Keyword Research for Beginners

A Step-By-Step Guide to Keyword Research for Beginners

For a lot of people search terms have become a thorn in the side, confusing and confounding literally thousands of internet business people. Ultimately, internet marketers fail because they are unable to conquer the concepts of keyword search and how Google keywords can bring traffic to their site. To develop your platform online you should understand how search terms and visitors using keyword search will find your site. 

When a person does a keyword search, they are looking for something specific. Most are not looking for general answers to a question, they want concise and specific answers. Therefore, your first step is to ensure that you are answering the question of your visitor. Now comes the tricky part, with any question, there may be a multitude of answers. 

Keywords should be:

  • relevant (correspond to the website topic and information on a specific page);
  • popular (people should often use the words that you select for website promotion when searching for information);
  • competitive.

Stages of keywords selection

  1. Manual screening.

The first step to proper search terms usage is to understand what it is you are promoting. Visitors to your website do not have time for confusing, misdirected, or ‘jump through hoops’ websites to try and figure out what you are doing. It is vital that you apply the right strategy in your search terms that brings the targeted traffic to your site. 

It is necessary to highlight in detail the specifics of the company’s activities in order to choose words that characterize this topic. For example, let’s say that a person was looking to buy a pole barn to put on their property. How many different ways can you answer this problem? You can offer plans for building a pole barn, articles about how to prepare the ground, methods to make it secure from rains and high winds, and even reviews on how manufactured barns compare with competitors. 

  1. Analysis using search engines

At this stage, a preliminary set of queries is checked using search engine statistics services. For each word the services provide data on the number of impressions per month and offer an extensive list of other phrases on the topic. As a result of this analysis, the number of key phrases can increase to several hundred. It is necessary to remove from the list unpopular words and not mentioned on your website.

  1. Competitor analysis 

Competitors’ platforms with open statistics are analyzed for conversions by search queries. The information found will help you pick up missing key phrases and discard unnecessary ones.

There are many ways to identify keywords for your chosen niche used by competitors. The most efficient way would be to combine some of them. The choice is still yours, but here are the most effective among available methods.

If your competitors are already identified and you just need to find out what words they use, it is useful to work with special services for data analysis. Such services allow you to determine a competitor’s keywords by URL, learn the cost per click in contextual advertising for each word, frequency and exact position in search results, number of requests per month, and so on.

On the other hand, if competitors are unknown, you should start by researching them. It can be done manually. In this method, first, a specific is entered into the search networks. Next, you need to analyze the platforms that are in the first positions by this request. For example, if you would promote an assignment service, you should search for “research paper”, “lab report” or “essay”.

You can take a few of the highest-frequency keywords for your niche and use them to identify a direct competitor. The main thing is to figure out with whom the most coincidences are in order to focus on this company when choosing your own promotional strategy.

  1. The final choice

Eliminate implicit duplicates and non-target keys. First of all, filter out non-targeted keywords which you do not plan to promote. Also, get rid of phrases that consist the same set of words, but in a different order.

Remove all keywords that do not meet the requirements, are not popular and competitive. Usually 15-20 requests are left for the search engine optimization. For large platforms, this number can rise up to 50 keywords and more. 

How to use keywords properly

You can employ various keywords that suits your platform, however, that is not the end! Once you have the answers, you need to apply the keywords in a manner that relates them to the product you are selling. The search terms people use are not always the search terms that get them to your website. Therefore using a strategic linking strategy will result in two potential windfalls for your online business. 

Implementing search terms from your keyword search on pole barns, you can then put content applicable to all aspects of the search terms you found. Then employ a proper link strategy so Google and other search engines understand that you are using related search terms. For quality key-words implementation, you can hire SMM-manager or SEO professional, who know how to create right content. If your company is small and cannot afford extra team-member, you can look for help from an assignment service or free-lance author for articles writing time-to-time. Thereby, search engines will index your pages for more related keywords. 

The method to proper search terms usage is what will get targeted traffic to your site. In the example above, it may take years for you to rank for pole barns, however ranking for related search terms (laying the foundation, different construction plans, comparative reviews, etc.) adds more authority to your primary search terms. Then introducing a semantic linking strategy to build links and gain indexing and ranking in Google, ultimately leads to more traffic.

Author bio: Angela D Johnson

Angela D Johnson is a professional author in EssayMap that help with research papers, analytical essay, and other academic assignments. She travels regularly in search of the places, people, and spirits of the greatest countries of the world. She is also a skilled content writer who writes articles on topics like HR, business, education, self-growth, and many others.