Blog posts - and content in general - are an essential component to your marketing strategy. But if you don’t conduct keyword research and people can’t find your content, it doesn’t matter how much effort you put into creating it because no one will see it.
Cue keyword research, a process used to discover the exact words and phrases used by people when making a query on a search engine, like Google. Researching keywords is the search engine optimization (SEO) strategy integral to succeeding in attracting your target audience to your website and blog content.
To help you discover how to conduct your keyword research and find the queries used by your prospective customers or families, we’ve outlined our favorite SEO tools below.
1. Google’s Keyword Planner
If you want to identify broad keywords quickly, Google Keyword Planner is the best place to start. With this tool, you simply type in a keyword you believe represents the question your readers are seeking to answer through your content and the tool will give you the potential traffic, search volume, and how much it would cost to advertise for your search term.
For reference, in SEO, traffic refers to the number of visits to your website from organic or paid search. Volume refers to the number of searches that occur for a specific keyword.
You will need to have an active Google Ads account to utilize this keyword research tool. If you do have an account, we highly recommend this tool as it is easy to use, provides high quality information, and it’s also free.
2. Ubersuggest
Another tool to consider is Ubersuggest.
This tool gives you a domain overview and allows you to see what is working for your competitors so you can both adopt and improve those strategies. It gives you an inside look at your competitor’s pages and which organic keywords they’re ranking for. It gives you keyword suggestions, showing the volume, competition, and trends of the words so you know exactly what to write. To further help you come up with content ideas, Ubersuggest helps you discover the content pieces getting the most social shares and inbound links in your field.
It also gives you inbound link data, one essential component to measuring the success of your content.
3. Google: Performing the searches yourself
Sometimes the simplest option is the best option! Approach Google in the shoes of your expected audience and start searching.
With your persona in mind, Think about questions they would ask or the specific words they’d use to make a search query. What is the question your reader will get the answer to when they read your content?
Using this information, type it into a search engine and see what comes up.
Keep in mind that our persona may use a search engine other than Google to search for content. Depending on their location, demographics, and the nature of the query, they may use Bing, Yahoo, Youtube, or other social media platforms.
When typing in your search query, take note of Google autocomplete, featured snippets, “People also ask” section, and related searches located at the bottom of the page for further ideas.
The reason people turn to search engines is that they want to find something or they want to learn something. As long as you’re appealing to that human curiosity then you’re always going to find the right keywords to attract the prospects that relate to your business. If you don’t put yourself in your prospect’s shoes, it’s hard to appeal to them through your blog content.
Why is using the right keywords important?
Organizational growth is dependent on the two key elements of trust; relationship and credibility. Understanding your ideal client or family and creating content that serves their needs is the way to establish trust and achieve your goals.
Doing your keyword research is one way you can help your personas find you.
With search engine algorithms getting more intelligent and learning how we interact with digital content and the intent of our search queries it’s more important than ever to understand how to effectively use long-tail keywords in your content, words that are more specific and usually longer than commonly searched keywords. Using long-tail keywords in your SEO strategy is beneficial because there is less traffic and they usually have a higher conversion rate.
Understanding what humans are actually looking for is key to SEO and keyword research. This encompasses the idea of SEO. You’re not trying to appease search engines, you’re trying to provide solutions and value to your audience members.
The short version: write your content for humans (your personas) and not for search engines.
Now that you understand how to find the perfect keywords for your blog posts, we invite you to learn how to actually create content marketing strategy to get you the results you crave.
In our new Marketing Action Plan workshop, we will provide you and your team with the tools you need to begin your marketing strategy development or to ramp up your current efforts with your existing team and resources.
Find out more by clicking the button below!
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