SEO Keyword Research Basics
SEO keyword research plays an important role in your company’s ability to drive site traffic through organic search. Without proper research, your digital strategy can’t use keywords and key phrases to connect the right audience with your products or services, and you will miss opportunities to leverage organic search for competitive advantage.
SEO Keyword Research Benefits
Robust keyword research is the foundation of effective SEO. By performing comprehensive SEO keyword research early and often, you can improve the visibility of digital assets, expand your online reach and achieve important business outcomes for your organization. Some of the other benefits that your company can achieve by incorporating SEO research into your digital strategy include:
- Reach New Site Visitors: SEO can connect new prospects and customers with your brand, generating new site visitors from individuals who conduct Web searches for topics related to your business or offerings.
- Promote New Service Areas: Keyword research is often used to help companies promote new service areas or product categories. By gaining a clearer understanding of related search terms, you can map a strategy that increases the visibility of your new services or products in search results.
- Meet the Needs of Target Audiences and Searchers: SEO keyword research can also be an ideal tool for identifying the needs of granular audience segments. By researching keywords and key phrases, it’s possible to improve both the quality and the quantity of visitors to your site.
- Uncover Insights into Market and Terminology Trends: Firms use SEO research to uncover market trends and terminology that customers are searching for online. This information can be used to improve site visits and to better inform the company’s larger marketing strategy.
- Provides Fodder for Content Marketing Initiatives: Search and content marketing go hand in hand. Keyword research is often the starting point for content marketing initiatives because it highlights gaps and opportunities that are ripe for the creation of high quality digital content.
Tips for Effective SEO Keyword Research
SEO research can be as basic or as sophisticated as you need it to be. However, there are a few things that must be considered to improve the impact of your SEO keyword research efforts:
- Look for long-tail keyword opportunities. High traffic, low competition keywords and key phrases are the sweet spot in SEO. Long-tail keywords (highly specific keywords and key phrases) produce more results than generic terms because there is less search competition.
- Identify competitive opportunities. When you perform SEO research, it’s important to evaluate your competitors’ search performance. Competitive analysis often reveals opportunities to improve organic search for keywords that can deliver competitive advantage.
- Consider content. Backend SEO fixes and enhancements are important. But quality content is the primary vehicle for capturing the attention of search engines. As you research keywords, consider your existing digital content as well as the pieces of content that will need to be created to achieve your organic search goals.
Walker Sands is a premier agency for digital strategy and SEO keyword research. Unlike firms that only specialize in keyword research, we offer a comprehensive range of digital services-giving us important insights about the way SEO needs to be integrated into your organization’s entire digital ecosystem.
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