At some level, every SEO needs to focus on keyword targeting and optimization. While it is the fact that context and quality of the content matter the most, content mainly focuses on the topics which are defined with the help of target keywords. In this scenario, it becomes really important for the SEOs do right keyword research.
Keyword research can be done effectively with the help of several tools, resources and processes. But no matter how good the keyword research process is, there is always a risk of SEO professional ending up choosing the keyword which doesn’t produce results.So, the keyword research needs to be done in a careful manner.
A few tips that can help you choose the right keyword are worth mentioning in this regard.
Identify goals
The first thing that you are going to have to do is to identify your goals. You need to know what you want to accomplish at the business or organizational level. This goal is what can help you identify the topics that you need to cover while writing the content. That those keywords help you get found and get traffic on your site.
Ask stakeholders
Your marketing team, C-suit, customer and other prospects are the major stakeholders which you cannot ignore. Make sure that you are getting input from those stakeholders regarding what they search for when they intend to find your business.But remember, getting this input is not something based on which you can make decisions. There are a lot of things that you are going to have to make the final decision.
Analyze competitors
Your competitors may not be doing it right but you are still going to have to analyze them. This way, you will be able to know what is going on in your niche. Another purpose of analyzing your competitors is that you will be able to know about the things that are working for them.
Things that you will have to see, while analyzing them, may include Meta tags, page titles, and things they usually talk about. You will have to create a list of topics, terms, and phrases that your competitors are using.
Perform keyword research
There are too many resources from where you can get enough details about the use of keyword research tool for both organic and paid search. In this scenario, it gets really important to make sure that you are using the right tool for your campaigns. The most important thing here is to avoid mistakes.
Identify topics
After performing keyword research, chances are you have found tons of words and phrases. But the good news here is that you don’t have to solely focus on the keywords. You are going to have to focus on the topics. You don’t need to build pages for every single keyword. If you already have content on your site and you want to add more, things are going to be a bit easier because you will be able to get ideas about topics from your own site.Look at the site navigation for this purpose.
But if you have a new site, you are going to have to do the keyword research. You can translate those keywords into topics.
The topical relevance and alignment
After you have got the topic ideas from the keywords, now you have to validate the keywords to make sure that they are right terms to work on.
For instance, it is a great idea to make an effort to rank for the term ‘cars’ if you are a car selling company. However, this approach is just not effective from the perspective of SEO. You are going to be more specific in your approach.
If a person is searching for a brand that you don’t carry the inventory for, showing up in the search for that branded keyword is not going to be good for your site.
Review the SERPs
While you may have worked on all of the filters and ways to validate the keywords, you are not there yet. The layout of search engine results pages doesn’t remain the same for a longer period of time. So, it is quite important to dedicate some time for the manual exploration of the SERPs.That is due to the fact that showing up in the SERPs is your ultimate goal. Moreover, this manual exploration is an organic way of looking what your competitors are doing and how dominating they are.
