Why Keyword Research Is So Important - Concourse Marketing (2023)

First, we'll cover exactly what keyword research is and why keyword research is so important.Keyword research is the essential starting point for any well-structured SEO campaign orsearch engine positioning strategyand involves looking up search terms, search queries, or what people put into search engines exactly character by character.

MOZ stresses that keyword research is not only,“check how many searches a given keyword has; it is also about exploring the many ways that people use language to pursue an idea or topic”. They also make the distinction that keyword research is all about targeting.“the right traffic to your website – traffic that is more likely to convert”,This is why keyword research is important.

When considering exactly what keyword research is, Alexa defines it slightly differently, stating:“Keyword research is the process of discovering the keywords your target market is using when searching.”. This further illustrates the true nature of keyword research, which is finding out exactly what your customers or prospects are searching for right now, so you can implement those exact keywords into your content and increase your visibility in the marketplace.search engine results pages (SERPS).

This brings us to why keyword research is done in SEO. Keyword research is simply a discovery process to guide the creation of content to optimizeorganic trafficYou will have the written content and visibility you will have on search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. We can also begin to see why keyword research is just as important as basing your content on consumer insights and statistics to optimize business or organizational performance.

So why do keyword research? You are developing an SEO strategy; Based on keyword research, we developed akeyword listwhich acts as a compass that points directly to SEO success, we can better understand which keyword we should implement in a piece of content to make it visible on search engines to the same people who manually perform these queries on search engines. In terms of keyword skills, we havekeyword placementmikeyword densityWhich brings us to the implementation of our keyword research that we will cover later.

The role of keyword research in SEM (Search Engine Marketing)and SEO is key. We can begin to see why keyword research is so important in the context of SEM and SEO, since with all marketing tactics in general, we focus on acquiring qualified attention to increase conversions. A well-constructed keyword list allows us to prioritize search terms and variations and minimize the guesswork involved in creating content.

We might start with an idea of ​​what your target audience might search for on Google when searching for information about your products and services, but only when we get involved with keyword research can we see how important keywords are in terms of quantity. organic traffic they generate from search engines and how difficult it is to rank in search engines for those exact keywords.

keyword difficultyrefers to the competitiveness of any keyword. In SEO and SEM, each keyword has its own individual levels of competition. For example, let's say we have a dental office looking to rank on search engines for educational content that will bring more organic traffic to the site.

We may use statistical software such asSEMrushto detail the degrees of difficulty involved with ranking on search engine results pages for potential keywords, we may decide to focus on an educationblog postwe are looking to create

We can see that we have a list of different keywords that we can target in our blog post to drive quality traffic to our dental website. If you look at the "volume" column, it indicates and estimates the amount of organic traffic this keyword generates from search engines per month. We can also see the “KD%” column, which represents the difficulty percentage of the keyword. The higher this number, the more difficult it is to appear in search engines for any keyword in the keyword lists above, and the lower, the easier. With this data in mind, you can begin to see why keyword research is so important.

We can see the importance of keyword research when deciding what topic we'd like to target, as we might select a keyword like "dentists open at Christmas" which has a keyword difficulty of 3% (very easy to rank on). the SERPs) and getting closer to 70 organic searches per month or alternatively we can decide to target a keyword like “what dentists use to whiten teeth” which gets exactly the same amount of traffic but has a search difficulty of 71% keywords (incredibly hard to rank for in the SERPs).

Another important consideration in this process is the intent to purchase orbuyer's intentof the keyword. Someone manually searching for "dentists are open for Christmas" is likely to want to pay a visit, especially considering the time of year they're searching for that keyword. This is called keyword trends. We can expect that someone searching for this keyword at the end of the year, in December, is probably considering a visit to the dentist over the Christmas period.

