Content and Keyword Research

Now that you know how to show up in search results. It’s time to learn to play strategically. That is what keywords to target in your content and how to craft that content to satisfy both users and search engines.

Keyword research provides you with specific data like…

1. What are people searching for?
2. How many people are searching for it?
3. In what format they want results

Before doing research, analyze the public

It is always supply to the demand, and never demand to the supply. Hence, what you want to rank for is not necessarily what your users are looking for. 

First focus on your target audience, and then look for the keywords accordingly. This is the key to successful SEO.

For example, a website selling mugs asks you to do their SEO. Before focusing on the keywords, you must first ask a few questions to them, like:

• What kind of mugs are people looking for?
• What standard size of mugs are more in demand?
• When is there greater demand for mugs? Are there seasonal trends or not?
• What age group is their potential buyer?
• Why do people need mugs?
• Are there any complementary goods to the original product? Like a holder with the mug, or a coffee blender with a standard coffee mug etc
• Where are potential customers located?

And finally – how can you help provide the best content about the product in the finest way for all the queries that are being made.

What terms are people searching for?

You might have the best jargonized vocabulary in your list to describe your content, but what if it does not match what your audience is looking for?

It is important for you to know and to match the way your target audience is looking for your product, or your service on the web. 

For this purpose, enter all the wonderful keywords you have in your mind in a keyword research tool and look for the monthly search volume and similar keywords. In this way, you will get to know which version of your keyword is best to use.

In the process of discovering relevant keywords for your content, you will likely notice that the search volume of those keywords varies greatly. While you definitely want to target terms that your audience is searching for, in some cases, it may be more advantageous to target terms with lower search volume because they’re far less competitive.

Search Volume

The higher the search volume for a given keyword or keyword phrase, the more work is typically required to achieve higher rankings. This is often referred to as keyword difficulty and occasionally incorporates SERP features

Big brands often take up the top 10 results for high-volume keywords, so if you’re just starting out on the web and going after the same keywords, the uphill battle for ranking can take years of effort.

Typically, the higher the search volume, the greater the competition and effort required to achieve organic ranking success. Go too low, though, and you risk not drawing any searchers to your site. In many cases, it may be most advantageous to target highly specific, lower competition search terms. In SEO, we call those long-tail keywords.

Strategic working with Search Volume

Now that you know much of the basics. Let’s look at how you can be more strategic with your search volume, by looking at different aspects like your competitors, the demographics and psychographics of your audience and the type of searches made.

Keywords by Competitors

There are two possible scenarios here:

Case 1: 

You choose the high volume keywords that your competitors are not using, and beat them off using the opportunities they missed

Case 2: 

On the other hand, you can choose the high volume keywords that your competitors are already using and while making an aggressive strategic move, set yourself into the direct competition;

Keyword by Season

There are seasonal trends in most of the fields.For example, if you know New Year Gifts start to spike in November and reach their peak in post-mid December worldwide, you will have a chance to prepare your content months before, and give it a push at that time of the year.

Keyword by Region

You can more strategically target a specific location by narrowing down your keyword research to specific towns, counties, or states in the Google Keyword Planner, or evaluate “interest by subregion” in Google Trends. 

In this chapter, you have learned how to strategically choose keywords. 

You are learning well, Congratulations.

Let’s move forward to Chapter 5 Link Building