Are you trying to improve your search ranking? There are many ways you can do it, and focusing on keyword research is one of the best strategies. It is at the same time the most popular topic in the SEO field. That’s because it has such an influence on what you are trying to achieve. Before you start focusing on your keywords, you should take time to think about and define your goals. Even though this might sound like the most logical thing to do, people do not always think ahead and sometimes they don’t set clear goals. The truth is that only after that will you be able to synchronize your goals with your keyword research. Read on and you will find out more about 5 timeless keyword research hacks.
What are the typical mistakes to avoid?
Before we start discussing the best keyword research hacks, we should try to understand why they are so important. The choice of keywords should be your first step in creating SEO-friendly content. Keywords are the bridge between you and your prospective buyers. You are the one to decide what material you will use to build it.
To help you better understand what you can do with the right choice of keywords, let’s just quickly go through some of the mistakes that people make when choosing the wrong ones:
- If you target the wrong keywords, you are going to attract the wrong people. We could compare this with fishing for a certain type of fish. Wrong keywords would be the wrong bait that is not going to catch us the fish we wanted.
- If you choose the key phrase that is too long – not many people will be interested in reading. Your bait is too big, so most of them are not even trying to bite. That means that you will miss out on traffic.
- If you opt for the most popular keywords – you will have to compete for the attention with many more companies doing the same thing. You are fishing with the same bait as everybody else, and there are thousands of you trying to catch the same fish. Similarly, you will not rank your moving company in Google search only by advertising the best prices for your services. There are some keyword research hacks that you have to know about.
1. Choose the right TYPE of keyword
You might be familiar with the sales funnel often used to describe the customer’s journey towards the purchase. The top of the funnel is reserved for awareness, the middle part for consideration while the bottom means conversion. According to this funnel, your audience consists of those who are aware of your product, those who are thinking of buying it, and those who are ready to do so. This is important to know since the three main types of keywords belong to the three mentioned stages in the funnel. You should know how to reach customers at every stage of their journey.
The keywords your customer is searching can usually indicate the stage of the funnel he or she is at.
Here are the words you can use to target the customers at each level:
- Best way to, how-to, a guide to, 5 steps to, etc. – these are the phrases that are suitable for the customers from the top of the funnel, those who are searching for information;
- Ways to avoid, ways to do properly, how to stop, how you can fix, etc. – the phrases for the middle of the funnel, for people searching for solutions;
- Affordable, order, get today, compare prices, where to buy, etc. – these are the phrases that people who are ready to buy will type in their search bar; they are the ones from the bottom of your funnel.
2. Select your keywords to fit your GOALS
Ask yourself: What level of the funnel should I increase? After that, you will know which keywords and phrases you should focus on. This decision is predetermined by your business type as well. For example, if you are an exclusive car dealer, you shouldn’t expect that people will type the right keywords in their search bar, find you and just decide to buy a car from you. It doesn’t work like that. You should be focusing on building a long-term relationship with your audience and address the top and the middle of the funnel. On the other hand, if you are an e-commerce website, you should select your keywords to speak to the users from the bottom of the funnel.
3. See what keyword research hacks your COMPETITION is using
Whatever you do, you should always keep an eye on the competition. If there is a company in your field of business that is much more successful than yours, then you should choose it to be your goal. Tell yourself: I want to become as successful as they are in an x number of months or years. Then you can make a goal pattern for the period to come. For example: In two months I expect my search traffic to be 20,000, in six months 50,000 and so on.
There are tools that you can use to find any website’s traffic. Use them to analyze your competitor’s traffic patterns. You can also learn from their experience by finding a link between the site changes and the traffic increase. Focus on the keywords they used when their ranking was at its highest.
4. One of the keyword research hacks is consulting GOOGLE suggestions
These suggestions are directing the users to the content they may be looking for. It can be helpful to you since it indicates what already exists in your field and what people are actually searching for. Google suggestions can be a good source of ideas for some new content. Remember, you should keep your readers interested by improving the content readability and giving them exactly what they would like to read about.
5. QUERY FORUMS can be a good source of keywords
These forums can serve as keyword message boards. Websites like Answers.com or Yahoo Answers are the best places to find your audience and find out what they are looking for. Of course, the forums from your niche might be even more indicative of what your prospective clients are searching for. Visiting those forums is one of the best keyword research hacks.
Do let us know if you have a good tip or if you have any questions! Happy optimizing 🙂
