Consumers today turn to Google when they need to find a product or service, or even answer a simple question. This presents a unique opportunity for marketers to get their products or services in front of new customers. However, in the age of information overload, breaking through the crowded digital landscape requires a thoughtful keyword strategy to reach the right people at the right time. Strong keyword research will help you not only generate ongoing organic website traffic but also ensure your products or services are presented as a top solution. Here at TenStrat, we provide a starter guide for keyword research.
What Are Keywords?
Keywords are typically used for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), a key pillar of many successful marketing strategies. Let’s consider a Google Search. When a consumer enters a query, the search engine is triggered to analyze hundreds of billions of web pages in the background. It uses over 200 factors to rank and serve up pages based on the specific search terms — largely driven by your web pages’ content.
Keywords are terms or phrases used to develop online content. Marketers inform search engines like Google about what information can be found on your website so that they can, in turn, match them with the search query and surface them on search engine results pages (SERPs).
How to Approach Keyword Research
Now that you understand why keyword research is essential for your business, let’s dig into a step-by-step process for getting started.
Get Clear on Your Brand Product Marketecture
Most marketers aren’t in a position to simply overhaul their website content around top product and industry keywords. So, an important starting point is understanding how you’re talking about your brand and products. Make a list of broad topics covered on your website that you want to rank for in search engines. This should include topics surrounding your primary products, brand positioning, and what issues your business addresses for key buyer personas.
Tools like Google Search Console can also help you identify which keywords you already rank for on SERPs. Understand which search queries bring your website forward so you can optimize from there or shift as needed.
Consider How Customers Think about Your Product or Service
From there, you’ll want to refine your topics into specific keywords. The best way to approach this part of your research is to consider how your target audience would think about your products. At the end of the day, you want your keywords to align with the specific search terms that your customers put into the search bar.
Consider a brand that sells customer experience software. Common search terms from their target audience might include:
- How to optimize the customer experience
- Customer experience management tools
- What is customer experience management?
- Customer experience automation
Understanding the prospective customer’s intent should be your top priority in this step. This will help you account for the many nuances of keyword research and ensure you’re optimizing for those that will impact your brand most.
Conduct a Competitor Keyword Audit
When it comes to SEO, you are competing with hundreds of other brands to gain market share. So, understanding what keywords your direct competitors are ranking is invaluable. This can help you identify what you need to optimize for to surpass them and ensure your product is presented alongside (and ideally even higher up on the SERPs) than theirs. Additionally, identifying areas where they aren’t ranking can also present an opportunity for you to own market share on those terms.
Factor Monthly Search Volume (MSV) into Keyword Research
Not all keywords are created equal. Of course, the value of keywords is different for every business, but there are two main ways that we decide which keywords to target. The first is monthly search volume (MSV). MSV is the average number of searches for a keyword. There are many tools to research MSV, such as Google’s Keyword Planner, Semrush, SearchVolume.io, and Moz. The second is competition. Each of these tools give you an idea of how competitive each keyword is. The lowest hanging fruit is always the highest searched keywords with the lowest competition.
A lower monthly search volume means that few people search for the term. You may be able to get your page ranked for that term, but it won’t matter very much if few people are searching for it in the first place. Conversely, a higher monthly search volume means many are searching for it — and many brands are vying to rank on that page. So, the competition is higher.
Consider these nuances as you refine your keyword list. Large companies may already have the online presence to go after higher MSV terms, whereas emerging brands may need to prioritize low-competition keywords.
We prefer to use Google’s Keyword Planner for most of our keyword research. Within their keyword planner, we almost always use this section called “Discover new keywords”.
After you add in a few keywords or keyword topics, you will see something close to what you see below:
Here you will clearly see the Monthly Search Volume as well as Competition. In the example above, there are two terms that have low competition and high MSV. Both are great examples of keywords that would be great to start with.
Optimize for SERP Features
A range of SERP features are designed to provide more relevant and useful information to the user. Brands can increase their visibility by optimizing for SERP features and boosting their SEO strategy. Common SERP features include:
- Featured Snippets: Short answers pulled from websites displayed in the organic results.
- Knowledge Panels: Informative boxes about entities like people or places.
- Video Carousels: Rotating or swipeable video collections relevant to the query.
- Image Packs: Thumbnail grids showing relevant images related to the query.
Google & other search engines are constantly testing and changing these SERP features so be sure to stay up to date with all Google updates. Identify which SERP features make the most for your brand and identify how you can optimize your content to make the most of them.
Level Up Your SEO With Keyword Research
Remember that your keyword strategy will shift as the digital landscape shifts, so it’s crucial to continuously reevaluate your keyword research to stay current. With a strong, agile approach, you’ll be sure to shoot up the SERPs and generate valuable website traffic.
Looking for additional support in performance marketing? Get in touch with TenStrat today to help you make the most of your SEO strategy.
