Keyword Research

Understand what your audience wants to find.

Now that you’ve learned how to show up in search results, let’s determine which strategic keywords to target in your website’s content, and how to craft that content to satisfy both users and search engines.

The power of keyword research lies in better understanding your target market and how they are searching for your content, services, or products.

Keyword research provides you with specific search data that can help you answer questions like:

• What are people searching for?
• How many people are searching for it?
• In what format do they want that information?

In this chapter, you’ll get tools and strategies for uncovering that information, as well as learn tactics that’ll help you avoid keyword research foibles and build strong content. Once you uncover how your target audience is searching for your content, you begin to uncover a whole new world of strategic SEO!

Before keyword research, ask questions

Before you can help a business grow through search engine optimization, you first have to understand who they are, who their customers are, and their goals.

This is where corners are often cut. Too many people bypass this crucial planning step because keyword research takes time, and why spend the time when you already know what you want to rank for?

The answer is that what you want to rank for and what your audience actually wants are often two wildly different things. Focusing on your audience and then using keyword data to hone those insights will make for much more successful campaigns than focusing on arbitrary keywords.

Here’s an example. Frankie & Jo’s (a Seattle-based vegan, gluten-free ice cream shop) has heard about SEO and wants help improving how and how often they show up in organic search results. In order to help them, you need to first understand a little more about their customers. To do so, you might ask questions such as:

• What types of ice cream, desserts, snacks, etc. are people searching for?
• Who is searching for these terms?
• When are people searching for ice cream, snacks, desserts, etc.?
  • Are there seasonality trends throughout the year?
• How are people searching for ice cream?
  • What words do they use?
  • What questions do they ask?
  • Are more searches performed on mobile devices?
• Why are people seeking ice cream?
  • Are individuals looking for health-conscious ice cream specifically or just looking to satisfy a sweet tooth?
• Where are potential customers located — locally, nationally, or internationally?

And finally — here’s the kicker — how can you help provide the best content about ice cream to cultivate a community and fulfill what all those people are searching for? Asking these questions is a crucial planning step that will guide your keyword research and help you craft better content.