Every year, millions of new users join the global digital community. They could be using the web for online shopping, visiting company websites, or simply scrolling on social media. As more users and businesses converge in the digital world, the competition becomes tougher. Studies from Net Solutions showed that some of the biggest challenges of eCommerce industries are gaining relevant leads and attaining customer retention.
To target the right customers, you need to have a relevant content marketing strategy. And to create the best content, you need to improve your keyword strategy. Fortunately, various keyword research software solutions are available on the internet. Whether you’re looking for seed keywords or long-tail keywords, these tools will help improve your overall keyword research strategy. But software aside, you also need to know the best practices for better keyword research. Below are the most effective tips you can follow.
1. Define Your Purpose for Keyword Research
Each strategy has a purpose; without a purpose, you can get stuck with your goal. Before doing keyword research, ask yourself: what are you looking for? You can list down any words or topics related to your business. For example, you own a fashion brand. Some keywords that can be associated with your business are “fashion,” “beauty,” “clothes,” and “accessories.” From there, evaluate: what are these keywords for? Are they to optimize your website content or to improve your social media presence? Defining the purpose of your keyword research is like outlining your marketing goals. You need to create keywords that would generate a high search volume and contribute to the success of your content marketing strategy. Also, you don’t want to end up wasting your bucks on keywords with little to no conversions. Businesses use ecommerce software to drive their online business processes, so it also helps to integrate your systems together to share data accurately.
2. Know the Different Types of Keywords
When doing keyword research, you should know the different types of keywords. These are:
- Seed Keywords—also known as the main keywords. This type of keyword is usually a one or two-word search phrase that’s highly competitive on the search engine result pages (SERPs). Some examples are “social media,” “online marketing,” and “SEO.”
- Long-tail Keywords—search phrases containing three or more words. This keyword type has lesser search volume than seed keywords, but its intent is more specific. A few examples are “what is online marketing” and “how to become an SEO expert.”
- Closely Related Keywords—synonyms or keywords having the same meaning but written distinctively. For example, your keyword phrase is “how to work with influencers.” You can search for closely related keywords like “how to collaborate with influencers” or “how to partner with influencers.”
- Semantically Related Keywords—also known as the latent semantic index or LSI keywords. These keywords are related to each other conceptually. For instance, for the search phrase “digital marketing,” some semantically related keywords are “SERP,” “SEO,” and “social media marketing.”
3. Understand How Search Intent Affects Your Keyword Research
A search intent or user intent is the identification and classification of what users want to find when they search certain keywords on the internet. Put simply, it’s the type of information that internet users are looking for when they perform a search. Unfortunately, only 28% of marketers have an intent data strategy as per KoMarketing’s report. Understanding how search intent affects your keyword research is pivotal to ranking well on Google and other search engines. It also gives you a competitive advantage, addressing the common problems and queries of users. For example, people research the keyword “how to write a blog.” Blog can mean a blog article or the blog web page itself. The searchers’ different intents will influence the direction of your article. Will you cater to users wanting to know how to write an individual blog post? Or do you prefer to create content on how to launch a website domain for blogging purposes?
4. Find Keywords Your Competitors Are Using
Keyword research is, after all, a business strategy. And to come up with the most idealistic strategy, you need to know what your competitors are doing. Before starting with your keyword research, make sure to have a list of all your competitors’ websites. Visit their sites and analyze their content. Discover which of their keywords are driving more traffic to their website and ranking well on Google. You can use a keyword explorer tool to perform a competitor check. There are also various SERP analysis tools that will help you get to the top of search results pages.
5. Choose Your Tool
The best keyword research tools will help improve your keyword and content marketing strategies. In choosing your tool, consider some of these features:
- Caters to different types of keywords
- Allows finding of keywords in any language target
- Provides click metrics for improving CTR
- Keyword rank tracking
- Research competition on each keyword
Get the Right Keywords for Your Website SEO
Now that you already know the best practices for effective keyword research, it’s time to build your strategy and optimize your web content. When you already have your set of keywords, re-evaluate them from time to time to maintain your online presence and grow your business further.
