10 Oct Factors to Consider For Successful Keyword Research
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Factors to Consider For Successful Keyword Research
A keyword is essentially a term that people use on the Internet while looking for products and services related to what you offer. You could look at it as though it is a reference for guiding people to your site. When performing keyword research, you must think in terms of the average person. What words are they likely to use?
Finding the right terms can sometimes be challenging. This is why you have to consider certain aspects:
#1: Target audience
You cannot purport to be doing keyword research and still ignore the very people whom you are targeting. Unlike a few years ago, when key terms were all about Google, the modern approach now involves prioritisation of the user.
According to Google, people normally communicate via conversation and not through typing keywords. That is why the search engine has been highly customised to understand and answer questions in the same manner that people do. Thus, when you have an understanding of who you are targeting, you will be able to choose terms that go hand in hand with their way of communication.
Long before you start inputting keywords in research resources like the Keyword Planner, you must start by defining your target audience. Look at them from the perspective of gender, age, geographical location, among others. Furthermore, you cannot afford to leave out your target audience’s likes and dislikes. You must know what they want so that you effectively execute your SEO efforts.
To identify your target audience for SEO, know your selling points. What makes your business special? What exactly will customers be buying from you? If you know what sets you apart, you will be aware of the kind of customers you are looking for. It is paramount that you know why someone would choose you over your competitors.
#2: Keyword placement
Regarding words on a page; they are not just a bunch of continuous lines. Rather, it is split into several sections such as header, footers, sidebars, body content, images, among other parts. The search engine often puts all these parts into consideration as it scans through your website. This means that they all have to contain the terms that describe your business and what is on offer.
Placement of the keywords is very important. As you start your online marketing journey, here is a guideline on how to do so:
- Headline and subheadings: A good website article and page is one that has numerous sections and the information, split into subheadings. The main heading should have your primary keyword. The same should also be incorporated in the subheadings alongside other key terms.
- Opening sentence: The keyword must be featured within the first sentence of your article. Remember, Google crawls your page and is more likely to focus on the first paragraph.
- Conclusion: Your conclusion must also have the keyword because Google and other search engines consider it while crawling.
“Choose the right keywords to ensure that your business is clearly visible.”
#3: Total number of keywords
One thing that has always troubled website owners is determining the right number of keywords to use on their website and where to place them. You could get started with about five keywords and scale up accordingly. That does not imply that you will just rank for the five keywords. There will be more on-page keywords that will also rank when you consider that the site has a variety of stop words and phrases.
Another option if you are a small business with the advantage of not needing a vast budget to work with is to run Dubai PPC campaigns. This also helps you gain traffic through keywords. This is an avenue well worth trying and edirect’s PPC team can easily set this up for you.
Research shows that 40% of searches on the Internet are based on phrases containing at least four words. For that reason, your search engine optimisation success is closely tied to the use of longer keyword phrases. Your website stands to benefit if you have more of these on the home page alongside links to other pages. Be sure to choose the right combination of keywords and link them on your home page.
For the average business, it is recommended that you begin with keywords ranging from 1 to 15. Of course, the final decision relies on the number of pages on the website, the types of keywords being ranked, and available budget. These terms ought to be evenly shared out across the meta tags, page title, and H1 headers.
We cannot give a precise number of the total number of keywords that are appropriate for your website. This will change as the size of the website changes. Consulting the services of experts at edirect will provide you with an opportunity to review the site and determine what will work out best for you and your long term business goals.
#4: Keyword search volume
What will be the point of using a phrase that people are not even looking for? Make sure that your selected keywords are actually in line with what online users are interested in.
There are numerous ways in which you can find this out.
- PPC tests: A PPC test gives you an idea of the potential topics and key phrases that the target audience has been using. You can conduct such tests via Microsoft Bing Ads and Google AdWords. You will not be charged anything to run such tests.
- Trending topics: The phrases that people are mostly looking for on the Internet are, without a doubt very competitive. Consider what is trending to get inspiration for the keywords to use. You are better placed if you get terms that are trending and still have low competition.
- Scalable keyword groupings: After you have identified popular phrases, you might want to look into whether or not they are a part of a larger group of scalable keywords. This would give you an opportunity to expand the content of your site based on what you find.
It is paramount that you set aside a considerable amount of time when researching the search volume for different phrases. That’s because you are not only interested in what is popular but also in the key terms that have low competition. Most website users contract experts such as edirect for such tough tasks to be accomplished.
#5: keyword competitiveness
No matter how impressive the keyword may be, it is of no use if you are not able to out-do your competitors for that term.
Keyword competition refers to the difficulty in ranking on Google’s first page for selected terms. There are a number of factors that influence competition. These include page authority, domain authority, and content quality.
An effective SEO expert normally sets aside time to evaluate the effort required to rank for given search terms. Newbies are often advised to start this by using a browser such as Firefox and install various plugins to help collate data. The browser provides a lot of data about website age, related sites, and links to ranking pages. However, that is a basic level of gauging keyword competitiveness. The best way to go about it would be to use a keyword competition tool.
SEO software can help you analyse the phrase by running it via a difficulty checker. The idea is that once you have the terms to hand, you ought to know how each one of them would perform on Google and other search engines.
The best approach when doing keyword research is to look at each term from the point of view that it is going to be hard to rank. You could make a quick publication, something simple, just to see how hard it will be for the given term to rank. There are times you could be lucky, and the phrase ranks almost immediately. In other cases, you might have to perform some simple modifications before it performs as expected.
To simplify your life, have a taxonomy for keywords so that the competitiveness is looked at from a collective perspective rather than an individualistic point of view. You could make your own groupings or base it on existing ones.
#6: Price of the keyword
Before you begin using a keyword on your website, you might want to make sure that cost-per-click is high. There are various tools that you can use to determine this, including Google’s own AdSense. Such a tool can give you an instant scale based on CPC. The keyword selected must be one that generates you money. Do not just go for it because it is of low competition.
As we talk about keyword price, you might be interested to know more about what determines this pricing. Everything boils down to an auction. The automated auction happens every time someone performs a search on the Internet. Advertisers then start bidding for such keywords. The more someone is willing to pay for them, the higher the keyword price.
Besides just choosing the keywords on the basis of their price, you must make sure that they are coherent to one another. This means that users will not encounter sections of your website with awkwardly phrased terms. Furthermore, maintaining relevance is something you cannot afford to give up on.
Where can you get keywords?
Having determined the factors to consider during keyword research, logically, the other question is where you can get the right phrases. There is a wide range of places where these can be obtained.
YouTube and Google suggest
Whenever you type something into YouTube and Google Search Bars, often you’ll receive suggestions on other things you might be searching for. These suggestions are based on the search engine’s vast database, which is built by actual people looking for content on the Internet. Since Google suggested it, you can be sure lots of people are looking for said terms.
Searches related to
When you search for something on Google, the bottom of the search results page normally has a list of other things that people were looking for. This list has keywords directly related to your search term, which you may want to consider.
Your target audience can often be found on Reddit. With a little persistence, you’ll often see users discuss things that are associated with their business. Look at how people pose questions and coin key terms as this will provide you with invaluable insight.
Wikipedia
The Wikipedia table of contents is rich with key phrases. It can also be a great source of ideas for your next article.
Need help with keyword research? contact edirect
edirect is a leading SEO company in the UAE. We have the personnel to execute a comprehensive keyword research campaign that places your business on the map. Get in touch with us today for help with placing your business on the first page of the search results. We will perform a free SEO site analysis to give you an idea of how you rank.