Keyword research is the foundation of any successful internet strategy, particularly when your intention is to expand your business and create sales. It’s the method of finding and researching the precise words and phrases individuals enter into search engines such as Google when searching for products, services, or information specific to what your website provides. When done correctly, keyword research isn’t about traffic; it’s about attracting the right kind of traffic—individuals who are ready to be customers.
Start with Your Business and Audience
You need to understand your own business first before you look into any tools. Think about your main products and more significantly, your ideal customer.
- Brainstorm “Seed Keywords”: These are the generic, broad keywords that describe your products, services, and industry. For example, if you’re running a business selling handcrafted soap, your seed keywords might be “natural soap,” “organic body wash,” or “homemade gifts.”
- Identify Search Intent: Every search has an implied purpose for the search. For a business website, you want keywords that indicate high Commercial Investigation or Transactional intent.
- Informational: The user wants to learn about (getting soap making instructions).
- Commercial Research: The user is looking for alternatives before buying (best natural soap reviews).
- Transactional: The user is ready to buy (buy organic lavender soap online).
Look for commercial intent keywords like: best, reviews, price, compare, vs, coupon, for sale, buy.
Utilize the Proper Tools to Expand Your List
After you have your seed list and understand the buyer’s process, it’s time to discover thousands of related words. Luckily, you don’t need to make a guess. Keyword research tools provide you with search volume, competition, and related concepts information.
- Free Options: A great place to begin is Google Keyword Planner (part of Google Ads, but no ads are needed to use it). It has reasonable volume ranges and competitive insights, developed originally for advertisers, so the information is business-focused. Google Search Auto complete and the “People also ask” sections of every search results page are also useful for quick, real-user inspiration.
- Paid/Premium Tools: Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz are examples of tools that not only provide deeper data and performing a comprehensive analysis of competitors but also give a more accurate measure of “Keyword Difficulty”—a scale revealing how tough it would be to appear on the first page of Google for that keyword. These are must-haves as you scale up.
Analyze and Prioritize Your Keywords
Having an enormous list of keywords is only the start. Actual strategic work goes into analyzing data to figure out what to go after.
- You would want to go after the keywords with a nice Search Volume (i.e., they are being searched for) but less Keyword Difficulty (i.e., you can rank fairly). Start with the low-competition keywords to build your position over time.
- They are longer phrases that are more descriptive (e.g., “best gentle unscented facial cleanser for sensitive skin”). Lengthy keywords are less searched for but still very high converting because the user knows exactly what he/she wants.
- Look at the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages): Type in your desired keywords and check what is ranking now. If the top rankings are all product pages, then your content is to be a product page. If they are all comparison articles, then your content will have to be a comparison article. It is very important that your content format matches the user’s intention for you to succeed.
This systematic approach guarantees your product pages, category pages, and copy are all in sync with what your most profitable potential customers are searching for right now. It brings your site from simply being online to actually generating high-quality commercial leads.
Conclusion and Next Steps
Keyword research is not a one-time project, but rather an ongoing process. Search patterns change, new players emerge, and your business changes. Re-checking your keyword plan every now and then and optimizing content is required to maintain and accumulate your organic presence. To companies that look for a professional to put raw information into a coordinated, successful SEO and content campaign, the expertise of a full-time digital marketing agency is priceless.
SocialCTR Solutions is a specialist in assisting companies such as yours to identify those high-value, commercially significant keywords that drive measurable return to the bottom line. Our knowledge can remove the complexity of the analysis and provide you with a clear direction for content creation that speaks to customers at all touch points of their purchasing journey, so your website drives more sales to your company.
