Keyword Research Strategies
Keywords
Keywords are defined as a word or group of words that are used to determine a search engine output. Knowing how keywords work and how the search engine interacts with them is a vital part of a digital marketers job. There are two types of keywords, short-tailed and long-tailed. Short-tailed keywords are one to two words while long-tailed keywords tend to be three to five words, however, they can be longer than five. The reason keywords are as important as they are today is because of the way search engines use them to rank pages. Google’s algorithm uses keywords to rank website pages or business profiles in order to provide the most relevance to the user. This assures that google is providing a user experience that is relevant to what they are searching. For example, if two websites were attempting to rank for the same keyword but one of the websites used the keyword in all the optimal spots on a webpage but the other did not, (assuming all backlinks and reputation is the same) then the website with the content tailored to the specific keyword would show up first.
Keyword Research Tools
In order to be a proficient digital marketer, you need to know the tools that are offered to you that help in keyword research. Having these tools in your back pocket allows for you to not guess at high volume keywords but rather have a statistical measurement on how much volume certain keywords receive. One of the most widely known keyword tool is the “keyword planner” that is in google ads account after you input billing information. This tool allows for you to search for keywords you believe could be relevant to your business and find the traffic volume and related keywords in a matter of seconds. Other similar tools that digital marketers use for keyword research are Ahrefs and SEMrush. These tools are used in a similar fashion, where you input keywords and the volume of that keyword is told to you.
Conducting Keyword Research
When conducting keyword research we need to assess the different kinds of searches and what intent those searches have. If you are a business trying to attract consumers to your page that are in the market to buy, your keywords that you are optimizing for should reflect that. Understanding keyword intent is vital because it allows for your conversion rates to be higher because the people you are targeting are looking for the material that you have on your website. When targeting keywords it is also important to assess whether your business or website has the capabilities to compete for top spots for certain keywords. High traffic keywords tend to have very large businesses with highly reputable websites competing for the top spots, therefore it is important to know your limits. When looking for good keywords to target, you want to find high search volume but low competition. This would allow for you to start ranking quickly because there is little competition for those keywords. Overall, it is immensely vital for a business to perform keyword research before attempting to optimize for certain keywords.