The Best Way to do SEO Keyword Research

 

Every website owner wants people to frequent their website. But not all of them succeed in attracting visitors in hordes.

Why?’

The reasons could be many. But one of the prominent reasons why people fail to visit your website is irrelevant or out-of-context keywords. If you want people to visit your website, you need to know what they search – the keywords or words they use and the content that best matches their intent.

Hence, if you want to get on top of the Google game, you need to do two things right – keyword research and understanding user intent.

Changes in the digital world happen thick and fast. For example, Google keeps updating its algorithms frequently, but one thing that has remained more or less consistent over the years is keyword research.

However, though the keyword research hasn’t changed much, the way it is done has seen quite a twist and turns.

Let us, therefore, take you through what is keyword research, how to develop your keyword strategy, and creating content with the user in mind so that you can optimise your online presence.

What is keyword research?

If you want to do well on search engines like Google, you need to know what search queries are used the most by your audience. It is in this context that keyword research assumes so much significance.

So, what is keyword research?

It is a process that helps you to know and understand the actual search terms people use to find what they are looking for on search engines. When you get a clear understanding of the actual search terms, the insight helps you to create a robust content strategy and a smart digital marketing strategy.

As a business owner who has an online presence, you must be aware of the importance of SEO. But that doesn’t mean that keywords or keyword research have lost their relevance.

When you do keyword research properly, you get to know what topics your audience is looking for, what do they like to read about, and the most popular topics among your audience. With proper keyword research, you also get to know your SEO keywords. SEO keywords are the terms/ phrases and keywords in your web content that allow visitors to find your site via search engines. When you optimise your site for search engines and speak the same language as that of your potential visitor, your chances of connecting to your target audiences increases substantially. And, that is what keyword research helps you do with ease.

Hence, with proper keyword research, you can get to know the keywords that are generating high volumes of searches every month and create a robust content strategy to target tour audiences.

How to develop your keyword strategy?

But if you want to do your keyword research properly, it is extremely important that you first have a keyword strategy in place. Doing keyword research is vital, but how you take your journey forward from there is equally important, and this is what makes your keyword strategy.

Based on your keyword research findings, a keyword research strategy is what guides you to make informed decisions about the content you need to create and how you need to monitor and track the results in analytics. A keyword strategy tells you how you need to target your keywords.

So, how should you develop your keyword strategy?

If you want to develop a robust keyword strategy, you need to focus on all the insights. A smart keyword strategy starts with self-assessment. Learn everything that you can about your product/ service and your competitors.

Understand your business

As mentioned earlier, you should first start to assess yourself, your business, your objectives, and your goals. Find out your USPs. Ask yourself, why would people want to visit my site? What is it that you want to convey to your audience? To learn all of this, you need to get hold of all the insights that you can so that you can utilise your resources properly.

Understand search intent

Search intent is an extremely important aspect if you want to do well in the digital world. If you want to know about the intent, it is important to know your audience first. You need to understand what people want, what they are looking for, and where they want to proceed. Try and learn whether your audience is only looking for information, or are they interested in buying things from you. When you know about the intent, you can create content to target the specific intent of your visitors.

Understand words

Words are the be-all and end-all of search. When you do keyword research, you come to know of the words people use to find what they are looking for on search engines. It helps you create user-oriented content that matches their intent to meet their requirements.

Understand your competition

When we talk of keyword strategy, competition forms an integral part of it. You need to have complete knowledge of what your competitors are doing. You need to know where your competitors are ranking for the search terms you are planning to target. When you study your competitors carefully, you can find out ways to outmanoeuvre them. You will get to know the keywords that will work for you – long tail or short keywords.

Understanding search engines

You will, of course, do all your competitor analysis on search engines. When you analyse your competitors, you don’t just get great insights into your competitor’s strategy, but you also get a fair bit of idea of what will happen when you type your main keywords or phrase. When you work so much on search engines, you get to know more about them, how they work, and how search engines give answers that result in no-click searches. Working on search engines over time can help you get a sense of a lot of things like featured snippets, local packs, and rich results.

