Want to know how to choose keywords for SEO?
Keyword research is important to search engine optimization because it is the way to understand what potential visitors want.
Before you start creating the type of content your buyers need, you need to know what your customers care about and where you stand against your competitors.
Failure to carry out keyword research means your content strategy or blogging is based on assumptions. You’ll waste time. You will burn your marketing budget.
Ultimately, your website will not rank or will rank for keywords that won’t bring sales.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to create an effective keyword strategy and boost your marketing results.
Let’s begin.
Keyword research is an aspect of Search Engine Optimization that focuses on knowing what terms your prospective buyers are using in their search queries. It precedes the development of an SEO content strategy from the data collected from search engines.
These are the key steps in keyword research:
In SEO (and marketing generally), you need to know your target audience.
They are the price, after all, and one of the ways to understand them is to know:
This information will let you make better decisions and enhance your SEO plan.
I talked about blogging tools and free keyword research tools in a previous blog post.
For this article, these are the ones I will be referring to:
We have other tools like Google search analytics, which is more about measuring your traffic than it is for keyword research.
Let’s understand some of the terms so that you have a smooth reading experience.
Search intent is the reason behind a search query. It answers the question, “Why is this person searching for this term.” For example, someone who searches for “best restaurant in Lagos” is likely researching for names and reviews of restaurants.
Short-tail keywords contain about one to three words. Examples include “blogging,” “crypto key phrase,” or “best cakes.” It will be hard for a website that doesn’t have the authority to rank for these keywords. Moreover, their search intents can be difficult to determine. Ranking on the first page is hard, so you need to choose this type of keyword more often.
Long-tail keywords often contain more than three words. Examples are “Importance and benefits of good skincare” or “Where can I buy Iphones in Lagos?” The most important thing to know about Long-tail keywords is that they are specific and have a clearer search intent.
It is the number of times people search for a term per month.
It is the calculated difficulty for a website to rank for a particular keyword. It is measured between 1 and 100: the higher the KD, the more difficult it is to rank in search results.
A topic cluster means creating a page for a lot of keywords that are related.
The main page of a series of topics. It’s like a page you see when you open a game, and this page lists all the things you need about the game. If you want to do anything significant or look for help, you come back to this page. Your pillar page is that page displaying all the subtopics you cover at a glance.
You might want to read SEO Demystified in 5 minutes to understand the concept of Search Engine Optimization. I covered what you need to know about Google’s Algorithm and how Google identifies, collects, and organizes data about websites.
Now, let’s get to today’s business.
The best keywords for SEO are those that deliver the result you want at the end of the day.
First, you really need to be clear about what you want to achieve. Attracting the right audience is more important than the number of visitors. One hundred people interested in your product or service is a greater goal than inviting 10,000 people who won’t buy your product or services.
So, you need to focus on the relevance of the keywords to the product you are selling.
The keyword “how to solve labor shortage problem” is more relevant to a brand that offers recruitment services. This same firm won’t help their business if they focus on terms such as “how to bake a cake.”
In that regard, I have divided this process into three phases:
In this section, we will look at your product or service and try to understand it.
People are searching for questions and queries about what you are selling. Your job here is to find these people and understand the things they want to know. This is how to choose keywords for SEO.
The first thing you need to know about choosing the best keyword is knowing where you stand.
Do you own a new website? You can simply skip to the next step in this article.
If you have a website that has been here for some time, you need to know where you stand.
You probably have been creating content for some time, and all you need is an improvement.
Where are you, where do you want to go, and what do you need to do?
In SEO, this is called a site audit, and it involves the following substeps:
As a service provider, what’s your job?
I am an SEO content writer.
What about you? Ask yourself, what do I do every day? What problems do I solve for people? Then, pick a pen and paper and start writing.
Again, as an SEO content writer, I help businesses create written content that brings more traffic to their websites. But that’s too broad. So let’s be more specific here.
As an SEO content writer, I help with
Let’s say you sell toys. Then, when you pick your pen and paper, you write things you do for people.
