What is keyword research and how is it done? Keyword research involves finding the best keywords for your own website, in other words, understanding what search terms potential customers use on Google to find your services. The research reveals which keywords your customers are currently using to find your website and which keywords could help them find it more effectively. Keyword research offers significant benefits as the identified keywords can be utilized for your own search engine optimization and search engine advertising.

What Keywords Does Your Offering Cover?

To begin with, you can start thinking about keywords for your own website by considering your own products and services. Break down your offerings and related terms, even the headings on your website, into individual words that you can imagine your customers using when searching for your services on Google. You can list all these collected words in a spreadsheet, which can serve as a foundation for your own keyword research. Putting these words into various keyword tools can provide a realistic view of the variations in which these words are used or if there are any other related words or phrases to consider.

Which Keywords are Currently Performing Best on Your Site?

When conducting keyword research for a business unfamiliar with the topic, you’ll usually notice that most of the traffic to the site comes from branded search terms. It’s usually easy to achieve a high search ranking with branded search terms because brand names/industries are so distinct from one another that there’s little competition between them. However, when moving to keywords that correspond to products and services, the competitive situation might be entirely different.

Depending on the industry, you should initially list three types of keywords in your keyword list: those that generally relate to your industry, keywords that you can imagine your customers using on Google verbatim, and finally, keywords related to your brand. Building around these keywords, looking for various variations and permutations, will help you accumulate your own keyword list.

How to Choose Good Keywords for Your List?

Good keywords have certain characteristics: they accurately represent your service or relate to it, they have a high search volume, and they are not overly competitive. Often, keyword research efforts fall short when greed takes over and there’s a desire to compete with the highest volume keywords, those with the highest search volumes. However, it’s not recommended to solely base your keyword list on these high-volume keywords. It’s advisable to include keywords with potentially lower search volumes as well, as they generally make it easier to achieve better search rankings.

What Keywords Are Your Competitors Using?

If you want to be clever, you can also find out which competitors appear for keywords related to your own products or services. Some keyword tools come with features that allow you to roughly estimate competitors’ organic traffic, their best organic keywords, and other nuances affecting their search visibility. You can also draw inspiration from your competitors’ keywords for your own keyword list.

For instance, if you find yourself in a situation where your product/service is nearly identical to that of your competitor’s, such as both of you selling wool socks but in different online stores, you can borrow the competitor’s website name as a keyword. This strategy aims to appear when someone searches for your direct competitor’s name on Google. Generally, it’s not advisable to directly take keywords from competitors, as those keywords should match your own website. This method is not suitable for optimization but can be used in paid advertising.

Find and Utilize Keyword Potential

Untapped keywords could cost you and your business thousands of impressions per month from search rankings where potential customers are clicking through to your competitors’ sites. In search engine marketing, the goal is simply to be in the right place at the right time, and you shouldn’t miss that opportunity.

Once you’ve found your keyword potential based on keyword research results, it’s time to get to work. After compiling your own keyword list, plan your SEM (search engine marketing) strategy, which includes both SEO (search engine optimization) and SEA (search engine advertising). If you have a WordPress-based website, you can start with search engine optimization here.

Keyword research doesn’t end with the first study; it lays the foundation for optimization and search engine advertising. Keywords are constantly changing, new ones emerge, and some fade away. It’s crucial to stay informed about the fluctuation of your keywords and react to changes, especially if you’re actively marketing on search engines. Additionally, especially in search engine advertising, you’ll likely need to modify keywords based on match types (exact match, broad match, etc.) in the future.

Keyword Tools to Explore

Did you know that there’s a small search engine marketing specialist inside all of us? If this text awakened your inner specialist, take a look at the tools below if you feel it’s time to conduct keyword research!

• Google Trends (free, no registration required)
• Google Keyword Planner (requires registration)
• Ubersuggest (free, requires registration after a couple of uses)
• SEMRush (paid)