If you’re just beginning to learn about blogging or digital marketing generally You’re probably thinking, “Why is keyword research important for SEO?”
Learning how to conduct keyword research is a crucial SEO skill that every blogger and marketer should be familiar with. By identifying the most popular keywords as well as phrases which people are searching for through search engines such as Google You can find out what people are looking for and then focus your content on those subjects.
However, understanding the importance of keyword research is only a small part of the challenge.
Also, you must your keyword research properly.
This is the reason why I wrote this blog to assist you in getting more aware how important doing keyword research, and the necessary steps to choose the phrases and words that can bring positive results to your business.
Why Is Keyword Research Important for SEO?
Keyword research is crucial as it provides crucial information that will help you increase the visibility of your company online. Keyword research will tell you the terms that people are looking for, as well as the competition of those terms and guide your content marketing strategy to improve the visibility of organic search as well as rankings and traffic.
This is the fundamental idea behind the concept behind answering the question “Why is keyword research important for SEO?”
Let’s take a take a look at the specifics of what a keyword actually is and why it is crucial and how to select the most appropriate terms and phrases to use on your website.
What Is a Keyword?
Keywords are terms employed within digital marketing, to refer to the word or group of words people use search engines to search for information about. Keywords are crucial in SEO because they help you reduce the scope of your content to meet the requirements of the user.
As Yoast describes it, “If you use the incorrect keywords, you won’t receive the traffic you desire or require because your content doesn’t correspond to what the potential customers are seeking. If you make use of the terms people are looking for, your business will prosper. If you think in this way, your search terms must reflect what your target audience is looking for. If you choose the wrong keywords, you’ll have the wrong target audience, or perhaps none even. So, having the correct keywords is crucial.”
What Is the Most Important Thing to Look For When Doing Keyword Research?
The most important factor to consider when conducting study on keywords is amount of monthly traffic and the level of competition for a targeted keyword. Some keywords are not worthwhile to optimize for, therefore you must look for those keywords that can be easily ranked for your website.
What Are the Types of Keywords?
There are three kinds of terms that can be described by their length:
- Short tail keywords
- Keywords Long Tail
- Short-term fresh keyword
- Long-term evergreen keyword
- Product defining keyword
- Customer defining keyword
- Geo-targeting keyword
- LSI keywords
- Intent targeting keywords
According to SEOPressor, According to the SEOPressor, “Which type of keyword you’d like to choose to promote your business will depend very greatly on the kind of traffic you wish to bring to your website. As keywords get longer, search volume becomes lower. But, other metrics like conversion rates favor the use of long tail keywords.”
Short Tail Keywords
Short tail keywords range from one and two words.
These keywords have the greatest number of searches, but also the highest competition. However their conversion rate is among the lowest since these keywords aren’t as well-targeted.
Keywords with short tails are difficult to be found on the search engines and it could cost a significant amount of time and money to reach the top of the page on Google for these types of keywords. So, it’s best to avoid these kinds of keywords in your research on keywords unless you’re working on search engine optimization for a major and well-known company.
Middle Tail Keywords
Middle tail keywords range from three and 4 words long.
They have moderate search volumes and average levels of competition. Also, conversion rates are low due to the fact that these keywords are specific to the user.
Keywords with a middle tail are great to consider when doing keyword research since there are a lot of unexplored terms that are available. It is common to find three-to-four-word phrases that are simple to be found in the top positions on Google for any company.
Long Tail Keywords
Long tail keywords are those that contain five words or more.
They have the lowest number of searches, but also the lowest competition. However, their conversion rate is among the most high because these keywords are extremely focused on the user.
Keywords with long tails are ideal option when you’re doing search engine optimization for a new site or if you are looking for more specific sales. This is because there are a lot of hidden treasures that you can improve your website for.
In addition, selecting long tail keywords is an excellent method to increase your SEO speed to increase traffic. Larger brands tend to ignore long tail keywords in their search engine optimization since they don’t consider these to be relevant. These companies prefer spending their time and resources on large search volume short tail as well as medium tail, keywords to a certain extent.
I also address this concept in my blog post on how to increase the number of keywords you search for.
Therefore, I recommend to focus on long tail keywords for quick and simple wins for your website. It’s my recommendations on this page that you’re currently reading to answer the question, “why is keyword research important for SEO”. It’s because I’m convinced that it’s effective.
How Do I Choose Keywords?
1. Think About Search Intent
The first step when choosing the right keywords to use is to consider the motive behind your users. In order to accomplish this, you should take into account how buyers interact with you.
As Hubspot will explain it the path of a buyer comprises three steps:
- Awareness Stage: At this point, the purchaser is aware that there is an issue.
- Step 2: A buyer identifies their issue and explores possible solutions to resolve the issue.
- Decisive Stage: When the purchaser selects an option.
A well-designed website will contain information that is relevant to all three phases that buyers go through. So, you’ll be able to draw people’s attention and increase visitors no matter which phase of their buying process they are at.
Spend some time thinking about ideas that match what stage in the buyers’ journey that you are looking to focus your information on. Write down your short to middle and long keywords. Then, you’ll conduct keyword research in order to find out what the most effective alternatives are for long tail keywords.
2. Do Keyword Research
The next step in how to select keywords is to do your keyword research in order to narrow your search phrases.
