Keyword Research

Part of making sure potential customers can find you online is having insight into how people search for your business. There are thousands of ways someone can type in a key phrase into Google, so knowing what some of the more popular terms are will help you build a better plan on how to structure your pages and content to fit your audience.

Below are some tips on how to do keyword research as well as incorporating them into your pages.

Keyword Planning

1.       Spy on your competitors:

a.       There is nothing illegal about doing some research on your competition to see what they are ranking for. Often people on page 1 of Google have done some form of SEO or marketing, which means they have already done the keyword research for you. There are some great tools you can utilize in order to see keywords your competitors are ranking for along with how many times people type that phrase into Google a month.

          i.      Ahrefs.com – This is a popular online program which allows you to search by any domain and it will give you details on how that website is doing. From an estimate on monthly traffic to what keywords they are ranking for, it’s one of the easiest ways to research key phrases you would want to rank for as well. There is a limit on the number of searches you can do for free so try and focus on people who are on page 1 of Google. If you want to have more searches and gain access to all the analytics, there is a small monthly fee you can pay.

          ii.      Moz.com – Very similar to ahrefs, there are some great tools you can use to see how your competition is doing online.

2.       Google Keyword Planner

a.       There is no better way to know how people are looking for your business then going straight to the source. Google Adwords has a keyword planner that will allow you to search for phrases to see how often people search for them. The best part is the tool will come back with hundreds of variations and other options you may not have thought of. This can be a little more time consuming than the other tools of Ahrefs and Moz, but the amount of phrases you will be able to see is a valuable tactic to learn what needs to be incorporated into your site.

Higher search volumes will typically mean more competition, so try to find a balance of key phrases with a high search volume as well as lower search volume. Even with phrases that have less than 100 monthly searches, it’s much easier to rank for them and start getting traffic while you work on the more competitive words.

Incorporating the keywords into your website

Now that you know what phrases people use to find your business, it’s time to start adding them to your website so search engines can discover them. Some things to consider when adding phrases.

-          Content – This is one of the easiest ways to add keywords to the pages of your website. Search engines want to make sure your website is relevant for a phrase so having it several times throughout the content of a page can help you start ranking for it. Make sure you don’t just stuff phrases all over the place, but rather add them into your content so it is still easy to read. For more detail on content, please view our topic on adding text to your page.

-          Meta Data – Having your keywords in your Page Titles is a great way to add relevancy not only for search engines but also for people to see what you offer when they do a Google search. For more information about meta data, please view our topic on page titles and descriptions.

-          Make New Pages – If you have a couple of keywords that don’t necessarily fit great in any of your current pages, consider making a new page to incorporate them. It’s always better to have a page dedicated to a select few keywords than trying to get them all into one page. If you are a business that offers a variety of services, try making a page for each service. Not only will they rank better in Google, but it’s a better experience for visitors coming to your site.