The process of keyword research involves finding and analyzing the search terms that people enter into search engines, in order to use that data for a specific purpose, such as search engine optimization (SEO) or marketing. This research can uncover queries to target, how popular these queries are, their ranking difficulty, and more.

Why is keyword research important?

The research you do to find the right keywords for your target audience can give you important insight into what those people are actually searching on Google. This information can help you form your content strategy, as well as your greater marketing strategy.

If you want more traffic to your website, you should target the keywords that people use when they are conducting research online. This way, your content will be more successful in getting in front of your audience.

In the inbound methodology, we create content that is focused on what our audience wants to discover, rather than what we want to tell them. Our audience comes to us for this information.

This all starts with keyword research.

To learn more about how Arel=”noopener” target=”_blank” hrefs can help with your SEO keyword research, read our case study and interview.

Conducting keyword research has many benefits, the most popular reasons being:

Marketing Trend Insight

Conducting effective keyword research can help you understand current marketing trends, and center your content on relevant topics and keywords your audience is search for.

Traffic Growth

If you want your website to rank higher in search engine results, you need to identify the best fitting keywords for the content you publish. This will attract more traffic to your website.

Customer Acquisition

If you have content that would be useful for other business professionals, you can provide it to them along with a call to action that will direct them through the buyer journey from the awareness stage to purchase.

You can provide answers to the questions that most people in your audience want by researching keywords for their popularity, search volume, and general intent.

Although Google has progressed beyond using exact-match algorithms, keywords are still important.

Keywords vs. Topics

There is a lot of talk about how SEO has changed a lot in the last 10 years and how keywords are not as important as they used to be for ranking purposes.

The statement is true to some extent but from an SEO perspective, it is a different approach. The SEO professionals focus on the intent behind the keyword and whether the content solves for that intent.

But that doesn’t mean keyword research is an outdated process. Let me explain:

Keyword research is a way of finding out what topics are of interest to your audience, as well as how popular these topics are. You can use keyword research to determine which topics to create content on, and which keywords to target.

Elements of Keyword Research

The three main elements to focus on when doing keyword research are:

1. Relevance

Your content needs to be relevant to what people are searching for, otherwise it won’t rank high in Google’s search engine. Additionally, your content must be the best available resource on the topic; if it isn’t, why would Google bother ranking it highly?

2. Authority

If you want to rank highly on Google, you need to be seen as an authoritative source. This means having high-quality, informative content on your website, and promoting it to earn social signals and backlinks. If there are already many established, high-ranking sources for a particular keyword, it will be difficult to compete unless your content is truly exceptional.

3. Volume

If no one ever searches for the keyword you’re trying to rank for, you’ll never get any traffic, even if you manage to rank on the first page. It’s like setting up a store in a ghost town.

The monthly search volume (MSV) is a measure of how often a keyword is searched for across all audiences in a month.

How to Research Keywords for Your SEO Strategy

To come up with a list of terms you should be targeting, follow this keyword research process:

Step 1: Make a list of important, relevant topics based on what you know about your business.

Start by brainstorming a list of 5-10 topics that are important to your business. These topics will become “buckets” that you’ll use to help come up with specific keywords later.

Put yourself in your ideal customer’s shoes and think about what kinds of topics they would like to learn about and then write an article for your blog about that. Your most popular blog topics should be about the things your ideal customers are interested in. Write articles from their perspective to give them the information they want. If you were a company like HubSpot, for example — selling marketing software (which happens to have some awesome SEO tools… but I digress), you might have general topic buckets like:

• “inbound marketing” (21K)
• “blogging” (19K)
• “email marketing” (30K)
• “lead generation” (17K)
• “SEO” (214K)
• “social media marketing” (71K)
• “marketing analytics” (6.2K)
• “marketing automation” (8.5K)

To the right of each keyword are numbers in parentheses which indicate the monthly search volume. This data allows you to assess how vital these topics are to your audience and how many sub-topics you might need to create content on to be successful with that keyword. Moving on to step 2 will allow you to learn more about these sub-topics.

Step 2: Fill in those topic buckets with keywords.

You should now brainstorm some keywords that relate to the topics you want to focus on. These keywords should be terms that you think are important to rank for in the search engine results pages, as your target customer is likely to be searching for these specific terms.

For instance, if I took that last topic bucket for an inbound marketing software company — “marketing automation” — I’d brainstorm some keyword phrases that I think people would type in related to that topic. Those might include:

• marketing automation tools
• how to use marketing automation software
• what is marketing automation?
• how to tell if I need marketing automation software
• lead nurturing
• email marketing automation
• top automation tools

This is just to get a list of potential phrases customers might use when searching for topics related to the chosen bucket. The list will be narrowed down later.

