Learning how to do keyword research is an essential SEO task that involves identifying popular words and phrases that are entered into search engines. When you know what people search for, you can focus content around that and ultimately drive more traffic back to your site! So yes, a pretty important one…
This blog will cover all things keywords including what they are, why they’re important and how to research and use them. Trust me, you’ll want to stick around! Here is a gentle warning that you might be sick of the ‘K’ word by the end of this blog, but it’ll be worth it!
Firstly, we’ll start off with what they actually are. Your website’s keywords are the words and phrases that match with the queries people type into search engines and they also describe what a piece of content is all about. They play an important role in search engine optimization (SEO) – if you’re unfamiliar with this, it’s essentially the practice of getting your website to appear high up in search engine results. But feel free to rewind a little and read some of our earlier blog posts here https://frameworkmarketing.co.uk/2021/07/20/what-is-seo/
They’re important because they are the middle man between what people are searching for and the content you are providing to fill that need. Your goal in ranking on search engines is to drive organic traffic to your site from the result pages, and the keywords you choose to target (aka the ones you include) will determine what kind of traffic you get.
Ultimately, by researching the words people type into search engines like Google, and using this research to create targeted content, you can drive the exact traffic you need to your site – traffic that is a lot more likely to convert.
Keyword research isn’t just about checking how many searches a word has, it’s also about exploring the ways that people use keywords to research an idea topic. In that case then, you can see how researching keywords isn’t just a part of SEO but delves into content marketing on the whole. It can help you find ideas for your content, learn about your audience needs and keep up to date with the vocab that search engines closely associate with.
To create content that ranks well organically and drives visitors to your site, you need to understand the needs of those visitors, what language they use and the type of content that they’re looking for. You can do this by talking to your customers and doing your own keyword research with tools like Google’s Keyword Planner, SEMrush or MOZ’s Keyword Explorer.
All keyword research starts with a topic or an idea, also known as a “seed keyword.” This can come from your industry knowledge, such as the products or services your provide. Once you have a list of those, you’ll want to determine how popular each one is and how difficult it would be for them to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs). This is where the tools come in handy and present you with details on how popular the search is and how difficult it is to rank.
There are many types of keywords but three are described by their length: short-tail, mid-tail and long-tail. The length of a keyword can tell you a lot about its search volume, the potential traffic from it and how well it could generate conversions.
Short-tail or Head keywords are popular and broad search terms that have a very high volume of search traffic. Usually one or two words, they are very competitive to rank for, i.e. white t-shirts.
Mid-tail keywords have a smaller volume of traffic but with less competition and higher conversion rates, normally two to three words and slightly more descriptive – i.e. striped, white t-shirts
Long-tail are the longest search terms and are very targeted to a specific topic or audience. They typically have low search traffic and are low-competition keywords, which makes them easier to rank for – i.e. striped white t-shirts for women
After this point, you should have a good understanding of what kind of keywords are working for you and what you’re ranking for. But you may be wondering how to actually use them on your website, in which case we’ll now cover on page SEO?
A general rule is that you can use one page to target multiple keywords if they’re closely related ie digital marketing and social media marketing, but you should never use more than one page to target the same keyword.
To target more than one on the same page or not to, completely depends on how closely they are related and whether it actually makes sense from the perspective of your customers to include those topics on the same page.
For example, we’re a digital marketing company that offers services such as content creation and content planning. While they both cover the same topic of ‘content’, it doesn’t make sense to put them both on the same page as, when spoken in more detail, they cover separate things and different audience needs – meaning they will need their own pages.
You shouldn’t use more than one page to target a keyword because firstly you’re creating more work for yourself and secondly, you’re putting the two pages in competition with each other as well as pages on other website when it comes to ranking well.
Another basic rule also states that you shouldn’t repeat your SEO keywords too many times in a piece of content or force them in in an unnatural way.
This dates back to keywords’ early days, when every man and their dog were practicing ‘Keyword Stuffing.’ It began in the late 1990’s when Google was just a baby and Yahoo search engines were in their element.
Before White Hat SEO came about, optimization rules were minimal. It led to users spamdexing – deliberately manipulating search engine indexes by repeating unrelated phrases and link building. Instead of creating quality content, some digital marketers used Black Hat techniques, which tricked search engines into ranking content highly. Keyword stuffing focused on oversaturating content with a single word or term to the point that reading was a difficulty and the page looked like spam.
So no, unfortunately you’re not going to reach the number one ranking on Google by repeating your favourite keyword over and over.
Google didn’t stay silly for long and soon changed their algorithm in 2002, so that none of the Black Hat techniques (such as duplicate content and spam comments) would work anymore…
Ideally, you would want each page on your website to target a keyword. It normally pans out that your homepage will target a very broad industry term and once your narrow down to category pages, services, blogs etc, they will focus on your niche and target more specific needs. Best of luck on your keyword research journey! Don’t worry, it’s not as scary as it sounds and most importantly remember, the effort put into this will generate new targeted traffic for your site and leads for your business!
