If you’re looking to step up your SEO game, then you’ve probably heard of keyword research. It’s one of the pillars of any digital marketing campaign and for good reason-keyword research is fundamental to SEO.
However, if you’re new to the world of SEO, then there are a lot of facets to it, and not necessarily all of them are created equal. We’ll dive into that in this article-keyword research for SEO, what it means, why it’s important, and how to do it.
For many businesses, SEO is a real buzzword. They might talk about it at work or with their friends, but oftentimes they don’t fully understand what it means. If you’re looking to venture into SEO but are unsure where to start, this article will help you figure out what you need to know.
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The Importance of Being Familiar With Keyword Research
If you’ve ever tried to market something without first learning about keywords and the search engine optimization (SEO) process, you’ll know that it’s incredibly difficult. As the name implies, SEO is about making your website appear higher on Google searches.
Sometimes this might mean adjusting the copy on your website or using specific keywords in the titles or descriptions of your content.
Knowing how to use keywords properly is incredibly important if you want your website to appear in Google search results. If you’re unfamiliar with keyword research, it can be difficult to determine how to use the right keywords without properly understanding how Google’s algorithm works.
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What Are Keywords, And Why Are They Important?
In the world of SEO, keywords are groups of words or phrases that are used to search for content on a topic or within a specific website. When a user types a query into Google (the most popular search engine when writing this), the software will scan the text and pull up relevant results that match the query.
The algorithm determines which results appear at the top of the list based on various metrics, including the number of matches found within the content and the popularity of the websites that contain those words or phrases.
The process of analyzing keywords is known as research, and it’s an essential part of creating a strategy for SEO. You’ll often have to search for each term using Google or a similar search engine and then measure how often those keywords appear within the content you’ve found.
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How Do I Start My Keyword Research?
If you decide that you want to pursue SEO, the first thing you should do is determine what keywords you’ll need to utilize. Although it’s possible to implement SEO on many keywords, sticking to a reasonable number of keywords can increase your chances of appearing in the results of a Google search.
If you have a marketing department within your company, they’ll be able to advise you on a list of keywords that their group has identified as being commonly used within your industry. Alternatively, you can ask your company’s webmaster to help you identify relevant keywords.
Depending on the size of your website and the length of your content, you might only need a few keywords to start with. When performing keyword research, it’s important to remember that the more relevant and popular the keyword, the higher your website will appear on the search engine results page.
Using a too popular keyword might make your site appear more often than it should because Google’s algorithm decides that all sites using that keyword should be listed in the results. This is called ‘keyword spamming,’ and it is generally considered bad practice.
You should also avoid using the same keyword multiple times within a single piece of content. This practice is called ‘keyword stuffing‘, making your site appear less relevant to a human searching for information.
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How Many Keywords Should I Use?
As mentioned above, you should only use a few keywords within your content. If you are writing product reviews, you might want to use a few different keywords for each review. You can also use the same or similar keywords in your headline and the summary of your article.
However, you should avoid using longer keywords than three or four words in a single sentence. This is because spammers usually use long keywords to trick Google’s algorithm into thinking that the content is relevant to the query when it’s not.
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When Should I Use Keywords?
As mentioned above, you should use keywords within your content to help Google find and list your site in relevant searches.
If you’ve ever tried to market a product without first learning about keywords, you’ll know that breaking through the noise is incredibly hard. Including relevant keywords in your content gives the search engine additional information to pull up relevant results for your potential customers.
In addition to using keywords within your content, you should consider using them in your website’s URL and any online marketing materials, like blogs and social media channels. When performing SEO on a new site, it’s recommended that you try a few different methods before finding the ones that work best for you.
By including keywords in your content and in your web address, it opens up the door for more people to find you.
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It Starts At The Nitty-Gritty
The keyword research stage is important because it helps you find the ‘perfect’ keywords and phrases that will perform well for your website or blog. Without a clear idea of what keywords and phrases to target, your SEO efforts will come up short.
So you need to do some research and determine which keywords and phrases will make your content and products more accessible to your target audience. With these keywords, you can refine your content and determine the right placements for your keywords throughout your website. Doing this effectively will increase your search engine results and more business.”
One pitfall that often befalls beginner SEO marketers is believing that keywords are all you need to focus on. While it’s true that many large platforms like Google heavily use keywords in their algorithm, that doesn’t mean you need to focus only on them to have a successful SEO campaign.
You also need to focus on other aspects of SEO, such as backlink building, content marketing, and the use of long-tail keywords. By breaking down these tasks into specific and measurable goals, you’ll be able to see precisely how your SEO campaign is progressing and whether or not you’re reaching your goals (and, if so, by how much).
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What Is The Difference Between The Keywords “Keyword,” “Keyword phrase,” And “Keyword ‘Terms’?
If you wrote an article about landscaping and used the keywords “landscaping,” “garden,” and “plants,” you’re doing it correctly. However, if you wrote the article about tree surgery and used the keywords “tree,” “surgery,” and “trimming,” you’re not using all the available keywords because tree surgery is a more specific and narrow topic than landscaping.
In the first example, you mentioned three keywords: “landscaping,” “garden,” and “plants.” You only mentioned two keywords in the second example: “tree” and “surgery.” A person reading your content might assume both articles are about trees and gardens.
However, the second example is much more specific and relevant to people seeking that information because it mentions the surgery that is often performed on trees. People searching for information on tree surgery will know exactly what they’re looking for and will find your article because it’s highly relevant to their needs.
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How Do I Find The Right Keywords?
