Search marketers agree keyword research is a critical part of a successful SEO strategy. Without proper keyword research and tracking, your business is unlikely to get very far off the ground on a digital level. Keyword research is the backbone of all successful digital marketing. It is changing all the time, including implementing keywords specifically targeted toward voice search.
What are Keywords?
Keywords are the terms and phrases used to target a specific audience or group of people for organic and paid searches.
For example, a keyword for a residential roofing business might be “residential roofing.” This term would serve to target potential customers searching for things such as “residential roofing contractors in my area,” “residential roofer in [location],” etc. You get the picture.
What is Keyword Research?
Of course, keyword research isn’t as simple as picking a few standard industry terms and adding them to a spreadsheet. There are different types of keywords, different ways of tracking keywords, various ways to optimize for keywords, and many tools to discover keywords.
Ideally, keywords should correlate with searcher intent to get the highest click-through percentage. Because of this, keyword research naturally and easily flows into content development, link building, and ultimately the overall health of your website. It may sound like a lot, but don’t worry; all of this is why this article exists.
This article will walk you through keyword research.
- The best ways to benefit from it
- The best free tools to use for it
- How to use those tools effectively
You will learn how to create high-quality content based on keyword performance and the best methods for optimizing your current content to meet its highest ranking potential.
Finally, we’ll cover how voice search is shaking up the SEO world. By the time you are through this guide, you will have a better understanding of how keyword research can benefit your company and what it takes to create a successful keyword research strategy.
How Does My Company Benefit from Keyword Research?
Keyword research is one of the most fundamental components of search engine optimization. For your website to rank organically in search results, a well-developed keyword strategy is essential.
Your website and individual pages are indexed among millions of others, all of which can have very similar information. So how do you rank above these other millions? How do you make your page and your company be seen above the rest? For most companies, the basic answer tends to be a combination of:
- Domain authority
- Page authority
- Local optimization
- Content-to-query relevance
Establishing content relevance is where keyword research comes into play.
When new information gets put out onto the web, Google and other search engines have bots to find and crawl a new page or website. This is called indexing the page. While crawling, the Google bots analyze content to determine the subject, information quality, and relevance to various search queries. This is where keyword optimization becomes crucial to ranking.
By targeting specific keywords on your pages or post, you can coax the search engines into noticing your page has specific, quality content about a topic matching your keywords. Upon seeing this, the search engines will rank your piece above others with lesser-quality content. Ultimately, when potential clients are searching for “roofing contractor,” your company gets noticed above your competitors.
Tools and Strategies for Keyword Research
Now you understand the necessity of keyword research, you are probably wondering how you’re supposed to do it! A wide range of keyword research tools is available to business owners, marketing experts, and professional SEOs. Some of these tools are only available by paid subscription, but many tools are free for the public to use, and new ones pop up every day as the industry changes. However, even with constant change in the SEO field, some keyword research tools and methods seem to remain strong over the test of time. These are:
- Google Search Console
- Google Adwords
- Google Search Suggestions
- Forums
Google Search Console
Google Search Console has been a staple instrument in every SEO toolbox for years. This is a free tool offered by Google to track a website’s search traffic, data, errors, etc. Through this tool, a knowledgeable webmaster can analyze how a site is viewed through Google.
As far as keyword research is concerned, Google Search Console should be a primary source for search data. Google will track and display actual search queries in which they show your site, the number of impressions your site had, actual click-throughs off of the query, and average rank for your site.
After comparing the data for impressions, clicks, and rank, you will be able to dig deeper into the data set to discover pages which currently rank for queries and keywords you wish to target. After gathering this information, you should know exactly which pages to optimize for the new keywords you want to target.
Google Adwords
Paid ads are a crucial part of any successful digital marketing strategy. Take a look at any Google search results page and it is easy to see where paid advertisements are taking over the top rankings. Paid ads will always appear before organic search results. Although a staple component in almost everyone’s lives, search engines are really just businesses. Because of this, their primary goal is to make money, and advertisements are how they do this.
It is still possible to use the Google Adwords tool to benefit your organic search rankings. Google Adwords can be an excellent place to find potential keywords to try to rank for organically.
Gathering keyword data through paid advertising research is a great way to grow organic keywords. Often keywords will first be “discovered” as hot trends in paid advertising. Taking those trends and moving them into the organic field can move your ranking forward.
You can also use paid keywords to boost organic keywords in your campaign. Occasionally adding an organic keyword into the paid AdWords will bring higher rankings to organic search volume on a phrase or keyword.
The intersection of paid and organic is essential and not to be ignored. Do not discount either option; it’s best to utilize all the tools available to bring traffic to your website. Without traffic through keywords, there can be no sales or leads!
Google Search Suggestions
After using Google Search Console and Google Adwords to create a base keyword list, your next step should be expanding the list to include variations and long-tail keywords. Google Search Suggestions is an excellent place to look.
To use this keyword research method, all you have to do is enter your base keywords into a standard Google search. Google will suggest possible searches in a drop-down as you enter your keywords. Look through these and pick out keywords and phrases wh apply to your company and brand.
Tip: After writing a list of appropriate keyword suggestions, click into the search for your base keywords and scroll to the bottom of the page for additional keyword suggestions.
Forums
Try to imagine sitting down to write new content for your website. Do you know what you are going to write? Is information going to be answering the questions people want to know the answers to? Will people actually search for your content or be interested in reading it? This is where forums can be constructive in content creation.
