Are you looking to improve your SEO score?
Google search algorithms are always getting changed, with a total of 157 updates, and only 73 of them confirmed to have gone through. However, one thing has been constant through all the changes and updates that Google released.
That constant is keyword research.
Keywords in SEO increase the probability of people discovering your webpage on popular search engines. If you’re looking to stay on top of the search list, you need to learn how to research words and get familiar with it as soon as you can.
Here, we’ve prepared a simple list that can help you get started on researching keywords.
Think of Topics Relevant to Your Business
First off, you’ll need to play to your strengths. Thinking of topics that relate to your expertise is a great start for researching keywords.
For example, if you’ve structured your market around, let’s say, mattresses, then your topics should come out like “mattress sizes” or “mattress materials” and even “what are mattresses made out of.”
You should think of as many topics as you can to maximize your time. You can dismiss these topics later if they prove to hold little potential for marketing success.
If you want to target a specific topic in your field, you may want to consider taking up a niche in your business.
Niches are specific things that you can pin down for a specific audience, people who are looking into even more specific areas in a specific field. While it may be harder to think of topics for a niche, it can also be more rewarding than thinking of generalized topics.
Sometimes, the most common places where you can find niches are in the forums of a broader topic. People tend to talk about specific areas in forums. For instance, in a forum about computer gaming, you can find specific topics such as ones that ask about specs to have an optimal gaming experience.
Think of Keyword Ideas
Next step for you is to think of keywords that you can link to your topic.
Keywords are phrases or words that your target audience may think of when they do a search about your product or service. These are important, as they help increase your rank in search engine results pages.
Think of as many keywords as you can, they will provide you with a long list of keywords that you can trim down for competitive purposes later on.
This step focuses on getting into the mindset of your target consumers. You need to be in their shoes to be successful with keyword generation. Try making your own persona of your target clients. What are they likely to type when looking for services that relate to yours?
If you are having trouble thinking of keywords for a website. You should check for competing websites with a high popularity ranking, you can then check on any related keywords they use.
Search engines can also provide help for you if you’re having problems with your keyword list. They are often displayed near the end of each link. Sometimes, they are at the very end of the page itself, too.
Mix in Some Head Terms and Long-tail Keywords
Head terms are keywords that tend to be more concise and have a more generic feel to them. Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, are longer and provide a more specific search result.
People often search for head terms because of their broad coverage of a topic. For instance, people who want to improve their baking skills will often look up “baking tips” rather than long-tail keywords such as “how to bake amazing cakes” or the like. This makes head terms harder to rank on search engines and also make them a more competitive keyword.
Long-tail keywords, in turn, are the better choice if you’re looking to target a niche topic. While they may not get searched as much as head terms do, they allow you to target people who want to know about a specific topic.
Long-tail keywords are perfect if you don’t want much competition from other people. And they can get you more visibility on search engine results pages provided that the potential customer types in that specific keyword, which is its drawback.
Make sure you have a good mix of these keywords. Relate your long-tailed keywords as close as you can to the topic while pinning down possible specific topics.
Research Words that Your Competition Uses as Well
The main purpose of you checking on your competition is to take into account the keywords that you can use for short-term profit and for long-term goals.
Competition over multiple head terms will be fierce. However, it provides you with some unique opportunities. Checking to see that you and your competitors are ranking for the same keywords is a great sign that your keyword is working out great. It means that you get a short-term goal to work on and improve upon the certain keywords.
You can also take a different approach and take a look at the keyword list at the bottom of the ranks. These tend to not get much attention from your competition, allowing you to have more of a claim to these certain keywords.
You can structure your search engine optimization around these lesser known keywords to improve their rank in the long run.
More often than not, a look at one of your competitor’s web page can give you a lot of keywords, more than enough for your needs. However, if you want to be thorough, you can check a domain list for your other competitors.
Use Keyword Planners to Trim Down Your Keyword List
You can use keyword planners to get search volume. They also tell you which keywords have little to no success in getting any search volume, as well as those with too much success. The latter means that there is strong competition over those keywords.
There are multiple keyword planners out there on the internet. Despite some small features that some sites have, they all work pretty much the same. You only have to enter your core keywords and the planner will come up with a list of keywords and phrases that are most common to the topic.
Planners are perfect if you want to focus on a niche. They often display keywords that can work for your specific topic and help you out even more by giving you long-tail keywords you may not have thought of on your own.
Keyword planners also give you the option to take a look at the trend history of the keywords you’ve input. These statistics can help you determine if the path of the current trend, thus, giving you an idea of where it will end up. You can use this to prepare for the trend’s failure or work even harder to its expected success.
In addition to that, you can also look up past keywords who may rank high again. You can then structure another topic around this keyword.
What Does Search Volume Mean?
Mentioned multiple times above, the search volume of a keyword determines the number of searches it will receive over a period of time. You use online tools to check on the search volume of your chosen keywords to see if they are worth making or not.
When your keyword has a low search volume, it may be time to consider abandoning it. On the other hand, you can try to improve it.
Improving a keyword with low search volume can be tricky, but by broadening the keyword’s search definition, you may see quick improvements to it. If it’s not enough, try combining it with different keywords. They tend to increase in search volume if you’ve structured your topic well after getting combined.
Utilize Your Keywords
It’s time for you to put your keywords to use. Writing your content is the entire purpose for your keyword researches.
Managing your keywords may prove difficult, that’s why you have to sort them first. When you made your list of keywords, what topic did you have in your mind? Use can use that topic to be the primary keyword, as they tend to be the one to relate the most to the current intent of your article or blog.
Once you’ve put them in place, it will be easy for search engines to determine what you are writing about by the number of keywords you have in place.
However, be sure that your content is also relevant to your keywords. It’s known that your on-page content improves your SEO score a lot if you place the right keywords and use them for great blog posts.
Research Your Keywords Now
With the help of this guide, you can now research words on your own to improve your SEO score!
If you’re having doubts about your choice of keywords, check out your ranking here to see if you need improvement or if your keyword is already good enough.