To do this, you’ll require a tool to research keywords to gather the relevant data for making informed choices.
As I explained in my article in my post on how to boost the amount of traffic you get from SEO in 30 days There are a variety of alternatives to choose from. You could use a free program or a paid service.
I like KWFinder by Mangools (cheap with a trial trial for free) as well as SEMRush (try the trial for free) However, you can also try Ahrefs (paid), Keysearch (paid), Ubersuggest (free) and Google Keyword Planner (free).
After choosing the keyword tool that you’ll use start it up and begin searching for keywords that are short and middle-tail concepts. While you’re searching long tail keyword suggestions are likely to start popping up in addition.
As I said before that shorter tail keyword phrases are difficult to be targeted therefore, you can make use of these keywords as seeds using the tool to generate concepts for long and middle keywords.
After you’ve finished searching for keywords, create your own list of terms and phrases that are attracting an adequate amount of traffic. You should aim for at minimum 10 monthly searches to search for keywords with long tails, and 100 searches per month for mid tail keywords.
3. Analyze The Competition
When conducting keyword research, you need to be aware of the competition in your targeted keywords. If competition is too excessive for a given keyword and you’re losing your time writing and rank your new content for it.
If you’re using an online tool to research keywords and you’re using a paid keyword research tool, then you’ll be able find the competition score for a phrase or term using the appropriate field to find this information.
For instance, KWFinder has a column for KD (Keyword Difficulty) next to each keyword that is ranging from 100-100. This lets you instantly determine which words or phrases are the most easy to focus on.
Every keyword research tool differs in this regard and I’m not able to provide you with a specific recommendation regarding which keywords and phrases to pick according to the tool’s competition score. Instead, you should search for keywords with the lowest scores in that area.
Remember, the more extensive the keyword you select the lower competition it typically.
4. Choose the Best Keywords
Once you’ve conducted your keyword research, and then analyzed the competition, it’s now time to select the most relevant keywords to concentrate on.
The first two steps of the research process for keywords are crucial to help you choose the top keywords to write articles for. Make your own decision here.
5. Map Keyword Clusters to One Page
One thing you’ll notice while doing search engine optimization is that each tool will provide suggestions for keywords that are related to the one you’re researching.
This is crucial because certain phrases and terms are so closely connected that you shouldn’t have to create a new article for every variation.
For instance, when I was conducting the keyword research for this page you’re on right now I found the following three keywords that were similar:
- Why keyword research is crucial
- What is the significance of keyword research for SEO
- Why is keyword research so important to SEO
It’s not wise to write three separate articles that focus on the exact phrase. This would lead to duplicate material and keyword cannibalization which happens the case when more than one page on your website competes with the same keywords.
Instead, I grouped these three keywords and put them together on one page.
Do similar things during this phase of the research procedure; group the keywords that are closely related to be utilized on a single page.
Three to two keywords is a great general guideline for the number of keywords on a page to concentrate on.
For more ideas on creating an entire web cluster around specific topics take a look at this guide to creating pillar clusters of content guide.
6. Determine the Right Format for Your Keywords
Once you’ve got identified your keyword clusters The final step in this process to determine the best keywords to select is to decide on the best layout for the content.
It’s easy to do by searching for a couple of your key words on Google and observing the type of content appearing in the initial page of results. The research you conduct will quickly inform you whether the content can be most effectively communicated using graphs, text, lists tables, images and so on.
Google gives you the solution here. Be sure to use the correct format to your content so that it is easier to rank for your desired keywords.
After that, go through my guide to how to include keywords on websites for SEO ranking to gain the greatest improvement from your web content.
If you’re interested, check out my article regarding how to determine your keyword’s rank on Google to keep track of your improvement.
If you’re still unsure what the significance of content to SEO this post will explain everything you should know about this subject.
Do Keywords Still Matter for SEO?
Keywords are still important for SEO. However, today it is better to concentrate on search engine optimization over the frequency of keywords. For instance, keywords continue to have a role to play in the page’s title as well as the URL Meta description header tags and page’s content description of images and names of files.
Moz describes how keywords are important in SEO in this way, “Using your keywords in these areas is the most fundamental method to make sure your content is targeted to search results. It’s not likely to propel you to the top of the list however it is an essential part of SEO. Failure to follow these simple steps could prevent you from being found using other methods.”
I disagree with some of the statements as I have experienced immediate increase in the rank of keywords when optimizing a site to a certain group of keywords. The majority of the time, this boost occurs most often on pages that have not been optimized for a specific keyword, but I’ve also experienced success with pages already ranking well for a specific phrase.
Performing the proper on-page optimization can have an impact that is dramatic on the pages SEO visibility and ranking and traffic.
If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of on-page optimization make sure to read my article about on-page SEO vs off-page SEO that will explain it all to you.
Summary for Why Keyword Research Is Important for SEO
I hope that you have enjoyed this tutorial on answering the question “Why is keyword research important for SEO?”
As you’ve discovered the principle of conducting keyword research is to figure out what people would like to know about and to make your content a focus on these topics. Based upon the phase of buying journey they are on, some terms are better to be targeted.
You are now aware of the reasons the importance of keyword research in digital marketing , and how it can enhance the SEO of your efforts. Hope that this information in this article has addressed all of your queries about this topic and also provided new suggestions to simplify the process of researching keywords.
