Tell Me: How Do I Do Keyword Research?

Keyword research is the process of finding the words and phrases people use to find your products or services on the web. Yes, it can be time consuming. It can also be confusing. Whether you’re using Google’s Keyword Planner or one of the other free keyword research tools, there are similar steps to work through. Today I’m going to explain how to do your keyword research step by step.

Guiding You Through Doing Your Keyword Research

Okay, first up you need to have a content marketing plan. While this doesn’t have to be strenuously in-depth, you do need to know:

• who is your target audience – age, gender, hobbies, likes, dislikes etc.
• what you want to promote – your products or services
• the type of information your audience wants and needs
• what you want to become an expert in
• what you want your website to rank for – in generic terms

When it comes to identifying the ways in which your website ranks, be quite specific. Go for broad topics, rather than individual words. Sometimes it is too hard to rank for a specific word, while other times it can take years. Think of each topic as a bucket which you are going to fill up with the keywords you want to rank for and those you find during your keyword research.

But How Do I Do Keyword Research?

It’s time to fill those buckets with keywords. You’ve probably got a bunch of keywords you want your website to rank with already. But now is the time to hunt out those you never even thought of. This can be done using one or several keyword tools, depending on the depth of research you want to do.

Having your page on page one in the SERPs (search engine results pages) is where you want to aim for. That’s because most people won’t click on sites which aren’t in the top ten results. The aim of keyword research is to help you choose the right words which get you on page one. Google’s Keyword Planner is the most commonly used tool and you can find out how to use it in our Keyword Planner instructional guide. Check out this article for other free keyword research tools. 

But there are also other ways to do keyword research. They include:

• asking your audience what they would use
• using your Google analytics data and internal search results
• identifying the terms your audience are using in blog posts, online groups and social media
• checking out what your competition is using in their web copy, social media and advertisements

Sometimes it is possible to see what keywords your competition are using by right clicking on their page and selecting view source. You’ll have to wade through a lot of code, but the keyword may jump out at you.

Ready to do your keyword research? If you want a hand, we can help. Pop in your details in our contact form below and we’ll organise a thorough keyword research report for you.