10 Tips For Choosing Key Phrases For Website Optimization
Key phrase research is the process of selecting words and phrases for which search results are ranked. It helps you develop the right content strategy to drive traffic and interest in your digital products. We’ve compiled a list of 10 keyword research tips to help you improve your site’s rankings by driving organic traffic (people coming to your site from both desktop and mobile).
1. STUDY YOUR AUDIENCE
Keyword research should be done as part of your overall marketing strategy, targeting audiences and predicting customer behaviors. Knowing your audience is the backbone of any marketing strategy. To figure out which keywords will drive traffic, you need to predict which keywords your customers are looking for for your product/offer. To predict user behavior, you must clearly understand who your target audience is based on the following: demographic data, what they care about, how they might be interested in your business. Once you have identified your target audience, you can find a ton of information on the Internet that you need to find key phrases/words.
2. SEARCH FOR TOPICS
Once you’ve figured out who your target audience is, you should start looking for topics that your potential customers are interested in. Ask yourself: What topics related to your business are people looking for? Google Suggests search autocomplete technology is the best tool for finding key phrases. The search engine predicts user queries based on audience behavioral patterns, helping you identify the most popular ones. Similarly, social networks, YouTube, and Wikipedia work, which also show search trends by trying to automatically complement search queries. Also, don’t forget about site search tools, as you might be missing out on a ton of useful information stored in your site’s analytics data. This data will visually demonstrate what users are looking for on your site.
3. LEARN ABOUT THE LATEST TRENDS
Search volumes based on trends are constantly changing. You can follow new trends using Twitter, YouTube, and news aggregators. Promote your business based not only on trends in your field, but also on trends in technology, pop culture, world, and local events. This will help you drive huge traffic to outperform your competitors.
4. SET A SPECIALIZATION
You are unlikely to be able to achieve meaningful results for keywords with broad reach. The competition, for example, in real estate or tourism is too great. However, by using specific key phrases and identifiers, you can improve the effectiveness of your marketing campaign. Here are three tips to help you flesh out your promotion strategy.
- Target local markets. Combine keywords with geographic identifiers.
- Highlight the key features of your product. Combine key phrases with the unique properties of your product or service that make it stand out from others.
- Emphasize seasonality. Search queries change throughout the calendar year. You can probably offer your audience something about the holidays.
To narrow down your searches, pay special attention to long-tail key phrases. For example, instead of specifying the word “travel agent”, the user can enter the long search term “travel agents for European cruises.” Statistics show that about 70% of Google searches are long-tail phrases. The latter opens up great opportunities for optimizing queries for your target audience.
5. USE DIFFERENT VARIANTS OF PHRASES
Any request can have several wordings. Explore synonyms and possible semantic variations of phrases that characterize your product. Google uses RankBrain technology to recognize synonyms, which greatly enhances search results. Moreover, the search engine imposes sanctions against sites containing duplicate key phrases. By using synonyms and alternative search phrases, you can not only avoid problems with Google but also significantly expand your audience reach.
6. STUDY YOUR COMPETITORS
Competitor analysis is an important part of keyword research. Find out how your competitors ranked in search results. By examining their content, you can find weak points in your own. Also, you can borrow some ideas from your competitors (but don’t copy their content). Mimic their success with keyword complexity in mind, which measures your chances of ranking high in a highly competitive environment. Plus, Google almost always associates branded keywords with who they belong to. You are unlikely to be able to get on the same list as your competitors’ brands in an honest way.
Also Read: Why Digital Marketing Is The Best Career Move in 2021?
7. USE SPECIAL TOOLS
You don’t have to do all the work manually. Fortunately, the internet is overflowing with various keyword research services, with Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, SEMRush, seed keywords, Keywords Everywhere, and Ahrefs arguably the best out there. Among them, there are both paid and free tools. Either way, they can save you tons of time and effort.
8. BUILD YOUR CONTENT STRATEGY BASED ON KEY PHRASES
Your content strategy should be based on the results of your keyword research. The content of the pages and the metadata of your site should contain these key phrases. Avoid unnecessary keywords embedded in your content. They should be spaced evenly, combined with synonyms and alternatives.
9. EXPLORE ANALYTICS DATA
Once you’ve identified key phrases and embedded them in your content, take the time to research your findings. Using Google Analytics, you can easily find the key phrases that bring customers to your site. Review analytic data at least once a week to make appropriate adjustments in a timely manner.
10. KEEP UP WITH THE TIMES
Key phrase research is an ongoing process since the world does not stand still: trends, seasons, popular terms, and phrases change. To make keyword research a truly ongoing process, you can use SEO and marketing agencies. If you want to stay ahead of the competition, you should conduct new research at least quarterly (ideally monthly). Partnering with a reputable SEO agency is the best way to secure your competitive edge.
CONCLUSION
Keyword research is an integral part of your digital marketing strategy. It should take into account the audience, trends, characteristics of market competition, seasonality, and other aspects. Such research is carried out carefully and methodically. Fortunately, there are dedicated online tools as well as entire SEO agencies to help you with this.
By doing keyword research, you’ll create great ideas for your business, services, and overall marketing strategy. By researching keywords, you can better understand the needs of your target audience. In this sense, your content strategy will be more than just playing with the search engines. Keyword research is directly related to your audience. By basing your research on the knowledge of your customers, you will get results that will help you improve the quality of the products and services you offer, thereby increasing your brand loyalty.
