In this episode we cover the tedious wonderful world of Keyword Research. There’s so many tools and so many methods, this has become an area that many business owners can get analysis paralysis. Today we want to demystify it for you with 3 FREE Keyword Research Strategies To Pick Winners.
SEO Series Recap
We started off with SEO’s foundational thing which is site structure. So many business owners and so many bloggers miss this step. Of knowing the why behind their Web site and what is it supposed to do. Then we hit the 9 Fundamentals of SEO Success with Part 1 and Part 2. Finally, we wrapped up last week with probably the most important lesson, the 9 Most Effective Link Building Strategies.
Why Keyword Research
You might’ve wondered why didn’t start with that. The reason is I really feel like a lot of people get analysis paralysis and I didn’t want that to happen. In addition, you might be asking, why do it at all, afterall, didn’t I say just stick to your passions? I do want you to start with your passion and I do think that you’ll get traffic from that. You’ll naturally answer questions and that your content will sort of naturally be appealing to a certain audience that’s going to resonate with what you’re saying. At the same time if you’re going to want to generate business online and that you’ve got to be somewhere a little bit more targeted. You definitely need to know where you’re going.
Where Do You Start With Keyword Research
Go back with “Why” and start you know what’s the goal of the website. Ask, is it to generate sales? Is it to generate traffic? Think about the goal of each piece of content and then also think about who the reader is. What is the target audience?
[box type=”info”] Key Take-Away: When targeting keywords, be aware of your audience. Don’t overuse industry vocabulary.[/box]Where Do You Rank Now?
The first thing that you want to do I think is that you start with what you’re already ranking for. One of the best tools is called Google search Console also known as a Google Webmaster Tools. You can look at your content and see what its ranking for. In fact this could be some of the best low hanging fruit that you’re going to find.
Action Items
- Make a note of where you rank, pay attention to the CTR and see if you can’t increase that.
- Click “download” at the bottom to get a spreadsheet of keywords you already rank for!
Competitive Keyword Research
The strategy is this. If there are tools that tell us what WE rank for, those same tools could be used to see what OTHERs rank for. There’s a lot of free tools out there. The one we recommend is Semrush. Just try it. Grab your competitor’s web address and put it in the search bar above. Another great tool is called SpyFu.
Manual Keyword Research
- Come up with words or topics that you think you want to rank for. Ideally put these in a spreadsheet.
- From there copy and paste them into the Google Adwords Keyword Planner Tool. It’ll give you search volumes and additional words.
- NOTE: Google is showing you average volume for what it thinks are synonyms.
- Additional Tools – Soovler and Ubersuggest.io
You got All These Words, Now What?
Read the bit below, but basically you want a mixture of “body” and Long tail keyword phrases to go after. I usually don’t go for anything with less than 40 searches and has more than 1 Million results.
Keywords – Head, Body and Tail
Head Words – Head key words are those one are two word phrases and they’re sort of massive search volume and so ahead key word might be: “insurance,” “cars,” “real estate.” Massive search volume, super low conversions.
Body – Key words are those key words that are kind of in the middle. They have a little bit more than 2000 searches a month and they are sometimes also competitive. Examples: “Toyota Camry 2016” “Long Term Disability Insurance” “Atlanta Real Estate” Searches in the 2,000+ a month range, usually 3 or 4 word phrases.
Long Tail – Keywords with lower than 2,000 volume. Examples: “Affordable Life Insurance For Senior Citizens” or “5 bedroom homes for sale in Alpharetta GA.” Lower search volume overall, under 2,000.
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