KEYWORD RESEARCH

When writing a blog, you’re aim is to give quality content and reach out to a big audience. Less than 25% of people go past the first page of the search results. So, how do you ensure you appear on the first page? The secret lies within a quality website, quality content and keyword research.

Less than 25% of people go past the first page of the search results.

What is a Keyword?

A keyword is a word or phrase that is most likely to be used as a search term. For example, if you bake cupcakes, your audience will be those people who are looking for cupcakes and not just cakes. On your page, you will target keywords that lie along that subject such as, how to bake cupcakes, cupcakes in Nairobi/ target location, cupcake recipe, etc.

Keywords can be short-tail or long-tail. A short-tail keyword is something like, ‘Brown Chocolate’. This user could be looking for the origin, recipe, a chocolate cake, bakers, cake shop, health benefits or hazards, or manufacturers but it is too general. A short tail keyword is very competitive… more on that later, and it will be very hard for you to rank for it.

A long-tail keyword is more of a phrase and has intent and purpose. Let’s say you want to find a vanilla marble cake, what will you search for on the search engine? Vanilla marble cake, and then add the location to be more precise. This way, the results will bring anyone who has the vanilla marble cake description and filter using the location you added to display closer and relevant results. A long-tail keyword shows that this individual is out looking for something and the intention to buy or consume information is very high leading to more conversion and visits to your site. Long-tail keywords are less competitive compared to short-tail keywords.

Keywords can be short-tail or long-tail

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword Research is the process of finding what search terms your target audience are using while looking for services or products that you deal with. The first and most important step is to identify your target audience. We have said this before, in every business, you need to know who your target audience is before you start creating content. When you can tell who your target audience is, you can tailor your content to spark their interest and fit their needs.

While working on your target audience, you should consider some of these factors;

Your target audience persona.
How do they search for your product/services?
What is their demographic (gender, age, location)?
What format do they want the results displayed in?
Any other similar searches that they may carry out in relation to your product/service.

One mistake that many SEO specialist make is tailoring their content in favour of Google algorithms, forgetting that the consumers should be their primary target. Yes, we want our content to rank high on Google, but when you target your keywords towards Google without paying attention to your audience, you are out to lose. Google values user experience and good user experience comes from a good user interface and quality content. Make sure your content is primarily tailored for users following Google’s rules on how to optimize your website and you’re off to a good start.

How to do Keyword Research?

Once you have identified your target audience, the next step is to do the research to find and analyse the appropriate keywords that you can use. As said before, short-tail keywords are very difficult to rank for, so what’s the next step? Go for long-tail keywords.

When doing keyword research, there are primary keywords, that you target heavily and then there’s secondary keywords. Coming up with a list of keywords is not easy, that is why we have tools which we use to search for keywords and look at their parameters to see if they are worthy or not. More on the tools later.

Keyword Parameters

When doing your keyword research, you will notice majority of the keyword tools use certain parameters to rank them. The most common of these parameters used are;

Keyword Difficulty. This simply means, how hard it is going to be for you to rank for these keywords. Most of the tools use a scale of 1-100%. When your site is new with low domain authority, it is recommended you go for keywords with low difficulty.

Traffic. This is the amount of search traffic the keyword gets within a certain time period. It could be a day, weeks, months or years.

Cost per click (CPC). This is the cost when ranking for that keyword and it directs traffic your way. When the price is high, it means that the keyword is very hot. The price is determined by those bidding, basically how much are you willing to pay for that keyword.

Competition. Some tools will tell you who your competitors for the keywords are. The first thing to look for in the competitor, is their domain authority.

Domain Authority means how much google trusts you. To get high domain authority, you have to get tons of backlinks. Your content should also be of high quality. Sites that have a higher domain authority will rank higher for the same keyword.

Some tools will also show you the top ranking pages for a keyword. The best tools will go deeper and show you what keywords your competitors have used in their pages.

Steps of Keyword Research:

Identify your target audience.
Use keyword research tools to come up with a list of keywords you would like to target.
Use those tools to look at their parameters e.g. Difficulty etc.
After comparison, trim your list to be left with a smaller but more relevant list.
Strategically use these keywords in your articles. Use them in the title, headings, URL, alt text for images, body etc.

Some useful tips while doing keyword research, is to look at the traffic the keyword gets over a period e.g. a year. Note at which times of the year the keyword gets more traffic and you can prepare your content for that period.

Also take note of holidays, seasons and trends to know when the best time to use certain keywords is. Ensure you create evergreen content that won’t get traffic at one point and go to zero the next time. Evergreen content will always be useful over the years and the steady traffic is brings will definitely aid your SEO.

Avoid keyword stuffing in your content. Keyword stuffing means you have used your keywords in excess in your content. Use the keywords in an organic way and don’t stuff your content since Google could treat that page as a spam.