5 Steps to Mastering Keyword Research
It is no secret that drawing people in to view your website is a key aspect of creating success for your business. Starting with keyword research is a great way to expand and optimize the potential traffic coming in.
Keyword research is the process of finding the search terms that your audience will most likely use when using a search engine. Keyword research allows a company to create their SEO strategy based on the findings and this will directly impact the reach to your audience. There is huge power in having a better understanding of your target audience and knowing how they are searching for your services and products will give you a leg up on the competition.
So now that we have covered why keywords are important for your business, you might be wondering where to get started with your own research; we have developed a simple step-by-step process we explain in this post:
- Brainstorm
- Identify Keywords
- Cut Down Your Keyword List
- Consider Rankings
- Choose the Best Keywords for SEO
Step 1: Brainstorm
Think about your company and why customers come to you. Before you can start with SEO, you first need to identify who your target audience is and what their goals are when looking for your services.
These may include your most popular products, value-based services, or important and relevant topics that you cover on your website. Consider why you want customers to come to you over your competitors and then use these general topics to start the keyword research process.
Step 2: Identify Keywords
Use each general topic that you identified in step #1, and jot down all the main descriptors (a few words or less) that come to mind for these topics. Think about it from a customer’s perspective; if you were wanting to search for your product or service, what might you type into a search engine? If you’re stuck, you can enter keywords into a keyword research tool to help generate popular keywords, common questions or topics based on the content that you enter.
Step 3: Cut down your keyword list
Now that you have a detailed list, it is time to start refining it down to include only the most relevant keywords. If you need help with this step, you can use Google keyword planner or you can reach out to a company that specializes in this, like Trilogy Solutions; we would love to help!
Step 4: Consider rankings
The next step is to consider the rankings for the keywords you’ve identified in your final list. You can enter each of your keywords into a keyword research tool and discover the average monthly search volume (AKA how popular the keywords are). Rankings are an important step in the process but don’t discount the keywords that rank lower; these keywords have less competition and are often more specific. Using keywords that rank lower can be a great strategy to use for a small business, in combination with some of the more popular ones as well.
Step 5: Choose the best keywords for SEO
Deciding which keywords are “the best” to use can be daunting. The main things to consider are relevancy, authority and volume.
Luckily, you can rely on the data for this decision; look at how often the keyword is being searched and consider how relevant that search is to the product or service you provide. You want to ensure that you are drawing customers in that will engage with your website, so make sure that your keywords are specific to your brand.
No matter how you look at it, if you are a business using the internet (which we all should be by now), you need to consider keyword research and creating an SEO strategy. Ideally, this strategy should be re-evaluated every few months to note your successes and what changes can be made to extend your reach to your target audience.
Trilogy Solutions specializes in SEO and provides tailored solutions to clients across a wide variety of industries; if you think this service would support your business, feel free to reach out to us, we would love to help!
Jenna Robins
Jenna Robins is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Trilogy Solutions Ltd., a multi-media website development and digital marketing agency. As a busy mom-preneur, Jenna masterfully balances the demands of her active home life with her husband and two young daughters while managing the day-to-day operations of her rapidly expanding business.
Jenna takes pride in delivering superior quality, custom solutions for her clients’ projects or branding needs, and offers exemplary services that she can securely scale to meet any client project scope. Under Jenna’s proficient leadership, Trilogy Solutions’ team provides a wide range of solutions for any type of business, from comprehensive brand development to monthly website maintenance and/or digital marketing services.
