As search engine algorithms continue to evolve every day, the importance of keyword research in the field of inbound marketing should not be ignored. The success of any SEO strategy depends on the degree of keyword research you do to optimize a website for search.
What Is Keyword Research?
Keyword research is the process of analyzing search terms used by online consumers with the primary goal of utilizing the gathered data for general marketing and SEO practices. It reveals the importance, popularity, and ranking difficulty of the keywords within the industry that consumers typically type in the search engines. Keyword research offers valuable insight into these search terms. The insight gained from keyword research may significantly help make the content strategy effective by optimizing these search terms in various website elements.
Keyword research also reveals the intent behind these vital trending phrases. And from the intent, SEO professionals and content writers can create powerful content to resolve various consumer problems. For search engines, they utilize the relevance and popularity of keywords to rank a particular website.
Keyword research tells you what topics web searchers often look for and how popular these topics are with your audience. Through this process, you would know which search terms in your industry receive a high volume of searches within a specific period of time. Once you’ve discovered which keywords are generating search volume or you should target, you can create content that will provide fresh information to your website visitors. You can now offer a solution to many questions of your prospective visitors by researching keywords based on their intent, popularity, and search volume.
How to Research Keywords for Your SEO Strategy
The following are the steps you can follow to generate a list of keywords you should target:
1. Creating a list of keywords based on a specific industry
At the beginning of the keyword research process, consider making a list of topics about a particular business or industry. You can create at least 10 topics that you think are important to your target audience or topics you want to rank. You can come up with targeted keywords from these primary topics you have listed. To generate topics quickly, consider reading open forums and sales conversations or looking for relevant comments about the business you want to create content for.
2. Filling up the topic list with keywords in mind
Once you have created your topic bucket listing, you can think of keywords to relate to these topics. These key phrases are words that you think your prospective consumers look for or are important for search engines. It would be best to put yourself into your buyer’s persona to determine what potential key phrases they are likely to type into the search tool. The purpose of combining topics and keywords is to come up with relevant search terms your customers may use to find your business.
Search engines constantly encrypt keywords every day. Another way to get valuable keyword ideas is to figure out the keywords data your website normally receives from organic traffic searches. Consider using website analytic tools such as Google Search Console or Google Analytics to find out the keywords often used by page visitors. Website traffic sources will reveal what particular keywords customers have used to get into your website. Consulting with sales or marketing professionals can also help you find out the typical questions or search terms often raised by prospective clients within your industry.
3. Figuring out how intent directly affects keyword research
The capacity of any keyword to rank high is no longer based solely on search volume. User intent is a critical ranking factor in today’s modern digital landscape, allowing SEO professionals to figure out what kind of content they can offer to the target audience. Many intents can be generated from a similar set of keywords, so it is very important to interpret the keywords you want to use in your search engine optimization strategy. It is also crucially important that your website can address the current problems of your consumers instead of only focusing on performing keywords alone.
You have to be extra careful how you interpret the keywords you want to target because the intent behind these keywords is significant to your ranking potential. If you want to verify user intent on the keywords you want to target, you can type the keyword into the search engine yourself and see what results will appear. Based on the topics and keywords that show up on the results page, you will formulate the specific type of content that you intend to produce for your generated keywords.
4. Conducting basic research on relevant search terms
If you don’t think you have generated enough keywords from keyword research, you can try some suggested search terms you will find on search engines. When you type a specific set of keywords, you’ll notice at the bottom of the results page some keyword suggestions related to the key phrases you want to rank. You can now create informative content from these recommendations. Do this creative step if you have trouble thinking of other keywords people might search for a trending topic.
5. Maximizing the benefits of using keyword research tools
You should not just stick to traditional keyword generation methods or create keyword listings from scratch. It would be best if you utilized keyword research tools to your advantage. SEO tools can help generate substantial keyword ideas based on exact or matched phrases. These keyword research tools may conveniently provide you with many performing keywords that you may not immediately think of or consider. Some keyword research tools such as Ahrefs and
SEMrush, which can help with your research task.