If you want to find the right keywords, you’ll need to look across multiple platforms. If you run a blog on WordPress.com, you can use the built-in Keyword Tool to find relevant keywords or phrases. Using the Chrome browser, you can also use the URL input field to enter a specific website and search for keywords within the URL.
If you don’t have time to enter keywords or phrases into the URL field manually, you can also use the “SEO Checker” within Google’s Search Console. This tool is especially useful for those looking to perform mobile SEO because it will crawl all the URLs on a given site, looking for keywords and determining how well the site is optimized.
Once you’ve decided on a list of keywords you want to use, you can use them to try and find articles that are already optimized for those terms. You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner to find the popularity of each keyword and what type of content is being generated around those terms. From here, you can determine which keywords you need to target and which ones you should avoid.
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It’s About Finding The Right Keywords & Phrases
One of the first things you need to do is determine what you’re looking for in terms of keywords and phrases. You don’t want just to throw out a list of keywords and assume that these are the right words for your campaign.
You need to perform keyword research, which means that you’ll enter your keyword or phrase into a tool like Google Keyword Planner and compare the results to the rest of your competitors. You can easily enter your product or service using Google Keyword Planner and select the location and date range you’d like to review, followed by the keywords you’re interested in.
Another essential step is determining how often your target audience will likely use each keyword and phrase. You can use tools like Google AdWords Keyword Competitiveness to easily find the frequency of each keyword and phrase to get an idea of how competitive the market is for each keyword and how many times each phrase is being used.
It’s also a good idea to look at the competition for each keyword and see how many results you’re getting compared to the competition. This will help you determine if your target audience is actually searching for these words or just using them as part of the keywords.
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What If I Don’t Want To Use Keywords?
If you’ve ever tried to market a product without first learning about keywords and the significance of optimizing content for search engines, you’ll know that it’s difficult to find the right marketing materials without first understanding how SEO works.
Some website builders, like WordPress, offer paid tools to help you find the right keywords and automatically make your content appear higher within the search results. You don’t need to be limited by the word count in your article when using these tools because they will allow you to find the right words regardless of how many you have.
In addition, you don’t need to search for a single word to find the right keywords because these tools will expand your search to include all variations of your chosen term (including hyphens and wildcards).
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How Does SEO Affect My Product Marketing?
SEO can have a significant impact on your product marketing. When people discover your product or service through organic searches, this usually means that those people didn’t know about your product or service previously.
In other words, they searched for information on your topic and came across your site in the results. This could mean that you’re reaching the right audience at the right time and that your product or service resonates with this particular group.
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The More You Know, The More You’ll Understand
An educated guess here would be that not many of you reading this have actually done the extensive keyword research. Chances are, you’ve either done some research or simply used popular keywords without fully understanding what those keywords mean or how they perform in search engines.
This can lead to some fairly obvious issues-you might show up in search results for unrelated terms that are spelled similarly, or you could find that your product or service is showing up when someone searches for something completely different (but which is related in some way).
To put it bluntly, you’re mostly throwing darts at the board without understanding how keywords work and how search engines determine what results to show. It’s not that hard to understand how keyword research works-all.
You need to do is enter a keyword or phrase into a tool like Google Keyword Planner, and you’ll see a table of results that make it fairly easy to understand how each word or phrase is performing. Once you have that information, you can start to build a more solid foundation for your SEO campaign. For instance, you might find that some words perform better for your content than you’d initially thought.
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Never Go With The First Keyword That Comes To Mind
As we mentioned above, you’re just throwing darts at the board without understanding how keywords work and search engines work. If you find that certain words perform well for your content, then that’s great-you might decide to use those words and see how they perform compared to other words you come up with.
The issue is that we’re not always thinking clearly at the best of times and sometimes, the first words that come to mind when you’re brainstorming are ones that you find distasteful or inappropriate. When that happens, your research will be tainted, and it might not turn out well.
An easy way to avoid this is by using tools that will generate random keyword ideas that you can use. It’s also a good idea to write down as many keywords and phrases as possible and then use the back of an envelope to rank the keywords from most relevant to least relevant.
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Always Compete & Learn From The Best
Another pitfall that often befalls beginner SEO marketers is assuming that their website or blog will perform well without doing any form of SEO. The issue here is that SEO is constantly changing-if you want to stay relevant, you need to stay ahead of the algorithm game and ensure that your SEO efforts are progressing as anticipated.
One way to do this is by constantly analyzing your results and measuring the difference between what you’re currently doing and what you should be doing to see the best possible results from your SEO campaign.
To put it bluntly, you can’t learn anything from looking at the last ten results you got for a certain keyword. You need to look at the entire results table to understand what’s happening fully.
That’s why you need to learn from the best-you’ll find a wide variety of SEO tactics and strategies that you can implement, which will help you reach your goals faster and with less effort. One of the best places to find SEO advice is YouTube-you can find multiple how-to videos on virtually any subject, and you’ll always be able to find an SEO expert to answer your questions.
Additionally, many large companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter also have their own YouTube channels that answer customers’ questions and provide helpful tips on various topics.
Not Sure Where To Start?
When people think of SEO, the first thing that comes to mind is keywords. While having keywords in your content is extremely important, ensuring that those keywords are relevant to the person searching is just as important.
With the right keywords, you can ensure that your content will be found when someone is looking for it. Having said that, you need to know a lot about keyword research for SEO, and we’ve compiled a list of the most important things. Take a few minutes to review these items, and you’ll be well on ranking your site higher in the search engines. Get started with us today!
