Why Keyword Research Matters for SEO
Keyword research is the process of figuring out what people are searching for to get to websites like yours. When you do keyword research, you work to determine, analyze, and prioritize the language that your target market will use when searching for content.
The goal of keyword research is to figure out what words your customers are typing into a search engine when they’re looking for products or services like yours.
Doing keyword research allows you to target your content to what your customers want. This will improve your SEO and increase the number of relevant visitors that come to your site.
How To Do SEO Keyword Research
The first step is to think of some words that your customers may use to find websites like yours. For example, if you have a site about website content writing (like this one), some terms you may think of could include website content, website writing, content writing, copywriting, and others.
A good next step is to enter these keywords into Google to see what comes up. Are the sites that appear what you expected to find? If you’re not getting the kind of websites you expected, you may need to refine your keywords.
Once you have some initial keywords, it’s a good idea to do some research to find related keywords that you may wish to target.
One way to get good information on related keywords is to look for the suggestions that Google makes when you start typing a keyword. For example:
Another good way is to look at the related keywords that appear at the bottom of the search results page:
Not all of these keywords will be relevant to your website, but doing this research can still be helpful.
You may also wish to use the Google Keyword Planner to get some ideas. This tool is designed for advertisers, but it can still give you a lot of good information. Google Trends is another tool you may wish to use to see how popular your keywords are on Google search.
Once you know what keywords and phrases you’d like to target, it’s time to come up with a content strategy that uses them!