A forum is a community of people interested in knowing about similar topics. People will ask questions in the forums and hope for a satisfactory response. Often, this means these questions are not satisfactorily answered elsewhere, which gives your company a perfect opportunity to provide an answer. After all, if one person is curious enough to ask, it’s very likely there are also other people interested in the answer. You want your company to answer questions you know people are asking, and forums are the perfect place to find those inquiries.
Keyword Research and Content Development
Now you have established a keyword list for your business, you will need to write quality content using those keywords for your site. Quality content is used to entice users into your site and ultimately prompt them to complete an action called a conversion. The way content accomplishes this ultimate goal is through keyword optimization. Keyword optimization is the term used to describe the process of carefully selecting and seamlessly layering chosen keywords and keyword phrases into a piece of content in order to find the target audience.
Without keyword optimization, you could have the highest-quality piece of writing, and it would mean nothing because it is unlikely to be found or read by the intended audience. Essentially, keywords are the bait to draw the right viewers into your site. The right viewers, of course, are those most likely to convert. Keyword-rich content is what we call optimized content.
Tip: Quality content needs to be the priority for keyword optimization. Always start with high-quality, original content people will want to read before baiting the hook with your keywords.
What is Quality Content?
There are a few guidelines for writing quality content for Google. First and most importantly, your content needs to be original. This simply means the content is not plagiarized. Plagiarism is considered literary theft and is illegal under US copyright laws.
Second, and a little less straightforward, quality content needs to appeal to the audience you’re writing for. Ask yourself who your piece is meant to be read by. Are you writing to someone looking for tips to know when to replace their roof? Maybe you’re writing for someone wanting to know the difference between shingle and metal roofing options. This is your audience. Always keep your audience in mind when you are writing your piece. Use language your audience would be comfortable with and explain any language they might not understand.
After you have a clear understanding of the audience you are writing for, it should be easier to select targeted keywords. Choose keywords which appeal to the type of people you’re trying to attract to your site and match the tone you are trying to set for your piece.
The tone is the last of the three guidelines for quality content. It is related to the audience, which can at times dictate the tone. Conversely, the tone can help to dictate the audience. Tone can also be significantly affected by the content subject, but it does not necessarily have to be (i.e., satire).
The tone of your writing simply means how you intend for your audience to read it. Is the piece meant to be comical or serious, informational or inspirational, formal or informal? Perhaps the work is intended to combine two or more categories or something entirely different. Whatever your tone may be, it is crucial to keep it in mind while you’re writing. Failure to do so can often lead to inconsistency in your work, which can be jarring and off-putting to readers.
The World of Voice Search
Google Algorithms
Like any genuinely healthy entity and growing industry, keyword research and content development is constantly changing; it is up to content and keyword developers to keep up with those changes. Google’s frequent algorithm updates are more often than not the catalysts for the changes:
- Google Panda. The first significant change Google made to the content and keyword game came in Google Panda in February of 2011. This put an end to the practice of keyword stuffing by calling for relevant content of high quality. Before 2011, keyword stuffing, or the practice of oversaturating a content piece with targeted keywords, was common practice in many SEOs’ repertoire. After Panda was released, SEOs were forced to change their strategy or fail in the new playing field.
- Google EMD (Exact Match Domain). Even after the launch of Google Panda, keyword stuffing did not completely die out in common practice. The release of Google EMD in September of 2012 acted as a supplement to Google Panda to prevent keyword stuffing within domain names. With EMD, sites with poor content could no longer outrank quality content simply because of an abundance of exact match keywords in the domain name.
- Google Hummingbird. Google Hummingbird was the first significant advancement directed at the search queries themselves. Hummingbird ensures the whole meaning of a search query is taken into account rather than just individual keywords. This opened the door to better Query to SERP (Search Engine Results Page) match based on the meaning of a query and completely changed how we use keywords and how we search. The Google Hummingbird update in 2013 made voice search possible.
How do I Optimize My Website for Voice Search?
Voice search is a complex development taking the SEO world by storm. Personal assistants are everywhere, and people are quickly adapting to use them to their full potential. What once was used only as a glorified music player and weather-checker is now used for general search purposes, market research, and even shopping – all without ever looking at a screen! Voice search continues to change the game for keyword optimization.
In today’s world of spoken commands and quick, concise answers, long-tail keywords are becoming more and more valuable, and knowing how to properly use them is becoming more essential by the day. Long-tail keywords are precise phrases more likely to correspond with highly specific questions in voice queries. Voice search, long-tail queries, and the lack of an actual screen mean devices have to return concise answers. Generally, only one answer is returned and the conversation either ends or springboards to another question.
You may be asking, “How can I make my content be one answer?” This is the key to optimizing your content for voice search. Google will return answers pulled from the content found on the first page of search results. This is called a rich snippet. The trick with rich snippets is they do not have to be taken from the first result on the SERP, but rather any of the top-ranking search results. Your FAQ page could rank third or fourth on the search results but still win the rich snippet. This implies that rich snippets are based more highly on the quality of content and its ability to answer the question at hand rather than traditional ranking factors.
For your company, what this means is a shift from the traditional techniques used to rank high in SERP results to having a focus on short, descriptive answers worth listening to. Certainly, you will still want to be one of those top search results; there is plenty of value for traditional searching, but having content optimized for voice search and rich snippets is becoming more essential every day.
The world of SEO is always changing; it’s up to you to make sure your company is ready by staying on top of the latest news and always being open to adapting your methods. If you’ve read this article, you’re on the right track to get started! If you have more questions about SEO, writing quality content, or digital marketing, get in touch with us at Art Unlimited!