Every search starts with a word typed in the search box. These words, phrases and questions represent the actual needs, wants and interests of the people you target with your business.
No matter the industry you work in, just any random visitor won’t do much for your business; – you need to attract the right kind of people to come to your web pages, in your office(s), and store(s).
By researching and analyzing your target keywords you will learn more about your customers, understand what they look for, and offer them amazing products and/or services that can really help serve their needs.
As part of a solid SEO strategy, keyword research and knowledge can help you reach far closer to your ‘right’ audience.
Selecting the right keywords to rank for is the foundation of all your SEO efforts, so be mindful, collect and analyze your data, and make good choices. Consider the following:
The relevance of your keywords
Be relevant and specific with your keywords. Chances are your website is targeting a specific niche, and you would want your site to rank for keywords related to that niche so that you are able to target an audience that might be interested in information and product within that niche.
It’s also important to be specific to narrow down to a more engaged targeted audience. For example You can choose –online business– as a main entry, but –online business training– will get you to a far more targeted audience for your products and services. (Read more about long-tail keywords below.)
The location your business covers.
If you only sell your products and services within a certain location or range, chances are that traffic from other locations
in the world probably won’t mean much to you.
Consider using location-based keywords if this is the case, adding the city or region that you cover.
Like for example –online business training oslo–.
Your keywords’ demand.
Look into the existing demand for the keywords you choose to target, i.e. the interest of searchers for what you are about to offer. You don’t want to target keywords that noone ever search for. This goes hand in hand with the next step, as you should try to find a golden middle path between demand and competition.
This way, you will have a good chance of climbing high up in search engine rankings, and you’ll be able to get a large percentage of traffic from a decently-searched keyword phrase, which is better than no traffic at all from a heavily-searched term.
Keyword competition
95% of all search traffic goes to the first page of Google, and when looking to climb search engine rankings, the number of other websites competing for the same keyword will mean a great difference in the work that it takes to rank on the first page for that keyword.
No matter if your targeted keyword is perfectly relevant and has millions of monthly searches, if you’re competing with 500 websites more established and popular than yours, it will simply take too much to beat the competition and you’ll have a very hard time trying to get on the top page.
Long-tail keywords.
The more specific, hence longer search queries like the above –online business training– and –online business training oslo– are called long-tail keywords. People are more likely to use them when they’re farther down their path of intent in the buying process.
For example, people searching for –travel arrangements– aren’t much likely to convert into buyers, whilst people searching for –best price hotels in Norway for honeymoon– practically have their wallets open already. The later searchers are in the buying process, the more likely are they to convert in buyers.
There’s also a greater demand through search engines for the long-tail keywords at the expense of the “popular” search terms (see image above). But now the big question is, how do we get all this information about keyword demand, competition, difficulty etc.?
Well, there’s probably just as many different techniques to find this information as there is people looking to find it, but as a daily keyword researcher and notorious perfectionist always striving for efficiency, I’ve developed my own technique for this that will share with you next:
How I do top keywords search to find the best keywords for my articles
When I’m doing keyword research there’s really just 3 big factors that I worry about and that is:
- Will the keyword fit into a sentence?
- Does the keyword have a lot of competition?
- Is the keyword getting a decent amount of monthly searches?
I’ve tried many different tools to calculate these numbers, including Google Instant, keyword planner etc., but the tool that I like best and that I’ve ended up using is called Jaaxy.
Now, let me show you exactly what I do, with this article as an example. I am looking for a keyword in the “keyword research” category to fit in this exact post, and after a couple of searches, I find this line of keywords:
I‘m looking for a keyword with a decent amount of average monthly traffic (Avg) and a fairly low competition rate(QSR). The less competition, the easier the keyword will be to rank for. These are the main numbers that I choose to focus on, but you can see that Jaaxy also provides a lot more information that come in handy when searching for top notch keywords.
(For a more detailed explanation of Jaaxy and all it’s features, check out my complete Jaaxy review)
Now I simply choose the keyword I want to target, put it in my content, headlines, url, meta descriptions etc. and as my new post starts to get traffic and my SEO campaign starts to take off, I will hopefully see my post climbing SERP rankings for that keyword in a short while.
Other keyword search tools that might come in handy
So now you know my secret, but there’s one thing knowing how to find awesome keywords to rank for and put them at the right spot in your content, but there’s still many aspects of keyword researching that you might need to know as an online business owner.
Here are some other great tools to help you properly manage and track your SEO campaigns:
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a must have for all online business owners. This is the way to track how much traffic you’re getting, where that traffic is coming from, how well your keywords are performing, your bounce rate etc.
There’s just so many numbers to keep track of and analyze, and Google Analytics is a must to be able to manage it.
For more detailed information on how to properly utilize Google Analytics for your website and business, check out my post: 7 web metrics every business should track.
Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools is a great tool that basically let’s you see your site as Google sees it.
It’s made to give you insight into your website SEO from Google’s point of view, and as of that, a website properly utilizing the Google Webmaster Tools will have a greater advantage than others when it comes to getting indexed and climbing rankings.
You can also analyze the trend of your SEO campaign, compare keyword traffic volumes over time and much more that can be turned into tactical SEO gold.
![google-trends-logo]()
Google Trends
You can analyze niche popularity and demand by using Google Trends. Sign up to receive email alerts for topics that you care about, and monitor the popularity of your brand.
The tool can give you an idea on exactly what is trending and popular in real-time that can potentially bring lots of traffic to your website.
On-site searches
Set up an internal site search function on your website, if you don’t already have one. By analyzing what your visitors are looking for at your site, you’ll get better idea of the terms and topics that are important to them and that they hope you can provide some expertise information about. Read more details about this on Crazy Egg.
UberSuggest
UberSuggest is a free tool that gives you suggestions for long-tail keywords related to the terms you enter.
It’s a great brainstorming tool. Still, keep in mind that the data is not based on actual research, but from real users queries.
Final Words
Once you complete your keyword research and implement the selected keywords onto your website, content and campaigns, Google and other search engines will have a much better understanding of what your online business is about, how it can be useful for their users, and based on that match you to the correct searches.
Keep in mind though that SEO and keyword research are ongoing processes. Make sure to routinely go over your targets to always stay accurate and up-to-date. Do you research your target keywords? What tools and methods give you the best results? Let us know in the comments.
