Importance of Keyword Research for SEO

Importance of Keyword Research for SEO

Keyword research for SEO is perhaps the part you should not avoid under any circumstances. You may ask why it’s important? Keyword research the first step of SEO & perhaps the only step that will ruin your hard & soul work if you ignore it. It’s the foundation of every SEO process. The stronger the foundation, the stronger the building. Keyword research for SEO is the also the only part where you need some expertise.

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Google receives over 100 Billion of search queries every month from all over the world. Search queries are something that will show your site in the SERP (Search Engine Result Page). If you want to get that lucrative organic & free place of the SERP, you have to optimize your site for that specific keyword. And most importantly the keyword should be related to your site.

You will find countless articles about keyword research. Most of them are filled with pro advice & tools. Then why this article? Here you will find the basics of keyword research for SEO & also tips about some of the best tools you should use for this process.

What & why keyword research for SEO?

Keyword research is a process where you will choose words & phrases related to your website & these words or phrase has a higher chance that user will use them to search online.

If you are running a pet shop in Orlando, Florida, then it will be helpful for your business to appear on the search engine result page after searching “pet shop at Orlando.” It’s not that simple. You need to optimize your website as always your contents properly based on this keyword phrase. Only then you will be eligible to appear the SERP after a search of that keyword phrase.

The SEO tactics is a broad concept & I am going to avoid that topic. You can read a full article on the topic SEO. I will keep the focus of this article on keyword research for SEO only.

Before even starting keyword research, you need to understand why it’s important. If you failed to understand its importance & choose the wrong set of keywords then after optimization, you would get irrelevant traffic. Irrelevant traffic will make your site crowded & as a site owner, you will get visitors without any leads. Soon after landing on your site, visitors will discover your site irrelevant & not up to their demand & will find the back button. After a certain time, you will find a high bounce rate & Google will mark your site as a spamming site. And you have to start from scratch again! Will the opposite make you the happiest man on earth right?

So the consequence is vast & that’s why you need to spend some time on keyword research for SEO before starting the optimization process.

Types of Keywords:

There are two types of keywords for keyword research:

• Popular Keywords.
• Long Tail Keywords.

There is always a debate about whether you choose the popular or long tail keywords. Popular keywords are general or high important keyword & consist 30% of total keyword research. But there is some problem behind the popular keywords. The competition is tough & most of the established brands are running for this type of keywords.

On the other hand, the 70% of the total search is Long tail keywords. These types of keywords are more specific & related to the need. Most of the time a person uses a long tail keyword to find the specific product & already they have decided to pick the product. So the chance of conversion is higher for long tail keyword & due to its vast nature, competition is not very tough.

You can narrow down the search by using location, type of products, specific price, weight & even color. We can pick the pet shop again as an example. You can narrow down the search by using the keywords “pet shop at Orlando, ” or if you are an expert on dogs then “dog pet shop at Orlando” will make it more specific & closer to the search. Due to the nature of long tail keyword, the user has also narrowed down the decision & maybe a step behind taking the decision. These types of keyword always have a high conversion rate.

Tools & how it is done:

That’s enough theory crafting; let’s try them hand to hand. There are several tools available in the net & below tools are best from my experience. If you are reading this article, then my keyword research is a success because your search lead you here & I have used these tools.

Free tools:

• Google Adwords Keyword Planner.
• Ubersuggest.
• SEO Book’s Keyword Tools.
• Soovle.
• Keyword Discovery.

Paid Tools.

• Moz’s Keyword Analysis Tool.
• SEMrush.
• FreshKey.
• Wordtracker.
• Keyword Eye.

Among the free keyword research tools, Google Adwords Keyword Planner is the best & famous. It’s a freemium tool & you will get premium services using this tools, You must have an AdWords account to use the Keyword Planner. You will get keyword suggestions, a wide range of synonyms & lots of statistical information which will be helpful for your overall keyword research for SEO.

And from premium or paid tools I will recommend using Moz and SEMrush, both these tools have trial periods & you will not regret your decision after buying. Tons of information including keyword searches, returning information, monthly search volume, top ranking website, etc.

To start keyword research for SEO, you should follow the below steps & consideration to get better success rate.

• Initial list: Before starting the engine of your keyword research engine, you should make a list first. Depending on your product/service you can find several keywords by just brainstorming. There is another secret I want to share with you. Just write your word in the search box & then scroll below to check long tail keywords that get maximum hits.
• Use keyword research tool to refine the list: I have already shown some of the best free & paid keyword research tools. It’s time to use them. Input your keyword, get suggested keywords, learn how much hits they got, etc.
• Careful using long tail keywords: While everyone in the industry will advise you to use long tail keywords, I will tell you to be very careful while using it. It’s not a secret recipe of success & everyone knows this. So the competition is also very tuff here. If you are offering products/service worldwide than long tail keyword will be a great choice, but if you are offering your products at a specific location then the chance of getting hot for long tail keywords is low.
• Keyword research for specific products/service: To sell products different categories, you need to research keywords differently. You can’t just use a single set of keywords for all your categories.
• Keep keywords relevant: You need to keep the relevancy word in your mind while doing the keyword research. Google always gives preference to user experience & if your site just attracts users using irrelevant keywords, then soon bounce rate will increase significantly & penalty will be the next logical consequences.

Measure your success:

After choosing a set of keyword & start optimizing your site & content for that, you need to check the result regularly. Some factors make a strong impact on the result.

Check the organic traffic. That’s the only place that should send traffic after proper optimization

What is the conversion rate? Receiving the traffic is not the ultimate goal you should run.

After the optimization, is the ranking improved for your site?

There should be a content strategy & it should support your keywords, traffic & conversion.

From Making a list of keywords to measure the success of that list, the whole process needs your proper attention to make it smooth & successful. If you want to start it again after a fail attempt, you need to change lots of things. If you follow my tips, the rate of success will increase dramatically because I achieved the success following those.