A Winning Keyword Research Process for SEO Success

Google has made it a roller coaster ride for businesses seeking success in their marketing strategies online.

With their constant algorithm updates, inbound marketers have been on their toes looking for and adjusting their strategies to optimize their website through the keyword research process.

The keyword research process is one of the strategies you can focus on for an SEO win that will essentially promote your marketing success.

So what can you do to master a winning keyword research process for your SEO and content strategy?

Basics of Keyword Research

The keyword research process is a powerful building block of SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

It is basically the terms that people or your audience specifically type into the search engine when they want to look for products, services, businesses, or a specific type of organization.

Knowing the actual search terms of your audience for your specific type of business or service will provide information for your content and marketing strategy.

If you know what keywords to target and use for your content, you will be better at optimizing your website and creating useful content for your audience to increase traffic and build your links.

Best Keyword Research Process to Optimizing SEO

Organize your Keyword Research Data

It is equally important for you to be able to manage the keyword research data that you get into a readily accessible spreadsheet.

This will help you store this valuable information that your SEO team will refer to when they create content.

You can update this spreadsheet anytime when google updates its algorithms or when keywords change with the preferences of your target audience.

Columns that will identify specific keywords might be Google AdWords Keyword Planner Competition and keywords from several competitors.

Understanding and Applying the Tried and Tested Keyword Research Process

Here are the fundamentals you should understand and apply in your strategy to rank up your website through finding the best keywords that can rank up and increase traffic on your website:

Make a list of relevant topics that your target audience is interested in and are important to your business. Consider topics that are most popular in sales conversations and have the most search volume because these are the topics that are important to your customers.

These are the seed keywords that help you grow your keyword list and expand it. Ask yourself keyword research questions like: “What do I want to rank for?”, “What do I already rank for?”, and “What do my competitors rank for?” Your answers to these questions are going to be your seed keywords.

Identify keywords or keyword phrases that are related to the topics you listed which are important to rank for in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

Think of all the possible phrases your potential customers use to search for content related to each topic you listed.

Use these recommended free and premium keyword research tools to kick-start your keyword search and help you move forward to your list building:

• Google AdWords Keyword Tool – Log in to your account to get more keyword ideas so that you can create better content for your website. Valuable information for each keyword includes competition, global monthly searches, local monthly searches, and approximate cost per click.
• Moz – Improve your SEO strategy by discovering the most valuable keywords. Information you will get for your keyword search includes search volume, competitiveness, competitor rank tracking, search visibility score, and global rank tracking
• Ahrefs – Your keyword search will come with local and global monthly search volume estimates and other advanced SEO metrics like keyword difficulty, cost per click, SERP features, and word count
• Ubersuggest – This is perfect for discovering new keywords related to your business or website. You will get useful information like search volume, SEO difficulty, paid difficulty, and cost per click
• Soovle – Find untapped keywords that your competition does not know yet. This tool will give you suggested keywords from multiple sources like Google, YouTube, Bing, Yahoo, Amazon, and more.

There are other Keyword Research Tools out there that you can use for your benefit. Choose the best one that will help your traffic grow in a relatively shorter amount of time.

Classify your keywords so that you will identify the very best ones. Know which keyword ranks as the highest volume keyword that a page is ranked for. Target semantically and contextually related keywords with a single page.

Decipher the intent behind each keyword search by googling the keyword and Google will tell you the intent. Then map the intent to the stage of the sales cycle where it fits. You will then better understand how that keyword will function for your website and business.

Know which keyword will give you the best ROI for your business, the visitors of your website that will most likely convert into leads or sales. Keywords with commercial intent are the ones that will drive sales and grow your business, according to Tim Soulo, the CMO and Product advisor at Ahrefs.

Classifying and prioritizing keyword searches will help you sift your keywords and leave the best ones that give you the best ROI because, in the end, it is what really matters.

Consider Long-tail keywords although they get less search traffic, they have less competition, too. These keywords which are more focused on a specific niche have higher conversion value.

Study and learn from your competition so that you will know how you can outrank them. Check out the SERP for the websites you are competing against and look closely at their content.

Use SEMrush to get an idea of keywords that are ranking up your competitors. This tool will show you reports about the top keywords for a domain you enter.

Favoring SEO Progress with Keyword Research

If you come up with hundreds of keywords after a thorough keyword research process, you don’t have to create pages for all of these.

Think about and determine which keywords you want to rank at the moment.

Stick to your priorities.

Remember that search engines are so smart, they only give the best answers to a search query.

Make sure that you use the keywords in your content that will answer those questions so that you will rank on top.