When it comes to SEO, keyword research is essential, and if you’re responsible for driving traffic to your company’s website, then you need to know how to conduct effective keyword research. By understanding which keywords your target customers are using to search for your product or service, you can ensure that your website appears near the top of their search results. When your website appears near the top of the search results, you’ll see a significant increase in traffic. In short, keyword research is the key to driving more traffic to your website.
What Exactly is Keyword Research?
Keyword research is the process of finding the right keywords to target in your SEO campaign. The goal is to find keywords that are relevant to your business and that have a high search volume but low competition. In other words, you want to find keywords that people are searching for but that aren’t being used by your competitors.
There are a number of different tools you can use to conduct keyword research. Google’s Keyword Planner is a great option. Simply enter a few seed keywords (1-2 keywords) into the tool, and it will return a list of related keywords along with their monthly search volume and competition level. Another great option is Moz’s Keyword Explorer. This tool also allows you to enter seed keywords and returns a list of related keywords along with their monthly search volume and competition level.
Analyze Your Competition
It can also be helpful to analyze the keywords that your competition is targeting. Use a tool like SEMrush or Ubersuggest to research the keywords that your competitors are bidding on in paid search campaigns, as well as the organic keywords that they’re ranking for in organic search results. This will give you some insight into which keywords might be worth targeting for your own SEO efforts.
Prioritize Relevancy Over Volume
When evaluating potential keywords, it’s important to prioritize relevancy over volume. Just because a keyword has a high monthly search volume doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to be a good fit for your business. For example, if you sell men’s shoes, then “shoes” would be a high-volume keyword that is relevant to your business. On the other hand, “buy shoes online” would also be relevant, but it has much lower monthly search volume than “shoes.” In general, it’s better to focus on a few highly relevant keywords with lower monthly search volumes than tons of irrelevant keywords with high monthly search volumes.
How to Use Keywords in Your SEO Campaign
Once you’ve conducted your keyword research and have a list of target keywords, it’s time to start using them in your SEO campaign. There are a number of different places you can use keywords on your website, including in your page titles, meta descriptions, header tags, image tags and body copy. It’s important not to overuse keywords, however, as this can result in penalties from Google. A good rule of thumb is to use each keyword 1-2% of the time throughout your website content.
Other Ways to Use Keywords
Content isn’t the only place where you should be using target keywords; you should also be using them in your link building efforts. When conducting outreach to other websites, be sure to include target keywords in your anchor text (the text that’s hyperlinked). For example, if you’re reaching out to another website about guest posting opportunities, you might include the following text in your email: “I’m interested in writing a guest post for your site on the topic of SEO keyword research.” Doing so will help improve both the quantity and quality of the links pointing to your website, both of which are important ranking factors for Google.
As you can see, keyword research is an essential part of any successful SEO campaign. By understanding which keywords your target customers are using, you can ensure that your website appears near the top of their search results—driving more traffic (and sales) to your business in the process. Conducting keyword research may seem like a daunting task at first, but once you get started, you’ll be surprised at how easy it is—and how powerful it can be for your business!
