Keyword Research: The What, Why & How.

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All searches start with words typed (or spoken) into a search bar.

Everyone who comes to your site through a search engine…

Will be there because of the keywords that they searched.

If you want to:

Strategic keyword research helps you understand and find which of those words or phrases will help you to achieve your business goals.

It starts by researching what your customer is searching for and why!

In any given niche there are thousands of keywords that are being searched for.

All of these keywords fall into different categories with different potential outcomes.

You need to understand which keywords will deliver the most benefit to your business.

Having lots of people on your site is a great ego boost.

But if it doesn’t improve your business then it’s worthless.

Investing time and effort into keyword research can transform your business.

Strategic keyword research has played a huge part in my generating seven figures of income from my blog (as you can see on my income reports). On any given month I reach over 45,000 people through Google:

Not all of these people are buyers (if they were I’d have won the internet by now).

But they are targeted searchers whose goals align with the goals of my business.

If you get your keyword research right and create valuable content…

…I have no doubt you can see similar results (if not better).

Should You Build Your Content Around Keywords Or Topics?

The best content for search engines is topic-driven and optimised with keywords.

To explain what I mean, let me give you an example…

My how to make money on Fiverr tutorial is one of the top generators of traffic for my site.

It fluctuates from time to time, but it consistently brings people in by their thousands:

You can see that the article itself is well optimised for the keyword:

“How to make money on Fiverr”

The keyword is quite prominent in the article-

However this content wasn’t built just because it was a high-traffic keyword to rank for, or because my gut told me it was right. It was a more calculated process.

I accepted this guest post to be published on my site for a few reasons:

Once the post had hit these criteria it was able do take a closer look at keyword research.

I looked for:

A valuable keyword >> with the right intent >> that would bring people to my site.
 
And over time, it started to not only rank for the target keyword…

…but also a range of related keywords

When creating your own content I urge you to think topic first, then keywords second.

1. Find the topic you want to write about that fits with your brand and business goals.
2. Then optimise it for the high value and high intent keywords.

But how do you determine the value and intent of keywords?

How To Determine The Value Of A Keyword

To determine the value of a keyword you have to understand your own business goals.

What is it with this keyword or this piece of content, that you’re trying to achieve?

Perhaps you want people to: enter your sales funnel, buy your new product, join your mailing list or listen to your podcast.

First you need to figure that out.

Then you can work backwards and look at how someone might be searching.

Let’s say you have a blog about shaving.

You want people to subscribe to your weekly newsletter so they can buy from your affiliate links and you can begin to promote space on your list to advertisers.

Keywords like:

Would be ideal.

Why?

Because these people are looking for help and guidance on a specific topic.

And YOUR BUSINESS could be who gives it to them.
 
But first you need to determine the value of the keyword to your individual business.

To work this out for your website, ask yourself a few questions-

If you feel you’ve reached a comfortable “Yes!” from these questions…

You can begin to look at using the keyword.

You could also go the extra mile to test these keywords.

Place a Google Adwords advert for 24 hours so that you automatically rank and see how it performs.

This will give you data on:

Which can help you decide if this is a keyword you want to work with before you make a big investment.

Or if you want to change your content and keywords to better fit your goals.

If you need help gathering this information then take a look at my free keyword research template that automates a lot of the work for you.

How To Determine The Intent Of A Keyword

Keyword intent can often be determined by the prefix or suffixes attached to the main term.

There are two types of intent we’re going to focus on here:

1. Commercial: The searcher wants to buy
2. Informational: The searcher wants to learn

Commercial search terms are prefixed or suffixed with words associated to a purchase.

These buyer keywords, more often than not contain the words below (or a similar variation):

People that are searching like this are ready to buy!!!

If you’re selling products directly, commercial intent keywords are paramount!

Informational keyword searchers are looking to gain more information and are phrased accordingly.

You can expect these kinds of words to be included:

Much like value, this intent must align with your business.

What are you trying to achieve and how does it relate to the person searching?

If you’re selling houses in Miami – commercial keywords are going to be your go-to.

If you’re running a blog about how to buy a new home in Florida…

Informational keywords are better suited to your ideal customer.

Understand who you’re selling to and what you want to achieve and then these last two sections of this page will become much clearer.

For example on this blog I strictly target informational keywords because my goal is to help people reach their goals and that usually starts with a question.

Where as with Ecommerce SEO, I prefer to target mostly transactional keywords that are also supported by informational keywords to help influence peoples buying decisions.

Every business is different.

2 Types Of Keyword You Should Be Using

There are lots of different types of keyword.

But for the most part your keyword research should be focused on informational and transactional keywords that fall into the following categories-

#1: Broad Keywords

Broad match keywords usually provide decent traffic and the searcher has a rough idea of what they want.

These are keywords like-

The problem with these terms is they are open to interpretation and deliver lower conversion rates than my next suggestion.

But:

They usually offer high levels of traffic and depending on your niche, can be relatively easy to compete for at a page level.

#2: Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are responsible for around 70% of all searches. They are my favourite type of keyword to target because-

WAIT!

Less search volume is better?

Yes! Because these keywords convert at a MUCH HIGHER rate, they usually deliver more sales with much less traffic.

Examples of long tail keywords are:

I love long-tail keywords because they hit that sweet spot between competition, traffic and conversion.

WARNING: there is one type of keyword that you shouldn’t use: the meta keywords.

How To Brainstorm Keyword Ideas For Free

There are a number of tools you can use to help brainstorm keyword ideas for free.

Just grab yourself a pen and a piece of paper and follow along.

Of – you can download my intelligent spreadsheet that makes keyword research easy.

The Google Method

Open up a Google Incognito window.

Begin to type in some words that come to mind when you think of your topic.

You’ll notice a drop down menu that prompts you for suggested searches.

Something like this:

This is a cool way to start learning some of the most common head and body keywords.

If you search one of them you can also look at the related searches section at the bottom.

These will be some of the more commonly search long tail keywords for your niche.

The Wikipedia Way

Go to Wikipedia and type in the “head” keyword for your niche (like: Shaving). This will take you to the main encyclopedia page of that topic.

On that page will be a menu with lots of links and sub-topics relating to your niche-

Jump down to one of those topics and you’ll find an entire section filled with keywords. These will be a mix of head and body keywords.

You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner or these free keyword research tools to dig deeper.

Find The Keywords You’re Already Ranking For

A great place to get keyword ideas is to look at what your site is already ranking for.

Head over to a tool like SEMRush and sign up for a free account.

Once inside pop your website URL into the search bar at the top of the page:

Hit “search” and this will show you a brief breakdown of your site.

Including the keywords your website is currently ranking for:

You may find that you’re already ranking for a bunch of great keywords.

Wrapping This Up…

Strategic keyword research is critical and should form the foundation of your SEO!
 
Get it right and your site will be flooded with people that align to your business goals!

But remember-

You can also use Keywords Everywhere or Google Keyword Planner to dig further.

Click here to learn exactly how to do that. And if you’re looking for other SEO tools, take a look at my free seo tools list.