Quick guide: how to research keywords!

How to research keywords

Keywords are the cornerstone of your SEO strategy, but first you will need to know how to research which words are relevant to your business and are most likely to convert to sales.

 

Firstly, what is a keyword? This profoundly important string of letters is what people type into a search engine when they are looking for services or products. These words are important to you because they are the words that will lead potential customers to your website, converting them into paying customers. If your site is full of copy that doesn’t contain relevant keywords, clients will never find you. You will forever remain an anonymous website in a sea of other anonymous websites.

 

Using keywords in content

Sourcing and analysing keywords that are relevant to your sector is the basis of keyword research. It’s a crucial admin task that can be time-consuming, although there are tools around that can help speed up the process. A keyword is usually a search term rather than a single word — for example, ‘small business grants’ is a keyword, rather than inserting the words ‘small’ ‘business’ and ‘grants’ throughout your copy, which probably won’t get you very far at all.

 

High-volume keywords alone aren’t particularly useful. What you are looking for are relevant keywords that match your brand — blindly stabbing at keywords may result in some activity, but fine-tuning the exact words that your target audience is using is invaluable.

 

Think carefully about keyword groups

Two similar keywords, such as ‘small business grants’ and ‘small business funding’ behave very differently and without research you wouldn’t know which would work best for your business. Initially, your task is to study your niche — where do you fit in your business space? Find out what terms existing customers used to find your business. Then make a list of relevant topics, breaking down the main topic of your brand. From here, you can create focus keywords, using descriptions of your business in the most focused and simple way.

 

Put these keywords into your planner, such as Google Keyword Planner, studying the data that comes back. Is the competition high or low? Is it suggesting other keywords that could be more relevant. Compile a list from this research and, there you have it, your keyword list — primed and ready for action!