Keyword research and analysis involves finding keywords suitable to meet your SEO goals, taking into account factors like search volume, traffic potential and ranking difficulty. Finding free keyword tools helps save you a lot of money in the process.
Consider search intent as well, particularly its relationship to buyer journeys. For instance, someone searching for “app development process” might not necessarily be in purchasing mode at that moment.
Identifying Keywords
Keywords are search terms people enter into search engines in order to access information e.g. “running shoes” or “SEO specialist Cornwall”. Conducting keyword research and analysis are vital parts of any SEO strategy as they give insight into what queries your target audience are searching for on Google, enabling content producers and organic marketers to develop marketing plans accordingly.
Step one in keyword research should be to identify keywords relevant to your business and associated with the intent or need of your audience. An excellent way of doing this is asking customer-facing staff what terms or questions frequently get raised during client interactions or which questions frequently get posed about services provided, in order to use these as seed ideas for keyword exploration. Using free keyword tools can help you uncover keywords faster.
Search all associated terms, as well as variations. For instance, “making money” has a high search volume but may be too competitive given all of the existing websites using it in their SEO strategy. Instead, “acquiring money” might have less search volume but is less competitive as it’s specific to your niche.
Once you’ve compiled your list of potential keywords, the next step should be analyzing them to select those most suited to meeting your current SEO goals. In general, keywords most likely to lead to conversions for your business should be prioritized – this can be determined by looking at buyer journey stages such as TOFU – general awareness / MOFU – researching solutions / BOFU (buying).
Once the keywords you have identified have been determined, it’s essential that they correspond with the intent of your audience. For instance, someone searching “making money” might still be in the “think-before-you-buy” stage of their journey whereas someone searching “buy women’s black tops size 10” may already be ready to buy and at the bottom of their funnel. By conducting an in-depth analysis on all targeted keywords you can ensure they align perfectly with their audience’s desires and are more likely to convert.
Identifying Keyword Phrases
Keyword research involves identifying keywords and searches entered into search engines by users searching for your product, service, or brand. It forms part of SEO’s methodology as it helps inform how to best tailor website and content optimization efforts towards meeting user intent searches.
When conducting keyword research, it’s essential to take both broad keyword terms as well as more targeted phrases into account. For example, “making money” has over 4 billion search results but “how to make money” has more of an audience focused search volume (over 100 million results) that may make ranking for them simpler – and result in more relevant traffic and qualified leads.
Understand how your keywords are searched by potential customers, and the type of content they expect when searching those terms. This will ensure you deliver content that satisfies user intent, increasing its chance of being clicked upon.
To accomplish this task, use an analytical tool like Ahrefs to review the top ranking pages on your competitors’ websites and examine their titles and meta descriptions to gain an idea of the keywords they’re targeting. After gathering enough keywords from this analysis process, use Keyword Explorer to expand on this idea by plugging the relevant search terms into it for additional keyword ideas and see which types of search queries yield results.
Time consuming as it may be, keyword analysis remains an integral component of SEO success. With search engine optimization constantly evolving and keywords becoming ever more crucial to digital marketing campaigns.
Conductor’s Keyword Research and Analysis can bring significant advantages to any brand; arrange a demo today! One of our experts will contact you shortly.
Identifying Keyword Variations
Finding and analyzing keywords are an integral component of any SEO process, providing invaluable insight into what questions and solutions your target audience is searching online – this in turn allows you to develop content which directly addresses their needs. Keyword research should form part of every website’s and content strategy regardless of size or scope.
At the heart of it all is keyword analysis – to ascertain whether a term has the ability to attract traffic and conversions. Search volume can provide some indication of this potential; however, other considerations need to be taken into account including competition levels as well as relevancy/RD% scores to determine its usefulness for your marketing objectives.
There are various tools available for conducting keyword research, but most work in a similar fashion: you enter a seed keyword and they generate ideas based on it. Google Keyword Planner provides one such service; simply enter any keyword or phrase and receive suggestions of related terms as well as competition levels for each word or phrase entered.
Remember, not all keywords are created equal; some may be very competitive and difficult to rank for while others have lower competitiveness and fewer searches. Therefore, using a tool which allows you to filter by search volume, ad competition and more will be essential in making the best choice possible for your needs.
Ahrefs Content Gap can be an extremely helpful way to identify keywords that are highly pertinent to your business and target audience, yet lack ranking pages yet. Simply input some competing sites’ URLs, and the tool will display all of their ranking pages along with any keywords they rank for that you don’t.
Once you’ve removed all irrelevant keywords from your list, it’s time to review and analyze your list in order to identify keyword opportunities. Generally speaking, search volumes with low competition may be optimal; however if just starting out with content marketing and SEO it might be worthwhile prioritizing keywords with higher business potential scores as this will increase chances of conversion into sales.
Identifying Keyword Opportunities
Conducting keyword research is an integral component of developing any content strategy. By researching keywords entered by ideal customers into search engines and then using those terms throughout your website to ensure they find what they’re searching for, conducting research can help uncover which searches have the greatest value to your business and determine the keywords most worthwhile using for SEO purposes. It also shows you which search intent factors have an effect on which terms provide the highest conversions.
As you begin conducting keyword analysis, it is crucial that you establish a spreadsheet or notepad with general categories or buckets of keywords. This will allow you to organize your ideas more efficiently while exploring potential options with keyword tools. For instance, if your business offers coffee services, some buckets could include “coffee”, “pastries”, and even ‘does chai tea contain caffeine”.
Once you have identified broad categories of keywords, using a keyword tool is the next step in uncovering potential opportunities. A good tool will reveal synonyms and related searches you may not have thought of yet; furthermore it can display ranking difficulty metrics and how many websites are competing to rank for each keyword.
At the core, SEO success involves striking a balance between your unique circumstances and key metrics and concepts discussed above – traffic potential, keyword difficulty, search intent and business potential. When just getting started with SEO efforts, for example, starting off on keywords with both high traffic volume and low ranking difficulty may be beneficial.
Established businesses should choose keywords that are both highly pertinent to their products or services and have commercial potential. By targeting highly relevant search keywords that also have commercial value, companies can increase visibility while improving rankings on search engines.
Semrush provides the ideal keyword tool to conduct keyword research and analysis with its massive keyword database and comprehensive feature set – perfect for quickly discovering traffic-driving keywords that expand your business. Start exploring with a free trial now!
Conclusion
Keywords is the heart and soul of SEO work product. Make sure you are embracing the best opportunities using free keyword tools.
