Keywords are business assets. The better you choose your keywords the more revenue your website can make. It becomes extremely hard to find your spot on Google search results In today’s competitive markets. You should stand out from the crowd and differentiate yourself for better visibility.
If you only going to choose keywords based only on search volume then that’s going to harm your business in the long run and I’m going to explain why in this article.
What Is keyword research?
Keyword research is the process of collecting phrases and queries to target for better visibility. This is one of the essential activities in search engine optimization (SEO) and it’s risky to automate it. For small to medium size businesses, it’s better to target low-competition and long-tail keywords to avoid wasting resources on high-competition and weak-intent keywords.
For example, you can’t rank for terms like “SBA Loans” but you can rank for phrases like “SBA Loans for doctors”. In the second query, the searcher already knows what he wants and looking for a specific result.
Since Google is looking for information from different angles the primary goal of keyword research is to provide better search results and user experience than the competitors. Usually, SEO specialists go beyond and group keywords based on search intent, buying stage, and topics.
How to choose the best keywords in 5 easy steps
In the following steps, I’m going to walk you through the criteria you should consider the next time you do keyword research.
1. Connect your keywords
Your keywords should have a consistent theme to build solid topical coverage. Topical coverage is the activity of covering each aspect of a specific topic to position a certain website as an expert in this area.
Google and other search engines are looking for reliable experts, especially after the latest update from E-A-T to E-E-A-T, which stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
The best way to make your keywords have a common theme is to build a mind map or topic clusters for each group of keywords you have. Ideally, you should be able to contextually connect these keywords with internal links; otherwise, these keywords are not relevant.
If your website has better and more coverage than its competitors, that means Google will trust your website and give it more priority in terms of crawling, indexing, and ranking your pages.
You’ll experience an increase in featured snippet placements as soon as you become more relevant and trustworthy.
2. Align business goals with the target keywords
Because SEO is a marketing channel, you must demonstrate its ROI to stakeholders on a regular basis in order to keep them investing in this area.
How do you make more revenue? Bottom-of-the-funnel keywords, of course. It’s the fastest way to get more clients for most businesses today because the searchers already intend to purchase.
Keep in mind that if you’re only going to cover transactional keywords, that’s going to be a red flag for Google, as you have no purpose other than making money, and why should So you’ll be competing with hundreds of other businesses; why should Google rank your website? Diversify your keyword intents and purchasing stages, and place internal links from informational pages to transactional pages to improve topical connections. and add relevant CTAs for each article.
Check your competitors with the same level of traffic to see what has worked for them and could work for your business. Double down on what’s working and avoid spamming as much as possible. Using the keyword CPC as a metric is misleading because revenue changes based on the business type.
For example, if a FinTech website ranks for a keyword that generates $2500 each month and the affiliate of this website manages to rank over it to make $100 for each referral, is it accurate to use the CPC of this keyword? Absolutely no!
The gap would be wider if we mentioned publishers or e-commerce keywords. If only 2-3 pages drive all conversions from the SEO channel, that means you’re messaging a different audience or your content is just bad.
3. Avoid depending on tools too much
If all SEOs have access to the same tools, they’re more likely to make the same decisions, right?
You should strongly use logic and critical thinking when you search for the right keyword for your business.
You should ask the following questions:
Can I provide better and smart answers to this search result?
How valuable is this keyword to my business?
What’s the cost of targeting this keyword?
Are there any big websites ranking for this keyword? and why?
Do we have supporting articles to keep the internal links flowing?
Keyword search volume is an excellent indicator but not the primary metric. because it’s inaccurate due to the changing demand and many other factors.
Using domain authority may waste good ranking opportunities because Google does not use it, and lower DR websites will usually rank higher. In some cases, DR correlates with high rankings, but it’s a false correlation.
Keyword difficulty (KD) is solely based on backlinks without looking at the content, user experience, or technical SEO in the top search results.
4. Check your sales team
Your sales team has all of your audience’s questions and worries, so you shouldn’t waste that since it’s free.
In case your brand doesn’t have one, you could use the following 7 methods:
Brand reviews
Quora/Reddit questions.
DM questions.
Google Autocomplete.
People also ask.
Google keywords planner.
3rd party tools such as SEMrush.
This step is crucial to align your business goals with your keyword strategy, so think like your audience and check the places in which they spend most of their time.
The goal is not to rank but to be visible when your audience searches for anything related to your products.
I’d also recommend using your product’s features as seed keywords to generate other ideas and potentially achieve thought leadership. For example, if one of your product’s features is automation for e-commerce, then the potential keywords would be:
How should I utilize automation for e-commerce?
Why should I use automation as an e-commerce business owner?
E-commerce automation case studies.
5. Use the related queries from google search console
The keyword research process doesn’t end with publishing the article. The last step is to use the related queries that you’ve ranked in lower positions to mention them in the appropriate context in the report.
You’ll find variations of the target keyword and interesting questions to answer and enrich your article, therefore covering more aspects of your topic. Start with the queries with the most impressions, the highest positions, and the fewest clicks. Don’t add any irrelevant terms just because you rank on them.
This step also prevents content decay as you update your content regularly with more relevant terms.
Remember, the more keywords you rank for in higher positions, the more clicks your website will get.
What happens if you select the wrong keywords?
If you rank higher for the wrong keywords, it means Google thinks your website fits into this category, and you’ll spend a good amount of time trying to rank for more relevant keywords.
Check the top 10 queries in Google Search Console; if you find them irrelevant, then you need to make serious changes.
Sometimes it requires you to remove these pages or draft them and start writing for more relevant keywords.
So it’s better to plan keywords for a long period in advance to avoid this situation.
Why is keyword research an essential step for SEO?
Because the more relevant your keyword strategy is, the better ROI you’ll get from search engines. As much as possible, avoid spammy activities, such as targeting random keywords simply because they are low-competitive.
Google is a search engine that uses an information retrieval system to take the user’s input and deliver the most relevant results for that search query.
So you can build a topical authority based on the different angles you cover, and Google will no longer confuse your website with any other category.
Tools no longer change the game. Some tools indicate that certain keywords have no search volume, while others do.
Bad keyword research will result in zero-click pages and keywords, thus wasting your company’s resources.
Which keywords need to be your top priorities?
Depending on your niche, website’s situation, and plans, there is nothing better than low-hanging fruits and quick wins.
Start with the easiest keywords and then go down. You should divide your keywords into long-term and short-term categories and group them accordingly. You need to consider potential revenue as well, as you’re not only going for traffic.
How can you optimize your website for voice search?
Voice search has become increasingly popular because it helps searchers get what they need faster than typing. The best way to optimize your pages for voice search is to phrase your headings and introductions in the form of questions and answers.
Add the most important entities in the first 400-500 words and make your article searchable. Answer the most frequently asked question about the page’s subject and be more descriptive than your competitors.
Look for featured snippets opportunities, as recent studies state that 40.7% of voice search results come from featured snippets.
Make sure your content is skimmable by bolding the most important sentences and entities. Avoid stuffing keywords and be more topic-oriented.
Use structured data or schema markup to help Google understand your page, so it can rank it for the best possible queries.
