Every effective SEO strategy starts with keywords. Why? Because SEO keywords form the bridge between your audience's needs and the content you produce.
With an effective keyword strategy, you'll be able to publish content that is specifically in line with the needs of your target audience - resulting in quality traffic, sustained engagement, and increased sales. So, what do you need? You're in need of some tips for SEO keyword-finding!
The first thing to do is identify your target keywords for SEO. Don't worry - it's not rocket science. Are you wondering how to find SEO keywords? With this guide, you'll be finding keywords for SEO in no time! Let's dive in...
Step 1: Start Simple
You can't search for SEO keywords that reflect your business without a firm understanding of the business itself. Ask yourself the following questions, and write down the answers:
- What is your main business goal?
- What might people type into Google if they wanted to find your business?
- What makes your business stand out from its competitors?
- What are your values?
- Who is your target audience?
By answering these questions, you'll be able to gauge your market and where you stand within it. This is what will allow you to start finding keywords for SEO that will boost your website's search rankings and traffic.
Step 2: Fill Your Bucket
Next, jot down general terms and phrases related to your business to create topic buckets. Note that these are not necessarily keywords to target; in Step 3, we will refine this list further into realistic and targetable SEO keywords!
For example, topic buckets for Designer Websites might look like this:
- Website design
- Web development
- Ecommerce
- SEO
- Digital marketing
Step 3: Elaborate
Let's say your business is a makeup brand that sells a range of products from foundation to eyeshadow. It would be amazing to start ranking for 'foundation' or 'black mascara' straight away, but unfortunately, there is a lot of competition from huge brands such as Boots and Superdrug for these high-volume keywords. So where do you go from there?
By identifying your niche, you can reduce the competition for your target keywords - this way, you can really hone your content down to the exact needs of your target consumers, which gives you a much better chance of ranking!
For example, your values may be that you are an eco-friendly business, and you specialise in cosmetics for oily skin. This leaves you with a realistic and achievable keyword goal: to appear in the search engine results for terms like eco friendly makeup for oily skin.
This is called a long-tail keyword. Long-tail keywords are very specific, and while they do not get as many searches as short-tail keywords (such as 'foundation' or 'makeup') they do tend to convert better. This is because your content is likely to be a much more precise match for the user's needs!
To find keywords for SEO, go through your topic buckets from Step 2 and zoom into each one:
- Write down related search terms and phrases
- Generate long-tail keywords (as in the example above)
- Type the name of each topic bucket into Google and look at the Autocomplete predictions, the 'People also ask' suggestions, etc.
- Look at websites such as Answer the Public and Google Trends to see what your target audience / niche is searching for
Step 4: Time to Analyse
Now it's time to see how many searches your keywords get! This will help to determine the competition of the keywords, and it will also give you insight into what kind of content ranks for the specific keyword.
The best tool for looking at search volume is Google's Keyword Planner - simply paste your keywords into the box and it will generate the average monthly search volume of each keyword.
High-volume keywords may look attractive, but it's not always advisable or realistic to target them. These keywords can be extremely broad, so even if you do somehow land on the first page of Google results for 'foundation', the traffic you receive will have quite a low conversion rate (since only a small percentage of users will actually be looking for your products). Remember: when it comes to website traffic, quality is more important then quantity.
If you're a well-established brand that ranks consistently well in a particular niche, then you can go for the high-volume keywords. On the other hand, if you're a small business, start with the less competitive, lower-volume keywords to build up a reputation within your sector.
Step 5: Stalk Your Competitors (We Won't Tell!)
Once you've narrowed down your keyword list, type each term into Google and analyse the content that appears on page 1. What does it look like? What kind of content is it? What kind of questions does the website answer? Are there any informational gaps that your website could fill?
Use competitor analysis to gain inspiration and ideas for content related to your target keywords - incorporate this into your own SEO strategy and you'll soon see your content fly up the rankings.
Step 6: Think About Search Intent
Every keyword is underpinned by search intent - what the searcher is actually looking for. When someone types 'cheap holidays' into Google, what they mean is something like 'I want to book a holiday and I don't want to spend too much money'.
You want your content to answer, fulfil, or provide a solution for what your target user is searching for. There are generally four types of search intent:
- Informational intent - I'm looking for information on a specific topic.
- Navigational intent - I want to get to a specific website.
- Commercial intent - I'm doing research with a view to buying something in the future.
- Transactional intent - I want to buy something right now.
Now you can use what you found out in Step 3 - what kind of content did you see most for a particular query? Depending on the keyword, you may have found more product pages, or informational blog posts, or possibly videos. This hints towards what Google considers the most useful answers for a particular query. Follow this guideline to create insightful content that's tailored to your specific keyword, and to the user's search intent.
Step 7: Create and Evaluate!
Now that you've got everything you need, it's time to create your content! You may find that you need different types of content to rank for all of your chosen target keywords, including:
- Specific keyword-oriented landing pages
- Informational blog posts
- Cornerstone content pages
- Categories and product pages (if you have an ecommerce site)
Once you've done this, track and evaluate your website traffic and your keyword rankings. Where is your keyword strategy working for certain pages, and where is it not doing so well? Remember to continuously research, optimise and update your keyword strategy to keep up with the changing trends of your industry and niche.
Did you know that we offer SEO and PPC services?
We hope this blog will help you begin finding keywords for SEO in no time! Thousands of people are searching for a business like yours - and our SEO experts can make sure they find you! We provide a range of SEO and PPC services to support your business's marketing strategy:
Request a quote for your website or get in touch today to see what we can do for you.