Understanding data

If you want to make your keyword strategy successful, you need to analyse data. The more you analyse data, the better will be your keyword strategy. To analyse data, both before and after keyword research, you can take the help of Google Analytics. Google Analytics gives you great insights that can help you formulate a successful keyword strategy. Also, you can take the help of Google Search Console to get meaningful insights and pursue opportunities.

Creating content with the user in mind

People search the web with a clear intent in mind – most want answers to their problems, are looking for information about the products and services they want, or things they plan to buy. If you want web users to discover you, you need to optimise your content to match the user intent of your visitors.

Since Google takes pride in displaying the most relevant information to its users, you have to optimise your content for user intent so that it has a better chance of ranking well on the SERP. If you create content keeping user intent in mind, it helps your overall SEO efforts.

That is why it is essential to create content with the user in mind.

So, how do you create a user-intent SEO strategy for the content you produce?

The first thing you need to do is understand the different types of user intent. There are three stages of user intent. Turn to Google for help, and enter the search terms you think your audience will look for the most. The result you get will help you identify the type of content you need to create to tackle your audiences at different stages of user intent.

Informational search queries – The user in such search queries are just looking for more information about the product, topic, or service, and they are not ready to buy the stuff. For example, the query “how can a CRM help my business” is an informational search query. The result Google throws up for such queries are informational like how-to results (blogs and tutorials) with no ads on the result page.

Navigational search queries – The user in such queriesare looking for a specific type of content to firm up his or her option, but they are still some distance away from buying the product or service. For example, the query “what is the best way to choose a CRM” is a navigational search query. The result Google throws up for such queries will have blog posts with a comparative analysis that helps the user firm up his or her decision to buy. The result might give you a hint on how to buy the best CRM for your business, but no one is going all out to sell their product.

Transactional search queries – The user in such queries areall set to buy the product or service. For example, the query “where can I get good CRM for my business” is a transactional search query. Most of the results that Google throws up will be product pages from where you can buy a CRM.

Once you are aware of the different stages of user intent, it should become easy for you to create appropriate content with specific key phrases to target your audiences in each stage.

Next, make sure your existing content centres around user intent. You can do this by going to Google Analytics and checking your top-performing keywords. In case your top-performing keywords/ phrases are not matching the user intent, then you need to revisit your content strategy. What you need to do is create content for each different stage of user intent so that you can target your audience properly. You need to understand that when people are in the informational stage, they don’t plan to buy; hence you need to target them with informational content. But if your user is ready to buy, and your content is only informational, then you are missing out on opportunities. What you need is transactional content at this stage. Hence, it is important to produce content that caters to the user intent of your audiences in each stage.

That is why it is important to create content for user intent. Don’t just concentrate on keywords when you formulate a user-intent SEO strategy. What you need to do is create your content with user intent.  And, because Google understands intent well, it will become difficult for you to rank for content that does not match your keyword.

For instance, if you are targeting for a long-tail keyword like “how to make chicken curry”, but in your blog post, you write more about how to rear a chicken, then you will not rank for search results related to chicken curry; instead, your post will show up in chicken rearing. What this means is you need to create content with user intent in mind. If you don’t keep user intent in mind, you will not get the relevant traffic.

Also, if you want to target your audience through each stage of their journey, then you must create content that caters to each type of user intent. The best way is to guide your audience through each stage and take them to the buying stage finally so that you don’t lose on opportunities.

If you keep user intent in mind while creating content for your website, your SEO strategy is sure to take you places.

If you have any difficulty in keyword research or formulating an effective keyword strategy, you can get in touch with vStacks Software Solutionsnow. We are a full-service digital marketing company, and we can help you out in doing keyword research and in formulating an effective keyword strategy.