When consumers want to learn more about a business, product or service, they typically turn to a search engine such as Bing or Google for help. When they search, results are produced based on the keywords included, according to digital marketer Robert Arloro.
If your business has optimized your online presence well, you may appear high in these search results. This is essential, as most traffic goes to the first few items on the search results page.
To rank highly on search engines, it’s important that you conduct keyword research so you can know how to optimize your online presence. Here’s more information about keyword research and how you can do it.
What is Keyword Research?
Keyword research is a process that includes discovering the search terms consumers type or talk into major search engines. The goal of keyword research is to discover what your target customers are searching for so that you can ensure your online content reflects their interests.
The key to being found online is matching up the information you provide consumers with the information that they’re searching for. Without keyword research, you’ll be walking blind trying to guess what kind of content and messaging people desire.
Proper keyword research will help you discover what topics your customers are searching for, which then allows you to cater the content you produce to those terms.
How to Conduct Keyword Research
Keyword research can be very complex and in-depth, but anyone can start off with the basics. A great way to start is by making a list of generic topics that you think are essential to your company. These topics would be general descriptions of what your business does, such as construction, roofing and home renovation.
Next, assign keywords to these topics. Think about what your customers might search for if they needed your services. For example, this might be “how much does it cost to upgrade a kitchen,” or “roofing companies near me.”
Then, compare these keywords you have come up with to the keywords your site is already getting traffic from. You can find this information from tools such as Google Analytics.
How to Refine Your Keywords
Once you’ve done the above steps, refining the keywords you want to target is a good idea. There are two great ways to do this.
First, type in your keywords on Google and look at the search results. Scroll to the bottom of the first page and look for a section titled “Searches related to …” There, you will see other related searches people make that you could also choose to target.
Robert Arloro also suggests using online tools to generate more keyword ideas. Some of the most popular ones include Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, SECockpit and Moz.
These tools can help you refine the keywords you’ve already come up with on your own with your manual research.
After you have all this keyword research in place, you can start to cater your online content to what your target customers are searching for so that they find you before your competitors.
About Robert Arloro
Robert Arloro is a digital marketer and marketing consultant with more than a decade of experience in the field. He currently works with businesses of all sizes to help them reach their digital marketing goals. Robert’s expertise includes SEO, social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing, and website optimization. When he’s not working, Mr. Arloro enjoys spending time with his family, playing soccer, and traveling.