A guide to Keyword Research
In this blog post, I am going to break down step by step the perfect keyword research guide for businesses that you need to read if you want to get good rankings in Google!
Keyword research is something that people don’t tend to utilise enough on their blogs. It may be because they don’t understand it or have never been taught properly but that all ends today. After reading this you will be able to go away and start applying the skills to your blog and understanding keyword research better!
What is Keyword Research?
Keyword Research is when you find a list of valuable keywords that will benefit your blog for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). they can help become a guide of how you should write your content to have the most beneficial effects from it.
A Beginners Guide to Keyword Research
There are loads of different ways that you can do keyword research, this is my favourite method and I think it is really simple and easy to do!
Study your Topic/Niche
The only way you are going to get anywhere with understanding good keywords and get good at SEO is by analysing your topic in detail. Speak to your followers and understand what it is that they like about your content. Have a look at your Google Analytics to see where people are usually going to on your site. Get involved in different communities based around your topic.
You also should put yourself in the shoes of your followers and look at your content/page to decide what it is that is attracting you to the page. This also works for people you follow – what is it that is attracting you to their page and ‘borrow’ their ideas!
Set your Goals
There are lots of people that don’t set any goals for their blogs and I never understand why. It is a simple task that takes you 5 minutes, you probably already have goals in your head so write them down and aim to achieve them.
The goals that you decide on will help you to define your SEO strategy and the plan you want to follow to achieve bigger.
Relevant Topics to write about
Take a look back on your main topics and your goals that you want to achieve and create smaller segments inside of those that you would like to rank in on Google.
This is important to do because if your aim is to rank for ‘lifestyle blog’ this is very difficult because there are thousands of people wanting to rank for that same keyword so it will be more difficult for you to do.
If you are involved with Beauty you could aim to rank for segments in that category like ‘make-up’ or ‘make-up looks’.
These relevant topics need to be important to your blog and related to the followers that you have so keep in mind the kind of things your target audience would search on Google. These topics will then be broken down, even more, to create keywords for you to use.
Create a list of focus Keywords
Now that you have the small categories from your large topic, these can be broken down further to focus keywords. These keywords are what your target audience are likely to be searching for on a Google search engine.
These keywords are important to your business as they are going to define your niche and help you to identify your competitors.
An easy way to find your focus keywords is by looking at your ‘offering’ so your blog category and brainstorming how people might search for it in Google. So if mine is ‘Make-up’ then people might search for ‘make-up hacks’ or ‘easy make-up looks’ or ‘date night make-up looks’.
Keyword Research Tools
I like to use a keyword research tool after deciding on my goals, topics and focus keywords as it gives you a bit more depth on your content and SEO strategy.
I like to use the Keyword Tool which is completely free (to an extent) and easy to use, type in your topic or focus keyword into the box and it will give you a list of keywords you can use.
Research your target audiences search intent
Once you have that keyword research you can put yourself into your customer’s shoes and think about what they would type in Google and how they would go about it. Ask yourself questions like ‘why would they search for your topic?’, ‘are they looking for a post to solve a problem?’.
You can then use this information to fine-tune your keyword research so that it directly matches your target audience’s search intent.
Long-Tail Keywords
As a blogger, long-tail keywords are important as they are a bit more descriptive. Using long-tail keywords is a lot easier than using your focus keywords because you can relate it to your audience more as there’s more room for information.
For example ‘make-up looks for date night’ is a lot more relevant to my audience compared to my focus keyword ‘make-up’.
However, long-tail keywords tend to get fewer clicks as not everyone is going to type that exact sentence into Google. But people who do are likely to stay on your site and read your content if it is relevant to the title because it’s exactly what they wanted to read.
Competitor analysis
Finally, the last thing you should do that should never be missed out is a competitor analysis! Using some keyword research tools you can see what your competitors are up to and how easy it will be to rank for certain terms. For example, if you look at the screengrab below, you can see that ‘makeup looks’ has a low competitive rate which means it will be easier to rank for.
This is a great tool to utilise as it will help you to find certain gaps in the systems that you can sneak your blog into and get the views others are missing out on!
Final Thoughts
I hope this has given you enough information to be able to go away and apply these skills to your own blog. If you have any questions or have got a bit confused and still aren’t 100% certain on what you are doing, don’t hesitate to Contact me I am happy to help anyone out!