What terms are people searching for?
An essential part of your keyword research process is figuring out how online consumers search for products, services, and maps using search engines. People use specific search terms according to search volume, popularity, region, and other factors to be discussed below.
·Keyword discovery
You probably have keywords in mind that you want to rank. These keywords can be products, services, or expertise that your website may provide. Consider using a keyword research tool to get the average monthly search volume of the keywords you have in mind. You can determine keyword variations, relevant topics, and helpful questions that seem popular among your target searchers in the discovery stage using keyword research tools.
You may want to know the keywords you can hit. In some cases, it may be more advantageous to target search terms with fewer search volumes as they are far less competitive. Regardless of what you prefer during your keyword research process, choosing high and low competition keywords can still be advantageous to your website. About website optimization, keyword plays a pivotal role. However, an entire website ranks because of its optimized pages as a whole and not because of keywords alone. Websites receive organic traffic because of properly- indexed pages, so it is important to diversify websites pages by optimizing focus keywords.
·Search volume
Having a high search volume of any keyword indicates a highly competitive level in the industry. It only means that it will require enormous effort to achieve a high search ranking. For keywords with high search volume, they are often incorporated into SERP features such as featured snippets, carousels, and knowledge graphs, thus making them even more competitive. If you go too low, you should expect not to receive any organic traffic for your website.
Since you will need tremendous effort to compete with prominent brand names, it can be advantageous to target highly specific, less competitive keywords, known as long-tail keywords. You can experience less competition with these key phrases because many of today’s online searchers will be more specific with search terms. The power of long-tail keywords should not be underestimated because they can yield better results for booming businesses. Searches seem more specific and intentional.
·Search questions
People also use search terms in question form to find information. It’s a good idea to put a FAQ page on your website to generate more organic traffic searches. Anticipate possible questions your visitors may ask about the products and services you are offering.
·Strategic location
After you have listed down those keywords with high search volume, take a more strategic approach by analyzing your competitors or determining how searches differ by region or season. It’s a good idea to prioritize keywords that are missed out on by your competitors. Also, consider incorporating names of local towns or climate conditions into your keywords research to make the search term more specific. Being localized is a great way to help your keywords gain a favorable ranking at the regional level.
Tools for Determining the Value of a Keyword
It would be best to do keyword research, find the right keywords, and generate keyword ideas that will potentially convert. Keyword research tools may perform a variety of functions. Once you enter your input here, you will receive vital information about a keyword’s average monthly search volume, coming from live clickstream data and essential SERP features such as featured snippets and local packs that rank for that search term. You can also find out about keyword’s difficulty score, seasonal fluctuation rate, and relevant questions that are valuable to keyword research, in addition to precise competitive keyword data. These generated keywords and reports from SEO tools can help digital marketers work efficiently with SEO, PPC, SMM, keyword research, marketing insights, PR management, and Content Marketing.
You may try using some of the following:
· Moz Keyword Explorer
· Google Keyword Planner
· Google Trends
· SpyFu Keyword Research Tool
· Ahrefs
· Semrush
The majority of the keyword mentioned above research tools offer an all-complete SEO tool kit that enables you to perform the following tasks:
· Optimizing multiple website pages
· Providing clear market insight or competitor analysis
· Discovering what your prospective customers are searching for
· Performing comprehensive SEO auditing
· Learning from performing content within your industry
· Tracking your ranking progress
· Managing social campaign
· Conducting link building
· Acquiring technical optimization insights
· Tracking keyword cannibalization
You can’t just ignore the importance of keyword research for your SEO marketing campaign. Keywords directly influence all the optimization tactics you use on your content and critical website elements.
- Schema Markup for Contractors: The Hidden SEO Tool Your Competition Isn’t Using - March 7, 2025
- SEO vs. Paid Ads: Where Should Construction Companies Invest Their Marketing Budget? - February 19, 2025
- The Local Contractor’s Guide to SEO-Optimized Content That Attracts Quality Leads - February 14, 2025