Importance of Wider Thinking for Keyword Research
Keyword research and analysis is one of the most fundamental factors when considering your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy. It is where you identify the core opportunities for your website, both for optimisation purposes and defining your target audience.
Getting your keyword research right is crucial when it comes to mapping out the direction of your SEO activities. How you optimise your website to bring in relevant traffic, where you place your content, and even the classic question, ‘how do I get my website to number one in the search rankings?” are often all answered by good keyword analysis. It isn’t just about selecting a few words and hoping for the best, however. Wider thinking has a part to play with keyword research and here are some of the reasons why.
Why is keyword research so important
Firstly, it is important for you to understand why carrying out keyword research is so important in the first place. It can be the difference between a high-performing, successful website, and a website that nobody ever sees. So what is it that makes keyword research so important to your online marketing strategy?
It is usually tied to all of your search engine based activities. Whether it is organic or paid results, keyword research is crucial to ensure that firstly, you can successfully direct relevant people to your website and secondly, keep them there.
Helps you to understand your audience. The further you go with your keyword research, the better understanding of your target audience you will have. This will allow you to produce good relevant content and complement it with an internal and external linking structure that enables the search engines to successfully crawl your website.
Allows for good content optimisation both on your website and through contribution-hosting. This will help to direct users to your website through expertly placed, keyword-rich content that is relevant to the user’s needs and in the process improves the domain authority of your website.
Local SEO and attracting people based in locations relevant to your business. Depending on the size and nature of your business, one of your biggest strengths can be your location. One of the most searched for generic terms is ‘near me’. More and more people are using mobiles to access search engines and the services they advertise, so thinking about local keywords, that will ensure your business appears for its niche within your region is extremely important, however, often forgotten.
Wider thinking leads to relevant linking
There is a good chance that you would have heard the phrase ‘content is king’ when it comes to SEO. However, this can only be truly accurate if you have done the right level of keyword analysis to start off with. Finding keywords for your website might sound like an easy task, yet it is also easy to get wrong. Therefore, it is important to understand that it is about more than just words. Identifying gaps in and around your market is pivotal to the success of your website.
Questions we always ask before carrying out keyword research include:
What are the benefits of the product or service?
How far-reaching are those benefits?
Are the products/services we are writing about trending and if so, for what reason?
These questions encourage us to think outside the box, rather than just settling for the same keywords that everybody else is targeting. The other thing that is an absolute must when deciding on keywords is competitor analysis and user search volume.
By answering all of these questions and building keywords around wider-thinking, you will inevitably create high-quality and more uniquely targeted content that will earn some superb, relevant linking opportunities.
How do we carry out keyword research successfully?
There are many fantastic SEO tools out there to assist with keyword research, some free and some that charge a fee. These include keyword and link analysis tools such as Moz or free keyword research tools such as Google’s own keyword planner.
However, to get the best results, the paid versions of tools out there are often the way to go, as naturally, they allow more depth for your research. These will also require a level of expertise and if you are looking for a marketing agency who can take your SEO and/or Paid search strategy forward, then look no further than KW Digital.
