyer Keywords are the words that a user searches when they try to buy a product. There is a different search intent for each buyer keyword. There are three types of such keywords: –

Transactional keywords
Informational keywords
Navigational keywords

Keywords based on their length

A keyword’s length can tell you a lot about its conversion rate, search volume & potential traffic. Therefore, the length of keywords plays an essential role in SEO. There are three types of keywords based on their length: –

Short-tail keywords
Mid-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords

Keywords for Google ads

In Google Ads, you can use certain types of keywords to create targeted ad campaigns. There are other types of keywords that you actively remove from search campaigns.

There are combinations of various keywords that you either allow or prohibit. Broadly, there are 4 types of Google Ads keywords:

Broad match keywords
Negative keywords
Phrase match keywords
Exact match keywords

What is keyword research?

The method of identifying words and phrases that people use in search engines is known as keyword research. Some popular search engines are Google, Bing, YouTube, etc. “Keyword research” is the best way to find out what individuals search.

It involves evaluating, comparing, and prioritizing the website’s best keyword prospects. The best way to find out what individuals are typing into search engines is by keyword research.

Keyword research begins by thinking about how potential customers can search for the brand or how it can reach them. There are many keyword research tools available in the market to help you with this process.

But first, make sure you understand the brand & its target audience well. Before you design the SEO strategy; we recommend you do proper keyword research.

Why is keyword research important?

The importance of keyword research lies in better knowing your targeted audience. Finding content topics, email outreach, advertising content, and on-page SEO – keyword research impacts all these SEO activities.

Below are the reasons why a digital marketing campaign should be based on keyword research:-

It is helpful to understand the time at which people look for the keyword. You can get a report of peak search hours and then decide when to post a blog or update your website.
If you pick keywords that are not relevant to your brand, it is more likely that you may lose traffic. Your visitors may also be misguided by incorrect keywords.
Google SERP can capture this action and you can lose your traffic and future customers. This also raises the bounce rate and lowers your overall ranking.
If your blog ranks well with a high search rate for the keywords, the traffic on your site might increase.
It’s necessary to determine how much competition occurs while researching keywords. Competition research makes it clearer to understand what keywords others target.
With keyword research, it is easy to decide if it’s worth targeting a particular search phrase. It can provide you with an indication of current market trends.

How to do keyword research?

Step 1: Define your objectives

To achieve the ultimate goal, you must always start with a solid plan. Write down your objectives, draw graphs, and just report it all. Defining your objectives provides you the structure and direction needed to strategize.

The objective of your SEO copywriting is dependent on your goals. We recommend you to define your goals beforehand.

Step 2: Make a list of relevant topics & the intent behind it

Based on your brand’s main category and the goals you aim to achieve, break it down into smaller buckets of topics. Do you ever wonder about the type of topics your target audience searches for?

Create a list of all the brand related that you want to rank. Then break down these topic buckets into keywords that are related to those topics.

It’s a smart idea to actually type some keyword into a search engine yourself to check the intent of that keyword search. This helps you to see what sorts of results pop up.

Step 3: Use good research tools for keywords

Now that you have a few subject buckets and their keywords, it’s time for you to define those keywords. Monthly search volume data of these keywords helps you to quantify how important these topics are to your audience.

It will also help you know different sub-topics you need for a particular keyword to be effective in your content. You can use keyword research tools to get all the keyword alternatives that you might not have even thought of.

Keyword research and SEO tools such as ahrefs, Moz, serped.net, etc. are quite good. These tools can help you come up with more ideas for keywords. They can be based on the ideas you have generated to this point.

Step 4: Find out among your competitors

It is not adequate to do keyword research for your brand only. You need to be aware of what your competitors do. The more you understand your sector’s content environment, the better it is for your SEO.

You should run a keyword search on your competitors to uncover these keyword options. Once you know the competition of numerous keywords, it also helps you to determine search terms that might be too hard to rate.

What are keyword research tools?

Keyword Research Tool is a tool that produces related keywords (also long-tail keywords) for any topic. These tools can surely help you choose the most appropriate keywords. Some keyword research tools are: –

Moz Keyword Explorer

Moz Keyword Explorer neatly connects keyword analysis metrics together. It makes it easier to evaluate complex terms.

The patented algorithms of Moz merge data from various sources to form the largest vetted keyword database of high quality. This gives you the most reliable scores and ranges.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an all-rounder. Google Analytics will tell you exactly what people search for and what are the most popular keywords. Google Analytics will also let you see the number of times each user has searches a particular keyword.

Google Trends

Google Trends provides interesting insights into the usage of keywords. Google Trends helps you to see search words that are of local and geographic importance. Another fantastic advantage of Google Trends is that it helps to compare the keywords.

WordStream

The WordStream Keyword Tool provides you with numerable specific keyword results. It also gives extra actionable details such as the level of competition and CPC (Cost Per Click)

You can sort the results sector-wise to specify your findings. It’s an excellent alternative to Google’s Keyword Planner. You can get other statistics like search frequency, market level, and approximate CPC. You can geographically filter your keyword results and quality/performance details to know more.

Google AdWords

Google AdWords keyword research tool gives you an insight into the frequency of keywords. It also helps you get an idea of how those keywords have evolved over time. This allows you to narrow down your list of keywords to the ones that are really essential for your brand.

SEMrush

The SEMrush Keyword research tool gives you reports on search rates, patterns, and the number of associated keyword recommendations. It also gives you statistics needed for organic and paid analysis.

This keyword tool analyses domains that rank top 100 on Google for a given search phrase. To grow your keyword pool, you can hop into an expanded list of keywords. You would also get variants related to the search and get infinite keyword possibilities.

You can also get valuable information such as length, SEO and PPC metrics, patterns, and ad copy for the keywords. You can then identify and target your SEO strategy based on the search volumes. Then all you need to do is analyze this data for both desktop and mobile indexes.

Keywords research is a very essential step to define your SEO strategies. It ultimately helps you to grow your brand digitally.

Back in the old days, people had to sequentially gather everything. That is why this procedure became time-consuming and never-ending. Now, you can perform the same amount of work in minimal time using keyword research tools.

If you want to learn more and dive deeper into keyword research, this link will provide you with a much deeper understanding of the topic

We hope this Virohaa blog will help you understand the basic concepts of keyword research and prepare a solid content strategy.

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