If you want to make it as an online business, solid keyword research is essential to best plan out content creation, placement, and promotion. Unfortunately, many businesses don’t take the time to conduct proper keyword and may crash and burn because of it. Fortunately, to help improve your business, here are 7 insights of keyword research:
1. Creating a list of keywords.
Choosing the right keywords for your webpages is the key to attracting the right kind of audience. One simple way to determine what kind of keywords you need is to look at your webpage and describe it in three to five words. Once you have a number of combinations to work with, they can possibly be used as keywords.
2. Selecting and using a reputable keyword research tool.
Many people rely on the Google Keyword Planner (previously known as the Google AdWords Keyword Tool) because it is free and simple to use. However, you can also use paid tools with more advanced features such as the Bruce Clay, Inc. SEOToolSet and WordTracker.
3. Utilising the keyword suggestions to narrow your keyword list.
Many keyword tools will provide you with a list of suggested keywords based on the keywords you originally use. Checking out the suggested keywords is an excellent way of finding even more valuable keywords and phrases that you otherwise would have never known about.
4. Determining if the keywords accurately describe your content.
When creating content, it is essential that you only use keywords that accurately describe the content. If you try to use unrelated keywords to rank, both Google and your audience will not appreciate the fooling attempt. In fact, you should only focus on one to three relevant keywords per page.
5. Determining how many people actually search for certain keyword phrases.
When focusing on keywords, you need to determine exactly how people phrase the search terms. You can refer to the Average Monthly Searches column in Google Keyword Planner for a general idea of what is being searched for in Google. However, tools like the SEOToolSet can show you results in Google, Yahoo, and Bing for the best results.
6. Checking out the competition.
If you want to become an authority for certain topics and keywords, you need to check out the competition. By typing your keywords into a search engine, you can easily see what sites you have to compete against. If the top matches are authority sites, you may have a more difficult time ranking for certain keywords.
7. Keeping up-to-date about the latest practices.
To prevent your site from being penalised for using black hat techniques, it is important to keep up-to-date with the latest acceptable white hat SEO practices. Fortunately, if you want to free up some time, you can find a SEO partner to keep up with the trends.
Learning all about how to properly conduct keyword research is essential for helping your online business to grow. By taking in these 7 insights, you can create a firm foundation to build your keyword research practices upon.
Daniel Hicks enjoys consulting with small business owners about their online needs. He also enjoys writing about digital marketing on various blogs and websites.