Ask someone what SEO means and they may tell you it’s about stuffing your content with loads of high end keywords - and they’d be wrong. Since its inception in the 1990s, SEO is constantly becoming more sophisticated and, while keywords are still a thing, it’s how who use them that matters. From web pages to adverts, intelligent keyword research is essential for getting the right message to the right people.
Far from guesswork, this is a
structured process whereby you choose keywords which match the words or phrases that your customers are using when looking for a product or service like yours. In this article, we’re going to explain how to find cracking keywords that’ll make your campaigns convert and your marketing measurable.
What makes a keyword the right fit ?
To begin with, it’s important to understand why and how people search for stuff online - and this is boiled down to three things:
- The user is ready to buy a product or service
- The user wants to research details and prices of a certain product or service
- The user is simply looking for information
Why is this important ? Understanding the user’s search intent helps you to make sure that you’re using words and phrases that are visible to customers at the different stages of their journey. It also means cutting down on wasted effort on counting clicks that don’t convert.
Common keyword research mistakes that hurt marketing strategies
A lot of the time, marketers are blissfully unaware of the fact that their attempts at SEO are actually damaging their marketing campaigns through a few schoolboy errors and these are:
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- Lots of marketers think that the key to success is to use tons of high value, high volume keywords. While this might work in some cases, it’s unlikely that these words will be a great match for your customer’s search - and these words will usually have scary amounts of competition. In many instances, long-tail keywords (lower value but more specific) will net you the results that you’re after.
For all intents and purposes - As we mentioned earlier, most people go online for a particular reason and this is called search intent - something you should ignore at your peril. If they’re just looking at market trends, they won’t be in a buying mood, but if they have their credit card at hand, you’ll want to nab them. The search query they use will often give this away.
Out of date - Like everything else, SEO and keywords are subject to trends and changing language - so what worked for you last year might fall flat now.
Track and trace - Last but not least, you’d be surprised how many people don’t bother to monitor and measure the success of their keywords - which means that their campaigns are taking a hit. Get into the habit of checking your SEO regularly to make sure that it’s still getting the job done.
Choosing keywords that align with your business goals
If you want to understand keywords and SEO, you need to get to know your audience. This means figuring out what they’re up to when they go online - for example; are they asking a question? Are they trying to solve a problem? Are they comparing a product or service? When you know what they want, you’re much more likely to be able to give it to them.
Start with a list of words and phrases that may be associated with what you’ve got on offer and then use a tool such as Google Keyword Planner, SEMRush or Ahrefs to group your lovely list by intent. This will allow you to start compiling groups of words and topics that will supercharge your lead generation and turn your campaigns into conversions. As we said before, don’t overlook those small but powerful long-tail keywords. Once you’ve got into your groove with building your keyword strategy you can dig deeper to
find the right keywords for a specific intent based on your business.
Building a keyword-driven marketing strategy
Marketing is a word that means different things to different people but, in a nutshell, it's all about “if you’ve got a problem, yo! I’ll solve it!” SEO is not just for ad campaigns - it should be consistently used across the whole of your business - from your website copy to your content marketing. Because of this, you want to organise your keywords into “purpose” groups - for example, those that you’ll use to first grab a customer’s attention and others that you’ll use to seal the deal. Just like your overall marketing messaging, your SEO needs to be structured and consistent for it to work effectively.
Keyword research tools and techniques worth using
While it’s important that you understand the purpose of keyword research, you don’t have to do all the heavy lifting yourself. Using an online tool can bring clarity to your search as well as speed and some, like Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends are even free to use. If you need a bit more oomph, there are some affordable paid tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs and Ubersuggest that will help you go deeper and also give you some super valuable customer insights. You can, of course, go old-school if you choose by reviewing SERPS (Search engine results pages) ; however, this will tend to be less accurate and more time-consuming. SEO is a small word for a big deal and you can find lots more info on tools, analysis and methods in the Search Engine Journal
keyword research guide.
Evolving your strategy: Reviewing and refining over time
SEO and keyword research is by no means a case of do it once then call it a day - it needs to be honed over time as new opportunities arrive. Because of this, you need to make this an integral part of your overall operation and track and check regularly to see what’s working and what isn’t. If you have even a small online presence,
SEO marketing needs to be part of it in order for your business to grow and thrive.
Conclusion
In the digital age, keyword research should never be an afterthought - it should be front and centre across all of your media channels. This doesn’t mean that you have to spend huge amounts of time feverishly searching out new words - when you build a keyword strategy and get onboard with one of the tools that we’ve mentioned here, the work will almost do itself - and the effort you put in will be so worth it!
