When typing the phrase “Keyword Research” into Google Search, you get 3000-word ultimate guides with ideas about automation for keyword research, how to use SQL formulas in Query, and many tricks on how to get data from different tools. It is a no-brainer that taking the time to do keyword research is a crucial component for successful SEO ranking.
However, using all these hacks and frameworks can make it easy to forget the fundamentals. Keyword research is not about different metrics, it’s about understanding your potential customers’ problems and needs.
In this article, we’ll cover some of the best ways to find the right keywords for your business growth, but not for vanity metrics.
RANKING FOR THE WRONG KEYWORDS
Many SEO specialists are still focusing on low competition and high volume keywords. This is a good approach, but you can easily go in the wrong direction without understanding your buyer persona.
In the example above, we see the SaaS solution for marketing agencies. Their product is amazing, but do they really convert traffic from keywords like “Reddit change username” or “not working facebook?” Organic traffic growth can be impressive, but without a focus on your potential customers, the value of the traffic can be ZERO.
Another example – digital marketing blog.
The keyword “download video from youtube” has low competition and high volume, but it doesn’t fit the business goal to sell courses.
If you chase keywords not related to your potential customers, you will be the proud owner of high organic traffic, but it won’t be a big help for your business.
How to understand what is a good keyword for your business?
Different keyword research tools are a big help in identifying keyword opportunities for conversions. Keyword difficulty, search volume, clicks—data can point you in the right direction, but decisions need to be based on understanding customer pain points by collecting feedback from support and sales teams.
Your support and sales team uses your customers’ language, so they have the most common and important questions from customers.
A good example is modash.io. Their content strategy is based only on customers’ questions.
They cover topics that are important for their audience. I can bet that they aren’t even thinking about keyword research, but their traffic is relevant for their product audience.
Just imagine if their content strategy was based on customer feedback and proper keyword research. They could easily increase their targeted organic traffic.
Another common mistake is to ignore low-traffic keywords—the keyword volume metric is an estimation only. At Omnisend we are always listening to our customers and we’ve identified the topics that are important for them. Even keyword research tools show numbers between 10-20 per month, so we know that customers need this information. We create a relevant article and every month we might not get even more than 200 sessions. But still, it does convert.
What is the best keyword to rank? The answer is simple. Your customer uses these words and the Keyword research tool shows that there is at least some volume for it.
How to do keyword research in 2022 for rankings and conversions?
What is the best Keyword research framework? Sorry, it doesn’t exist.
Use your customers
If you have a bigger pool of customers, they can be the main resource of keyword ideas that are important for you.
- Collect information about important topics from your potential and existing customers. In many cases, marketers and customers have very different views of understanding your product or services. Create a list and compare it to your existing content. Just type site:yourdomain.com and topic. It is an easy way to find what content gaps you have.
- Put these topics in the Serpstat Keyword tool and you will have metrics and additional keywords.
- In most cases, search volume for these keywords will be low but the organic targeted growth will be visible soon and these topics are important for your potential customers.
Close content gaps from competitors
Spying on competitors’ content is always a good idea. But easily it can go in the wrong direction.
Some of your competitors create content without any analysis or tools. From the first impression, you might think that they have an amazing content marketing strategy.
Serpstat lets you analyze specific pages and find content gaps or missing keywords that you can target.
What is next?
The list of missing topics is one piece of the puzzle. You need to map out these keywords with your buyer’s journey.
Without prioritization, you can easily spend time on content that won’t bring value to your business. Jaleh Rezaei, Co-founder and CEO at Mutiny, said: If speed is the yin, the yang is prioritization. You can’t be fast if you don’t know what’s important.
After collecting insights from your customer and doing content gap analysis, you will have plenty of awesome ideas. But if you will start working on new articles immediately, you’ll be writing blind.
Evaluate keywords on the SERP
Only search results can show the real situation if under your identified keywords or topic. Google is an incredible sorting mechanism and provides the best search results for users.
If the content you create doesn’t match the intent of the searcher, it doesn’t matter how strong your Domain Authority and Page Authority are; you’ll never survive in the top results.
By analyzing SERP, you can gather information about:
- Competition – if all websites are well-known in search results and you just started to build your authority, it can be the first signal not to prioritize a specific keyword.
- Keyword intent – informational, commercial/transactional, and navigational. By creating content you need to have insights about what users want to see under this topic.
- Content type – product page, How-To article, listicles, etc. If all search results are blog posts and you want to be different and create a product page, the chance to rank in TOP positions will be very low.
After SERP analysis, you will be well prepared to get new traffic that can convert.
The keyword volume and difficulty metrics show the estimations. Keyword research tools help us to find new ideas, but if we want to be real champions in keyword analysis, manual review is obligatory.
In this article, we focused on a step-by-step guide on how to do keyword research by using specific tools. The goal of the article demonstrates the right mindset for reaching your business goals with help of content marketing.