Keyword Research – How to get started
Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is a practice that helps your website rank higher and become more visible on search engines such as Google or Bing. To get the basics of SEO, have a quick look at our beginners guide here as told by marketing consultant Nat Sharp. There are many ways you can improve SEO but a large part of optimising your website falls to the keywords and phrases you use in the text you put on your web pages. In order to get the most out of the text you are incorporating across your website you will have to do some keyword research.
What I mean by keyword research, is looking for the user-searched terms that relate to your business, for example if you own a women’s shoe store, your favoured keywords will be women’s shoes or shoe store. You will then identify how well they perform, how often they are searched and how competitive the term will be – this will require the help of research tools, some of which I will list below. Then simply put together a list of all the terms you think will work best for your site.
Keyword research can be a fairly time-consuming job, but it is worth every second. Not only will it work wonders for your search engine ranking position, it can also help you better understand your customer base. So, if you are new to this concept, we have put together some quick tips to help you get started.
1. Obvious Keywords
To start your research, think of your obvious phrases and start putting them into your list. You can later expand on these once you start using your research tool. So as mentioned above, if you sell women’s shoes, this will be your starting point and then you will link to other possible terms such as – ladies shoes, high heels, ladies footwear and so on. Also look to friends and family for ideas, ask what they enter into a search bar when shopping for shoes, you could be surprised how much they differ from what you had in mind.
2. Keyword Ideas
Now that you have all the keywords you can think of, it’s time to get some fresh ideas. Listed below are some suggestions for coming up with new keyword phrases or search terms:
Wikipedia – It has an abundance of information about any topic and it is also updated by its users so you can get an insight into how their mind works around any particular subject.
Forums – Search for forums linked to your business/product and you will have a direct link to the types of discussions your potential customers are having. You can link this back to keywords and searchable phrases.
Quora – This is one of the best question and answer sites available. Similar to the forums, this is a great way to see the questions your clientele wants answered.
Google Trends – This is a great tool to see how well your keyword is performing and to see what other potential keywords are trending.
3. Keyword Research Tools
By now you should have a starter list of around 40-60 keywords or phrases. Don’t worry if you don’t, any number of keywords to begin with is perfectly fine. The beauty of using these aforementioned research tools, is they will offer related search terms. Here are some of our favourite keyword research resources:
Using these tips you should end up with a list of hundreds of words, with a decent idea of which words are searched most often and how competitive it will be to rank using them. You won’t use all of your words of course, study your list and select between 10 and 20 to start and begin incorporating them across your website. Head here to find out what to do next.