Keyword Research should be the basis of any SEO online marketing campaign. Our guide will help you understand more about the keyword research process.
What is Keyword Research?
Keyword research is the process of identifying what phrases or terms your target audience are searching for in order to find your products or services.
Why is Keyword Research Important?
Keyword research is a vital step in any online digital marketing strategy. Keyword research provides you with valuable insights into the search terms that your audience is actively searching for. You need to be building your content based on the keywords your target audience are already using so you can target those searches.
You can then use this research to strategically implement these keywords and phrases into your online content to increase the opportunity of ranking highly in search engines and driving more traffic to your site.
The Keyword Research Process
We have created a guide to help you understand the steps involved in the keyword research process.
Identify Topics and Brainstorm Keywords
The first step of keyword research is to think about areas that may be related to what you are hoping to rank for. For example, if you are performing keyword research for ‘family law’ you can create a list of keywords that relate like the below:
- Family & Divorce
- Family Solicitors
- Family Law
- Family Lawyer
- Adoption
- Divorce
- Family Finance
- Surrogacy
Once you’ve got a list of related keywords, you can then go into a deeper level and figure out what is going to perform best for your business.
Google Related Searches
To help you come up with some more keywords, you can use tools like Google related searches. By tying in a phrase or keyword into Google and scrolling to the bottom of the page it will come up with some other things people have searched for or might be related to your topic. You can then use these to help you build your keyword list.
Answer the Public
Answer the public is a great way to discover phrases that people are searching for in relation to your topic. You are able to create 3 free searches per day.
Use Keyword Research Tools
The next step is to make use of keyword research tools to discover even more keyword ideas based on the ones you have already generated. There are lots of free keyword research tools available with different options to help you find the perfect keyword. We have identified some below:
Google Keyword Planner
Although Google’s keyword planner is mainly used for advertising, It is a great tool to help find more keywords that you might not have thought about. It allows you to enter the keywords that you have already identified and it will then pull other keyword ideas based on the keyword.
Ahrefs Keyword Generator
Ahrefs can be used to generate keyword ideas and also see monthly search volumes as well as keyword difficulty scores.
SEMrush
Provides an overview of key metrics for keywords to help you decide what terms to target, spot opportunities and identify trends/seasonal spikes. Its ‘Phrase Match Report’ allows you to discover long-tail variations of your keywords.
Google Search Console
Google search console is a free service offered by Google that can be used to discover the keywords that are already bringing users to your website. This allows you to identify areas that you can optimise further by adding additional keywords and also help you discover opportunities for new content.
Research Search Volume
Once you’ve got your keyword list, it is important to check the search volume of them. The higher the search volume, the more popular that keyword is therefore the more potential traffic you will receive.
Google Trends is a free tool that allows you to compare the popularity of keywords quickly. It will also show you if the terms you are picking are predicted to gain or lose traffic so you can be ahead of the competition. We’ve written a guide on how to use Google Trends here.
Research the Competition
Searching your keyword in search engines will allow you to look at the competition you are going to be facing. If there are lots of big brand names there, it may be harder for you to compete against them so the best option may be to go around it and start looking at long tail keywords or related keywords. For example with Family Law, if there are some big firms ranking and you think it may be difficult to get yours higher you could look at creating sub pages like ‘Surrogacy Law’ and getting that at a high ranking.
Final thoughts
Keyword research tells you what terms your clients are actively searching for, the competitiveness of the keywords and can help guide your content marketing plan to increase organic search visibility, ranking and traffic.
Once you have completed keyword research, you can read our guide on how to use keywords to maximise your SEO strategy here.