Google is encrypting an increasingly large number of keywords, but there is still valuable info to be gleaned from the keywords your website is already being found for. Google Analytics or HubSpot’s Traffic Analytics tool can show you which keywords are being used to find your site.

Step 3: Understand How Intent Affects Keyword Research and Analyze Accordingly.

As mentioned before, user intent is key to ranking well on search engines. This means that it is more important that your web page solves the problem the searcher is looking for, rather than just containing the keyword they used. Therefore, your keyword research needs to take this into account.

When you are looking at keywords, it is easy to just take them at face value. However, keywords can have different meanings that you might not be aware of. Because the intent of a search is so important to your ranking, you need to be careful about interpreting the keywords you are targeting.

For example, if you want to write an article about starting a blog, you need to consider what the person searching is looking for. Are they looking to learn how to write a single blog post, or are they looking to learn how to launch a website specifically for blogging? If you’re only targeting people interested in the latter, you need to make sure the keyword reflects that before using it.

If you want to see what a user’s intent is for a keyword, the best way to do it is to type the keyword into a search engine. This will give you an idea of the different types of content that come up in relation to that keyword. Make sure that the type of content Google shows is closely related to what you want to create.

Step 4: Research related search terms.

Looking up related keywords is a great way to find more keywords to add to your lists.

If you’re struggling to find more keywords related to a specific topic, you can look at the related search terms that appear when you enter a keyword into Google. When you type in your phrase and scroll to the bottom of the results page, you’ll see some suggestions for related searches. These keywords can give you ideas for other keywords to consider.

Step 5: Use keyword research tools to your advantage.

Keyword research and SEO tools can help you come up with more keyword ideas based on exact match keywords and phrase match keywords based on the ideas you’ve generated up to this point. Some of the most popular ones include:

• Ahrefs
• SEMrush
• Ubersuggest
• Google Keyword Planner
• SECockpit
• Keywords Everywhere
• Moz
• KeywordTool.io
• KWFinder

3 customer insights gained by keyword research

Keyword research isn’t dead, but it has changed over the years. Columnist Stoney deGeyter shares how keyword research can be used to gain insights into the needs and interests of your potential customers.

Finding your target audience

Don’t you know who your potential customers are? Many enterprises are aware of a lot about their target market and will even build personas to help them focus on them. But no persona can be completely developed without examining the keyword data for the goods or services you offer.

The keywords that your audience uses in their searches can tell you a lot about them. For example, business people will use different phrases than students. And students will search differently from hobbyists, who will search differently from information seekers.

If you build your personas with only one type of searcher in mind, you could be missing out on traffic, sales, or exposure

The phrases in a text can tell you if you are able to provide the value being sought. For example, if there are no videos on your site, you cannot provide value to searchers who are looking for videos. That’s an audience you just can’t (currently) satisfy.

You can also try repurposing your content to better fit the needs of those who are not searching for business-related information.

Uncovering areas of interest

Once you know your audience’s interests, you can better assess which topics will be most compelling to them. Now that you know your audience, you need to know what interests them. What made them do the search in the first place? Once you know your audience’s interests, you can better assess which topics will most interest them.

The purpose of keyword research is to help you identify all the different interests that searchers have so that you can develop targeted content. This is especially useful for sites with blog posts, as it provides a never-ending supply of potential topics to write about.

Meeting searchers’ needs

One of the benefits of keyword research is that you can learn the different ways that people are searching for what you have to offer. This can give you insights into what your target audience is interested in.

Many businesses only look to their own experience and knowledge to understand terminology, rather than looking outside of their own experience. For example, you may make a widget, but a lot of other people might call it a gadget.

Even if your widget has the X function, searchers might be looking for the Y function. You might be able to add the Y function to your widget or create a new widget that is specifically for that function. You might also want to consider changing the name of your widget to something like “gadget.”

The key to creating content that will resonate with your audience is to figure out what they need. Once you know what they need, you can create content and solutions that will meet those needs. Each searcher wants to know what’s in it for them, and it’s your job to tell them!

It is important to write content that discusses the benefits of what you offer, but it is more important to make sure you are addressing the benefits that your audience desires. Do not focus on benefits that no one wants or needs, but make sure your content addresses the benefits that your audience is seeking.

Final thoughts

When you are doing keyword research, you will find that there are a lot of similarities between the different categories. You don’t have to try to appeal to everyone, but you should focus on the keywords that will be most beneficial for your business.

Keyword research provides a lot of insights about what searchers are looking for. Use this information to decide who your target audience should be and what type of content will be most effective. Instead of thinking about keywords themselves, think about what they reveal about searchers and how best to reach them.