Keyword research starts a foundation for search engine optimization, as it allows you to understand what your customers are searching for when it comes to your business. There are three questions you should ask yourself when searching off your research:
- How frequently is the keyword phrase searched?
- Are the terms relevant to your business?
- How competitive are the keyword phrases?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is not a one time task. Your website needs to constantly and consistently be updated with fresh and relevant information. Knowing the number of people searching for a keyword phrase may influence which services you target first. You may find the number of times a keyword phrases is searched increases based on how competitive the market is.
It is important to remember you are creating content for your consumers, not for a search engine. Narrowing down phrases that are relevant to your business will help you decide what content needs to be created.
Keyword Research Tools
Moz Research Tool – Launched in May of this year, the Moz team brings you an extensive tool to best help you with keyword phrases analysis. After plugging in a keyword phrase for research, you will receive keyword phrase data including but not limited too: additional keyword phrase suggestions, search engine result page (SERP) analysis, and keyword phrase metrics.
Google AdWords – This tool provides you with the number of times a phrase is being searched and offers new suggestions you could be missing. It important to remember, they will not show keyword phrases that have an extremely low search rate.
Google Analytics – Find the keyword phrases people are searching for when it comes to your website. With this tool you will also be able to determine not only what keyword phrases people are searching, but also what area’s the keywords are being searched from. You may find that one particular keyword phrase garners more traffic based out of one city more than it would in another city that you business targets.
By combining all of these tools together, you are now well equipped to answer the core three questions and begin to increase your organic search result ranking.