Finding The Best Keywords for Your Local Business Website.

Because there are numerous SEO strategies internet marketers can use to boost their sites’ search rankings, it can be quite tempting to skip the keyword research. However, keyword research has a huge role to play in your digital marketing campaigns. Keyword research is arguably the blueprint of your internet marketing efforts. With the right keywords at your disposal, your content marketing team can better understand what content to market.

Without keyword research, there is a high possibility you could be using the wrong keywords for your business. Research is the most important step in the SEO process, so getting it right ultimately sets you up for success.

what’s the importance of keyword research?

In simple terms, keyword research involves the process of identifying popular phrases as well as words people enter into search engines. Researching keywords provides you a better understanding of how high the demand of specific keywords and how difficult it would be to compete for those words in organic search engines, offering insights into your optimization efforts. When you know what people are looking for, you can now focus your content around those particular topics. Simply put, keyword research allows you to fine-tune your content strategy.

Is keyword research the end-all of good SEO?

Picking the right keywords is essential for good SEO. Regardless, it is imperative to note that SEO practices are diverse and are not just about keywords. Simply put, the overall performance of your site doesn’t depend on keywords alone. With that in mind, the fact is that keyword research is important.

But even as you embark on your keyword research journey, it is worth noting that keywords are not what they were a decade ago. While selecting the right keywords remains the backbone of your SEO strategy, just picking the best keywords and optimizing them on your website is not enough! Today, what matters is the quality and intent of your content.

After all, your intention isn’t just to craft content that ranks well based on either the frequency of the keywords on your article or how well they are distributed in your content. Instead, you should be more focused on creating content that not only takes your keyword research into account, but also solves the problems of your readers.

If you are not going to create content that is helpful to your audience, the chances are very high that they won’t bother to read it. Worse still, even Google itself won’t consider such content helpful and will inevitably rank it lowly.

As experts in the industry, we are here to help you pick the right keywords for your content. So, peruse the article and get to know.

How to find the right keywords in just six steps:

Step one: Brainstorming the topics that are relevant and important to your business:

This is the first step and involves brainstorming and putting down relevant and most important keywords to your business. And as you brainstorm, try to assume that you are one of your target audience. Think about some of the most common topics or words they would be searching over the internet to identify your industry or business.

Take note of the phrases that usually tend to come up during discussions or interactions between your sales department and your clients. For instance, if your business is about website creation, you may have to put your focus on topics that are directly related to website design, SEO, internet marketing, among others perhaps because of the fact that this is the area of your expertise. If you are in the website creation and development industry, for example, some of the most relevant keywords you would be looking for may include:

• Graphic design.
• Coding.
• Interface design.
• Web hosting

Once you have identified at least ten great topic ideas, you’ll now move to the next step where you’ll now transform these phrases into more specific and targeted keywords.

Step two: Drilling down your big keyword phrases.

Here, your aim is to fine-tune your big ideas. This is a continuing process and this implies that we are going to do it a couple of times in the course of the article. So, don’t focus all your efforts on getting it right the first time at this stage. Hopefully, at the end of this post, you would have created a solid list of the right keywords that suits your company’s profile.

Taking the topics you generated in the first step, while still assuming you are your company’s customer, try to ask yourself what those customers are likely to search for in Google to learn more about the same topics. For instance, those searching for website development most probably won’t just type in website development. Instead, they are highly to use more specific phrases such as:

• ‘What makes a great website”
• ‘What is responsive web design”
• ‘How to re-design a web page”

At this stage, your keyword list is not the final pick of the most appropriate keywords! Remember, you also need to have a look at what your website is currently ranking for. This is a fairly straightforward step because you can easily take advantage of tools such as Ubersuggest.io to carry out a quick examination of your site.

When you know the type of keywords your site currently ranks for, you will find it relatively easier to choose the best keywords as you continue your keyword search journey.

Step three: Identifying your related keywords:

Before we proceed with this step, kindly try to remember how in the previous step (step two), we picked keywords that were related to or rather similar to the ones you are already ranking. We are going to do more or less the same thing, only that here, we’ll be drilling down the phrases we created in the previous step a second time!

Below is the procedure involved:

• Take the first keyword in the previous step and start typing it in the Google search tab. For instance, in our case, we will use ‘what makes a great website”. As you begin typing this phrase, a drop-down will pop up beneath the search bar, where Google itself tries to auto-fill whatever you are typing. If you regularly use the web, you certainly have seen this before! These suggestions by Google are usually highly related to what you are typing or searching for.
• Also, take note of Google’s autocomplete search term suggestions. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you’ll see these suggestions.

Step Four: Search for Long Tail Keywords:

In general, there are two types of keywords, including long-tail keywords and head keywords. You should include both in your list for the best keywords.

• Head keywords: Also referred to as head terms, head keywords are broad and somewhat more far-reaching. Let us assume you have an electronics online store. In this case, a head keyword for such a store would be things like ‘smart television” or ‘home theater system”. While head keywords are known to attract billions of searches monthly, it is extremely hard to rank them simply because the competition is incredibly fierce.
• Long-tail keywords: Just as the name implies, these types of keywords are fairly long. To be more precise, they usually feature at least three words and also tend to more specific. In the case of ‘smart television,” a long-tail keyword would be ‘the best smart televisions near me”.

Now that you know the difference between the two sets of keywords, let us explain why you need both in your keyword research journey. Whereas head keywords attract more searches but are fairly harder to rank, their long-tail keyword counterparts get fewer monthly searches but are easier to rank for.

However, it is worth noting that the type of traffic you will generate from long-tail keywords is highly likely to lead to a conversion. After all, a user searching for a more general term like ‘smart television” is less likely to be at the so-called ready-to-purchase stage in the buyer’s journey compared to an individual who is searching for a more specific statement such as ‘the best smart televisions near me”. At this stage, you should have at your disposal a list of promising long-tail as well as head keywords.

Step Five: Pay attention to your competitors:

To look for newer opportunities, have a look at the keywords your competitors are using. To ensure you only select the best keywords, strike a balance between the words the competition is ranking for and those they don’t. Always remember that not all the keywords your competitors rank for are relevant to your business. A tool such as SEMRush will help you identify the keywords your competition is ranking for at that particular time. Pay special attention to those that are relevant to your company and put them down, whether they are head topics or long-tail.

Step six: Incorporate Google AdWords into your keyword research!

This is a very important step and one you shouldn’t skip! Google AdWords Keyword Planner will help you pick the right keywords for your SEO campaigns by providing some measurable data to guide your decision. For best results, you can use AdWords in conjunction with Google Trends.

In Google’s Keyword Planner, type in a keyword and study the results. Take note of the search volume metrics as well as Google’s traffic estimate for that particular topic. Identify those keywords that are either less competitive or too competitive for your business to rank for.

Now, before you can discard any keyword, proceed to Google Trends and check all your keywords! In some instances, the ones you identified to be less important in keyword planner might actually be great keywords. Confirm that no upward trend is expected on these keywords in the future. However, if an upward trend is on the horizon, start integrating those keywords into your content creation strategy now when the competition is still low.

The Bottom line:

At this point, we are pretty sure you have a comprehensive list of the best keywords to target for your business. The next step is to start incorporating those keywords into your content marketing strategy. However, because Google is known to regularly update its ranking requirements, you need to reevaluate your keyword list at least after every three months to stay at the top of your game.

If you still find difficulties, you can hire The Code Nerds which is ranked among the Top Digital
Agencies in the United States. With the right keyword research, competitor study, and business
analysis our adept in-house team help you outsmart your competition. Our experts also chalk out
strategies that are conducive to your website to help it achieve higher conversions.