It can be tempting to skip keyword research when starting an SEO strategy for your business. You might already know the keywords people use to find your company. But the truth is – we can learn a lot about the words and phrases people use to search, and it differs from our guesses every so often.
You might also presume search engines prioritize keywords less than before. However, that’s not true either. Keyword research is still vital for SEO, and we’ll explore why in this article.
What Is Keyword Research?
Researching keywords involves investigation and filtering to identify keywords that relate to your company and target audience. Not just that, it aims to find good keywords that will bring you a lot of traffic without too much competition.
Why Is Keyword Research Essential?
If you want to take full advantage of the value of SEO, don’t fall into temptation and skip keyword research when you’re starting an SEO strategy for your business. Frequently, keywords are the bedrock of a good SEO operation and many current digital marketing methods. Analyzing general, industry-specific terms and phrases that bring traffic to SERPs (search engine results pages) are known as keyword research. That’s a proven first step in any website’s SEO. And, apart from users looking for keywords, Google, and other search engines read your website’s content for keywords and rank you for these particular terms.
Keyword research aims to discover terms and phrases associated with your business that people are looking for on search engines. A big part of keyword research consists of taking the time to understand your target audience and their queries and finding ways to answer them in your content with a combination of appropriate keywords.
Keyword research means identifying and scrutinizing frequent search terms people look for through search engines and strategically adding them to your content, so it can rank higher in SERPs. Essentially, you should find words relevant to your content with adequate search traffic but without too much competition.
The keywords associated with your business determine its reputation. Also, your content marketing team knows what to advertise by using appropriate keywords. Keyword research boosts the entire process’s efficiency, which is why it’s essential.
You Might Choose the Inaccurate Keywords
If you avoid keyword research, you could be using the wrong keywords for your business. It’s one of the first steps in the SEO process, and doing it wrong or not at all will significantly reduce your chances of ranking high on SERPs.
Keywords with low search volume have very few to no users looking for them, and content associated with such keywords likely won’t be discoverable. Why? Because no one is searching for it using those particular words.
On the other hand, high-competition keywords could take a long time to rank your content or won’t rank it at all because there are already numerous pages competing for them.
Moreover, if keywords aren’t relevant to your page, visitors that click on them probably won’t stay on the page. That would increase the bounce rate for your page, which would, again, negatively affect SEO. And, if you wrongly use keywords, your content is unlikely to be found in an organic search.
That said, keyword research is essential for SEO as it lets you know the competition data and volume for the keywords you intend to use. Moreover, it enables you to change your keywords to propel your content.
Keyword Research Tools
Using keyword research tools has many perks. They typically allow you to see the average number of monthly searches, sorted by geography if needed, which is valuable information if you want to rank high. Keywords with considerable search volume aren’t always the best because the more users look for them, the more competition on SERPs rankings.
Choosing specific keywords with medium to low search volume will separate you from the competition and get you closer to your target audience.
Tips for Keyword Research
Below are several keyword research tips to help you out on your SEO journey.
Update Keywords
Researching keywords can be complicated. That’s why companies typically invest their time while first building their SEO strategy but ignore it later. However, the language people use to search for what you offer can, and often does, change over time. So, avoiding further keyword research and updating is a mistake, and you should refrain from it.
Regular keyword updates will ensure you’re up-to-the-minute on the words users are searching now. When you refresh and update your keyword research, you can edit your existing content or create new articles that can once again be discoverable on SERPs.
Use Keyword Research Tools
Google isn’t looking for a match between a string of data in a query and a string of data in a particular article. So, you don’t have to add exact keywords a determined number of times in your piece when building your keyword planner.
It’s more important to use a keyword research tool to familiarize yourself with what matters to your target audience. Once you’ve done that, you can boost your content by making it more relevant to the people reading the SERPs.
Use Tags
The keyword should appear in the meta title, meta description, title, subheadings, and occasionally through the text. However, it must sound natural.
Use Semantically Similar Terms
Using semantically similar keywords is also crucial for SEO because of Google’s new semantic algorithm. All you need to do is delve a little deeper into matching terms. As with the focus keyword, research and analysis of the popularity and competitiveness of related keywords are also significant.
Evaluate Keywords
The goal of keyword evaluation is to filter through them to know how popular and competitive they are. It’s best to aim for keywords with moderate to high popularity but low competition. If you see a lot of authoritative sites or brand names, it means the term is highly competitive and will likely be hard to rank for.
Bottom Line: Keyword Research Is Still Important for SEO
Having read this article, you understand how and why keyword research is vital for SEO. If you avoid it, your page has poor chances of ranking high on SERPs. So, roll your sleeves up and get that work done to see favorable results. If you don’t know how or don’t have time for it, hire professionals who will do it for you.