When we consider the search term "what dentists use to whiten teeth" this lacks the intent of the buyer as they could simply be someone looking for a DIY solution to a dental problem they have and are much less likely to Anyone want to tag an appointment with our dentist. practice. However, if we were looking to sell a dental product that would provide that solution, it might be a keyword we target,

Does this mean that high-difficulty words are useless? Well, that depends. If we consider the amount of traffic both keywords generate, it makes more sense to invest our time in the easier keyword, as there is a much greater chance of seeing a return on that investment of time with rankings on engine results pages. search. However, this will also depend on itdomain authority (DA)from your website.

Domain authority refers to the amount of credibility that Google and other search engines give your website and is based on a wide variety of factors, such as domain age, link profile, and subject authority, which we will cover. individually in a later publication. What you need to understand is that not all websites are created equal when it comes to competing for a keyword. Well-established sites with high domain authority can compete for more competitive keywords.

We can see the importance of keyword research, as if you are a new website or new to SEO, then the ideal SEO strategy for you is likely to leverage keyword research to find the best keywords that can Acquire quality traffic with low levels of competition. Above you can see the NHS website domain authority (authority score: 84), which could compete for these much more competitive terms by being the authority in the UK in the medical space.

Start WITH SEO

Keyword research starts with a pencil and paper. The process should start with some initial brainstorming, thinking of all the different ways someone might research your product or service. For example, a dental office might type the following keywords.

• local dentist
• Yorkshire Dentist
• Dentista Barnsley
• national health service dentist
• dental services
• community dental services
• NHS dental services
• emergency dental services

The key here is to let your ideas flow and come up with a solid list of at least 30 keywords that we can build on. Think about the different products and services you offer and the different locations you would like to target locally.

We need to look for keywords that we can add to our list of keywords that we didn't type intuitively, but that Google itself suggested to us. We can see keyword suggestions like "dentists near me" and "dentist near me NHS".

This process will not only reveal the keywords that are currently being searched for on Google, but it will also generate SEO insights. It is important to not only look at the keywords to create landing pages, but also to consider the keywords that we can implement to create blogs and educational content.

Take the time to enter at least your 30 seed keywords into Google search and manually review Google suggestions. Just one keyword idea for your SEO campaign can be the difference between SEO success and failure, so take the time to patiently consider the suggestions Google brings to you directly and leave no stone unturned.

You should now have a minimum of 200 keywords when considering the different towns and cities you want to reach nationally and the different suggestions made by Google. Your keyword list can have more than 200 keywords, and that's great news, as you're less likely to miss opportunities in developing your overall SEO campaign.

The next step is to look at your competitors keyword list, this is where we'll start to see why keyword research is so important. To move forward with this final step, you'll need to use analytics software like SEMrush, which will reveal your competitors' top keywords that we can capture and add to your keyword list. The purpose of this is to reverse engineer SEO success.

Considering the top locations you want to dominate nationally, choose 3-5 of the top players in your industry who offer the same products and services as you. If you can't think of anydirect competitorsor you're just not sure, then use your best friend Google. If you google "your service" + "target location", see who is currently at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Using a tool like SEMrush, look at the keywords your competitors are ranking for and start adding them directly to your keyword list. Once you've built a solid list of at least 300 keywords, it's time to consolidate your keyword list. In analytics software like SEMrush, you can use features like position tracking to set up an authoritative listing that can view and verify your ranking for the individual keyword on your listing over time.

The software will reveal traffic volumes and keyword difficulty related to all the individual words you have selected for your keyword list; that is why keyword research is important in SEO. This list of keywords will act as the compass guiding you to SEO success for the next 3-6 months. It will reveal to you the keywords that are most important to your business and have the most opportunity with the least keyword difficulty.

I hope this breakdown can give you some level of keyword research skills that you can apply to increase organic traffic to your website, and I hope you can see why keyword research is so important.

To conclude why keyword research is so important is to take the guesswork out of your marketing and content creation in order to convert as many people as possible. This is so that you can sell more products and services directly through your website. Why do keyword research? Well, you're not guessing what your target audience would like to see, and you're creating content based on what they're already looking for right now on search engines.

If you have any questions about why keyword research is so important, we offer a free consultation along with our free SEO audit, where we'll be happy to answer any questions you might have about keyword research or SI EL.

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