Figuring out the best search terms for your SEO efforts is extremely important for you to find so you are able to remain successful on search engines. Without the right search terms, the rest of your SEO efforts have more of a likelihood to fail. Researching the best keywords to use will remove the risk of targeting search terms that do not have search volume or are competitive to the point of being almost impossible to get your search terms onto the first page of Google.
Keyword research is not just about getting visitors to your site, but about getting the right ones there. Once you have done your research, you will be able to predict market shifts and conditions, including services that possible customers are looking for and content that web searchers are seeking at the moment.
By doing this, you are creating a large opportunity to understand your audience with a very low investment in terms of cost. This is one of the reasons that SEO offers a high return on investment for advertisers willing to do the work needed in order to succeed in this specific, very popular marketing channel. Let’s walk through the 5 steps of keyword research, according to Search Engine Journal:
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Create an initial list of search terms that you think your target audience would use to find your website. A helpful way to determine this is by using your competitor’s website: right-click on their site and view the source code to look for the Meta keywords listed. These are the keywords they have found to be their most important searches in landing on their site and could be good for your starting point, along with any terms you came up with on your own.
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Next, take your list of search terms and put them into the Google Keyword tool: https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool. After you’ve entered the search terms, click on the search button to show a list of related terms and their monthly traffic volumes per term.
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Create a document via excel with the search terms found in the Google Keyword Tool. Enter them based on their traffic competition and highest monthly traffic volumes. Choose about five to ten keywords toward the top of the list that you feel are most appropriate for your website.
- Next, check out the overall competitiveness of the search terms on your list. Google provides a competition score in the keyword tool, but this only shows the paid search competition and isn’t relevant for SEO. Because of this, you may want to use a tool such as: https://www.webseoanalytics.com/free/seo-tools/keyword-difficulty.php. Target search terms that are only considered low to medium in competition.
- After this, enter your search terms into a rank tracking software so you can keep track of your key search terms while also comprehending the activity impacting overall rankings for the search terms you target. Do so by using this tool: https://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/.
Finding the correct keywords for targeting your SEO efforts is the first step in getting your page at the top of Google rankings. If you get it right, you will be well on your way to becoming successful on search engines!