If you are unsure of how to perform this exercise, think about a typical day. What activities are involved in your office or the workplace? Write those down.
If you have products, follow the same steps. What does your product do for people? Then, start writing (short-tail keywords) around that.
This step might sound confusing because one of the aims of reading how to choose keywords for SEO is to “know your audience.”
It is the reason why you are here. Without keyword research, the “know your audience” exercise is incomplete. So it can be confusing a bit, but let me explain.
Use another approach to understand your audience by answering these questions:
Who are your typical buyers? What do they look like? What kind of job do they do?
Let’s use my services again. As an SEO content writer, my ideal audience is people who own an online business. These include business managers, startup founders, marketing executives, website owners, and bloggers.
If you manage a Fintech company, you help people manage their finances better. Your audience is salary earners, investors, and business owners. I apologize for my choice of words here — your company probably helps people who suck at managing their income.
If you are a veterinary doctor, your audience is pet owners.
Where do they hang out?
Social media.
Next question:
What do they complain about?
What problems are they facing?
You can find answers using all of the methods below. Write your answers down.
These are likely keywords to choose for SEO, but we have to know where you stand.
This step is the most straightforward way to find keywords without stress. If you’re starting out your SEO plan for the first time and have the tool, you can skip all other steps and focus on this one.
Competitor analysis:
I follow the steps above, inputting Neilpatel.com into Ubbersuggests.
The statistics about his website:
The articles or pages that bring the most traffic:
The keywords the website rank for:
I’ve explained parts of this process in the section above. But here’s the recap. The point of this section is to pick “long-tail keywords” that your website can likely rank. The “short tail keywords” are more competitive and are favorable to websites with high authority and backlinks.
You can know the difficulty of each keyword by using tools for keyword research.
Sign up for Google Keyword Planner.
You can take your time to explore how it works, but let’s go straight to how to use it for keyword research.
Next, it is time to work with the data you have developed.
According to Hubspot, there are three stages of a buyer’s journey. They are:
Awareness stage: at this stage, the buyers don’t know much about their problem. So if you sell a product that solves skin issues, in your awareness stage of marketing, you create content about what skin issues are and the signs that you have skin issues. Educate the buyers on what they need to know.
Consideration stage: the buyers have understood the different problems. They have narrowed their queries down this time. In our example of a product that solves skin issues, here the buyers will search for terms like “What are the best ways to treat acne?” You can tell they want to make a choice.
Decision stage: this is the buying stage. The buyer chooses a product for their use. In our example, this is the stage where the person goes online and searches for the “James West Acne treatment” or “best acne treatment cream.”
The point of understanding how to choose keywords for SEO is that you focus on your buyers at all times.
So, let’s do it.
Now that you understand the stages follow the steps:
Collect keywords that are related and organize them in a content outline. Instead of writing a series of blog posts about each of these keywords, you will write just one.
Still confused about the topic cluster?
Think of many keywords that are closely related and create a content outline that uses all of these keywords. Write one article to cover all of these, but ensure you cover it well enough so that your page can rank for each of these keywords.
Still not sure how to do it? Contact me and let me help. You can use the contact form above on the social media handles at the bottom of this page.
Now, you know how to choose keywords for SEO, and you have grouped them into categories. The next step is to start creating content around those keywords.
Or course, this isn’t the end. When you start creating content, you will have to monitor your growth. Don’t hesitate to make changes based on things you notice.
Use tools to check your website. You will find suggestions, tips, and data that will help you achieve your goal.
Before you write a single piece of content, take your time to read 17 best practices for SEO content writing. For instance, you create blog posts or website content following the buyer’s journey. Start with “Awareness” and move down. The tips would be helpful, too, when it’s time to choose keywords for SEO.
Do you want to write great content that covers readers to buyers? Then, you should read one blog post per day from 10 Phenomenal blog posts that will teach you how to become a better writer.
If you need help with any of the things in this post, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I can help you develop SEO strategies, create content, or manage your website. Send a message here.
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