Why keyword research matters
Business Development | SEO
Key takeaways
- Keyword research involves identifying and analysing phrases that users are using to search for products and services.
- Keyword research matters because it helps you get a better understanding of your target audience’s needs.
- When keywords are applied to websites, it allows search engines to find them online.
As a busy business owner or marketing manager, there are lots of things that take up your time and attention. So, the idea that you need to stop and learn about something as granular as “why keyword research matters” might seem like a waste of time.
However, if you’re interested in growing your business, this information is for you. Keywords are crucial to the performance of your website. They have the power to bring in more (or less) traffic and therefore more (or less) leads.
So, before you dismiss this as something only SEO specialists need to worry about, read on, and find out what keyword research matters for your business goals.
Firstly, a few definitions are required.
What is keyword research?
Keyword research is an essential part of any search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy. It involves identifying and analysing the specific keywords and phrases that people use to search for products, services, or information related to a particular business or industry.
Keywords can be long or short and can have various intentions behind them. Some are informational – the user only wants to learn about a topic. But others have commercial intent and are written by users who are interested in a product or service.
Sometimes users know the brand (or company) they want to use and use “branded” keywords. Others include directions and are known as navigational keywords.
All keywords sit somewhere on a user’s “customer journey”, an imaginary series of steps that lead a person from recognising that they have a problem, finding a website that might help, to solving that problem. So, an informational keyword might belong to the first stage of the customer journey, when the prospect is looking for a solution, whereas a commercial keyword will sit further along the journey when they’re comparing companies that offer similar solutions.
Discovering and then mapping out where these keywords need to sit is called “keyword research”.
So, how does keyword research help you grow your business? There are several reasons, and we’ll look at them in turn.
Want to know how to do keyword research yourself? Learn more here.
1. Because it helps users find you online
Firstly, without keyword research (and keywords), users would never find your website. It doesn’t matter how good your product or service is, if you are using words and phrases to describe it that no one is searching for, then nobody will ever find it! You would be surprised how common an issue this is.
Try and imagine a library the size of the moon! There are not just millions or even billions of books in this library but tens of billions, with more books being added every day. These books are all the websites on the internet. The chapters inside the books are the web pages that exist on these websites, and inside these chapters are pages and lines of text…that’s your content.
Here’s the rub…there is no librarian and no indexing system. If you are like me, you are old enough the remember libraries with rows and rows of tiny little wooden drawers filled with alphabetised little cards, cross-referenced by author and subject…ah, those were the days!
But alas, no. There are no little wooden drawers, no cards, no touch screen digital indexing system and no librarian. So how on earth do you find the right chapter in the right book in a library with no filing system?
Enter search engines, or more accurately, search engine spiders. I always think spiders is such an apt name for them because they literally crawl along every strand of silk connecting all the websites across the internet, indexing them all. It’s all very well for search engines to have all this content indexed like a giant, all-powerful librarian, but how do we access it? Enter stage left…keywords!
When users type search terms into search engines, search engines look to deliver the website or page that best fits that search term so that users can get access to the information that they are looking for.
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2. It helps you understand your target audience
Secondly, keyword research provides insight into what people are searching for, what their needs are, and how they express them. This helps you understand your target audience better. The better understanding you have of your target audience, the better you will be able to provide the kinds of services that they want.
3. It gives you an advantage
Rather than just filling your website full of keywords that you know users are using, using keyword research carefully and strategically can help you rank higher than your competitors. This involves looking for keyword “gaps”. By analysing the keywords that your competitors are using and ranking for, you can identify gaps and opportunities for your own SEO strategy. This can help you to improve your rankings and gain a competitive advantage in your industry.
4. It increases website traffic:
Next, optimising content for keywords that have high search volume can help you attract more traffic to your website, which can lead to increased brand awareness and sales. This happens because traffic is one of the signals that search engines use to determine how high your site is ranked on the results pages for each keyword. So, the more traffic you can direct to your site, the greater the chance you’re ranked highly.
As we all know, most users only ever click on the first page of results, so the higher you rank the greater the likelihood that you’ll get those all-important click-throughs.
In fact, some research suggests that if your website is ranked no.1 on Google, you will receive 27% of the click-throughs for that keyword. The percentage drops off quite rapidly. By the time you get to position 5 on the organic results page, you can only expect to get 6% of click-through traffic for that keyword.
Shockingly, according to a study by Ahrefs, 90.63% of content on the internet gets no traffic whatsoever from Google! Obviously, you want your website to be part of the 10% that does receive traffic!
5. Helps to prioritise content creation
Finally, keyword research can help businesses prioritise the creation of content that addresses the specific needs and interests of a company’s target audience. This helps to ensure that the content you produce is relevant and valuable to your audience. No point in writing a blog if you have no audience!
By writing content that answers your target audience’s informational needs, as well as their commercial ones, you can suck them into your obit and draw them into your sales funnel, resulting in more leads.
How does content marketing grow your business? Find out more
Keyword research: crucial for your marketing strategy
Overall, keyword research is a crucial part of any SEO strategy as it helps you to understand your target audience better, improve your visibility in search engines, and attract more traffic (and leads) to your website. Keyword research importance cannot be understated. As it is such a crucial stage in your marketing development, sometimes it’s best to leave this part of your SEO strategy to a specialist SEO agency.
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