Keyword research is the method in which digital marketing professionals utilize keywords to observe and study actual terms that browsers type in to search engines.
Keyword research for SEO is a valuable, significant, and high-yield activity in the digital marketing domain. A website’s success depends solely on the ranking of the appropriate keywords and organizations aim to boost their websites’ ranking using the appropriate keywords.
A robust keyword research process can enable organizations to gain a high number and right kind of visitors to their websites.
It is important for organizations to carry out the right kind of keyword research for SEO that will help them to boost their website ranking and gain new and right kind of visitors.
Here are some methods as recommended by digital marketing experts in Toronto to do keyword research for SEO.
1: Set up a template in spreadsheet
At the very outset, you’ll need to set up a template in a spreadsheet. To set up a template in the spreadsheet, you’ll need to sign into a spreadsheet application, such as Google Sheets, and make a clean spreadsheet.
After that save the spreadsheet under an appropriate name and fill the rows and columns with keywords. You’ll also need to keep the link handy that’ll enable you to make a strong recurring process document afterwards utilizing this guide. Appropriate keywords will skew the search engine results page (SERPs) in your favour.
2: Look for your potential customers’ search terms
After setting up a template in a spreadsheet, you’ll need to look for your potential customers’ search terms. This is important as you’ll need to study various ways by which your topic is going to be searched for prior to obtaining any data on competition or volume.
You can use search engines, such as Google, to glance at the relevant search terms that come into view as soon as you insert a keyword. After you plug in a keyword and scroll down to the bottom of the search engine’s results, you’ll find some recommendations for searches close to the original phrase.
3: Ask yourself the appropriate questions
After selecting the keywords, you must ask yourself the right questions such as “how relevant are the keywords to the content of your website?”, “will these keywords help the browsers to reach your website?”, “will this traffic help your company in achieving its revenue goals or any long-term and short-term objectives?” and “will the keywords will meet the needs of the browsers?”. Proceed only when you get an affirmative response to all these questions.
4: Ensure that you have the right mix of long-tail and head term keywords
Long-tail keywords are generally long keyword phrases generally comprising three or above words, while head term keywords are shorter and more generic. Head term keywords are usually searched at a greater frequency compared to the long-tail keywords that make them far more competitive and difficult to rank. You’ll need to ensure that you have the right mix of long-tail and head term keywords as it will provide you with a good keyword strategy, which is perfectly balanced with short-term goals and long-term objectives.
5: Observe how the same keywords have been ranked by competitors
After selecting the right mix of long-tail and head term keywords, you’ll need to observe how the same keywords are being ranked by your competitors. Observing how your competitors are ranking a certain set of keywords will give you an idea of what works for them and what doesn’t. This will enable you to learn from their strengths and weaknesses and help you to implement the right strategies and steer clear from the wrong direction.
You can use Ahrefs Site Explorer to get competitors’ keywords and information.
6: Focus to reduce your keyword list
You can utilize applications such as Google AdWords Keyword Planner to reduce the list of keywords to make sure that you have the best keywords with you. After obtaining the perfect mix of long-tail and head term keywords, you’ll need to reduce the number of keywords in your list. First, you need to remove duplicate keywords from the list. Then, you’ll need to look for the least searched keywords and remove them from the list. You can use tools and your fine judgment to reduce your keyword list.
Using the above steps, you can perform keyword research for search engine optimization in an efficient and hassle-free manner.