While Google is constantly keeping us under pressure with its algorithm changes, two things remain unchanged and these are the almighty keywords and the proper research for keywords. They will always be an important part of your SEO Optimization.

What do we mean by keywords?

People like you and I use the Internet to search with the help of keywords and that’s a fact. Search Engines analyze each website with their crawlers and then their algorithm kicks in to suggest the best match to the guy that’s on the other side searching.

The keywords you pick are of vital importance for your SEO. You need to pick keywords that best describe your product/service so that Google can suggest the most relevant solution to the one that’s looking for it.

What’s Keyword research?

In order to determine what would your keywords and/or key phrases be, you’d need to be aware of your target audience. How do they think? How do they express their thoughts?

Often times website owners bet on more professional and specific terms, whereas, their target audience uses simple terms.

How do you find the best keywords for your SEO strategy?

Step 1: Make a list with topics that are a closely related to your business.

Think of topics that you’d like to rank for. You can start with 3 to 5 main topics.

Then start thinking about sub-topics within these 3-5 main topics.

Be realistic about the topics.

Step 2: Fill the sub-topics up with keywords.

Now that you have some sub-topics, you can drill down to the point where you come up with actual keywords/key phrases. Those would be the keywords you think that best describe your business.

The point of this exercise is not to come up with the final list right away but to gather as many keywords as possible.

After you come up with a bunch of keywords that you think your visitors use, you can then move on to the next step.

Step 3: Test the keywords.

Once you have your list done, it’s time to filter for which keywords are worth optimizing for and which are just a waste of time. For that reason, you can use tools like Google Analytics, Google Trends, Google Keyword Tool and others.

Bear in mind that not always the most popular terms are the best to rank for. The more popular a keyword is, the stronger the competition.

There’s also a difference as to whether you choose 1 keyword (1 term for example) or a set of keywords – long tail keyword. Moving on to the next step…

Step 4: Double-check if your target audience looks for specific terms or for long tail keywords.

Again, the difference is in the amount of words.

Regular keywords could be 1 word.

Key phrases could be 1-3 keywords.

Long Tail Keywords are usually more than 3 keywords combined together.

Keywords are broad and the competition is high. Plus, they don’t bring super targeted traffic to your website.

Example below:

“Portrait” – keyword / term

vs

“How to make the perfect portrait photo” – long tail keyword

We believe, you’ll agree that the results from the above two search terms would be in favor to the long tail keyword. But at the same time it’s important to have both approaches into your SEO strategy.  Here’s why…

Keywords and Key phrases are really hard to rank for, especially in some niches but the search volume there is high, meaning many people search for 1-3 keywords.

On the other hand, the long tail keyword would give you laser-targeted traffic.

Step 5: Check to see what your competitors rank for.

Keep in mind that your competitors might not be on the right track but it’s always a good idea to know what their strategy (or lack of strategy) is.

Try to understand more about their plans by analyzing their websites. Check their keywords and see if you can outperform them.

If you need some help in identifying what keywords your competitors are using to rank for, feel free to contact us.

Step 6: Use advanced tools to further optimize your list of keywords.

Before you “pull the trigger”, we always recommend double-checking your list with some advanced tools that analyze volume and competition.

Congratulations!

If you’ve followed the steps above, you should now have a list of keywords that are relevant for you and your business.

We suggest going through this article once every 3 months to ensure you stay relevant. “Content is king”.

We hope this article was useful to you in your keyword and keyword research hustle.

Don’t forget the link building too.