Keyword research can be likened to market research for online businesses.’ During the business planning process, a market research is conducted to gather relevant and important information related to one’s market; which reveals a report about the prospect consumers of the market. In online businesses, a keyword research is conducted for the same purpose.
Search engines have algorithms that define how the search engine will rank the websites/blogs according to the keywords contained in them. Therefore, only relevant keywords must be used carefully in the content.
Whether you already own an online business, or are planning to start one; this article will teach you all the tips you need to enhance your keywords to such a superior level, that your rankings and conversion rates increase substantially. Attempt has been made herein: to leave no stone unturned in providing you with the best keyword research tactics that will shoot up the sales of your online business.
Importance of Keyword Research
As mentioned earlier: search engines have a built-in algorithm that processes keywords for ranking your website in search engines. To take full advantage of this process, one needs to publish high quality contents – by using the most relevant keywords – for the concerned target audience. Simply using the topmost ranking keywords from a keyword tool will not work.
Imagine that you typed in buy external sd card’ in a search engine which lead you to a website talking extensively about technical specifications of the latest smartphones’ but lacking in information regarding SD cards. Later, you find out that the marketer had tagged the keyword external sd cards’ in his blog or website.
Those who don’t realize the importance of keywords, generally use a keyword tool to find the topmost or medium ranking keywords, and utilize them in their posts, irrespective of the keywords’ requirement in the post. Using keywords this way is the best way to lose out on potential customers in your market.
Now that you have realized the importance of relevant keywords, you must remember one thing: using relevant keywords or targeted keywords in your content will not only result in higher rankings but also in winning sales and respect from the consumers. Later in the article, a few tactics are mentioned that will teach you on how to use the most relevant keywords for promoting your products or campaign.
Who Needs Keyword Research?
Keyword research is vital to anyone who wants to: win the trust of customers; make repetitive sales; and reach out to a wider audience in the market. An intelligently conducted keyword research will help you to promote your website faster and make sales conversion higher with each passing day. However, you do need to update your keywords in progress with your market.
Keyword research is absolutely essential to the following businesses:
E-Commerce – Since these websites sell a plethora of products to choose from, they need to narrow down their keywords so much so, that it results in instant conversions. For example, using various keywords ranging anywhere from shea butter cream’ to organic shea butter cream with extra virgin coconut oil’ will yield high conversion rates, as it will lead the consumer directly to the product that they’ve been searching to buy.
Local Businesses – Doctors, repair services, home delivery restaurants, etc can also utilize keyword research to get more customers everyday from their towns or cities. Using keywords from: your industry, service, city, charges, suburb, etc can optimize your local business’ website.
Affiliate Marketers – In this business mostly others’ products are promoted. Using keyword research with the related product(s), you can optimize your blog to fetch incessant sales. For example, if you’re selling a doughnut cutter, then using a keyword like: doughnut cutter 3.5 inch stainless steel’; will instantly attract those consumers who are ready to buy such a doughnut cutter.
Equipped with this knowledge, let us now get a deep insight on how to use relevant keywords from a keyword research to optimize a website for search engines.
1) Find Your Sub-Niche
One of today’s pre-requisites for operating an online business is to find a sub-niche. Gone are the days when using keywords like black leather shoes’ worked for conversions. These days, you have to be as specific as possible about what you’re selling online. The focus must be given to the attributes of the product more than anything else.
There are three steps that you need to go through to find your sub-niche, they are: category, niche and sub-niche. It would be advisable that you go even more down to find your perfect sub-niche in the markets. Once you’ve found your sub-niche, then keyword research will become hassle free as you’ll know beforehand what keywords will be of the most relevance to you.
Let’s suppose that you are indeed selling back leather shoes. There are many customers who’ll happen to land on your website, but won’t buy the black leather shoe that you are offering. Why? Because they were looking for specific black leather shoes that you don’t sell. So, how would you attract the customers who actually need the black leather shoes that you’re selling? You attract them by using relevant keywords of your sub-niche.
You can categorize your black leather shoes under their respective categories and niche, and then arrive at a relevant keyword like: black leather quarter brogue oxford shoes for men’, or black leather derby shoes for men’; etc.
2) Put Yourself in Your Consumers’ Pairs of Shoes
Now that you’ve found your sub-niche, you need to know your target audience’s demographic details a little bit to include more relevant keywords. You are basically trying to write in a language which your consumers use on the internet for their searches. Remember that: a fifty year old man and a twenty year old college student will not type in the same keywords to search for the same product.
To make this process a success, you need to try and legitimately think the way your customers would think while buying your product. Your potential target audience is already searching for that product elsewhere. They have a problem and they are using keywords to solve it. You can use those specific keywords and become their “solution.”
Find the hashtags related to your sub-niche and target audience, and then follow their updates on various social media websites. You can also join forums dealing with your product and watch your target audience’s activities. Through forums you can show your target audience that your product is the solution to their problem.
After following the hashtag updates on a regular basis, you will know what your potential customers are looking for. Use a search engine’s auto-complete feature to know of other words that are related to your product’s keywords. An alternate way to come up with a unique keyword is to use a thesaurus. Give a little twist to your keywords, but keep the meaning intact.
3) Long-Tail Keywords and Consumers’ Buying Decisions
After making a list of keywords related to your niche, product and target audience; you’ll need to refine the list and select only the most appropriate keywords. One of the most appropriate types of keywords is the long-tail keywords. Let’s see what a long-tail keyword is and how it influences a buyer’s decision into buying a product online.
Most online marketers might tell you that: any keyword that uses more than three words is categorized under long tail keywords. They are wrong. Long-tail keywords are defined by their low volume of search – say about 1,000 searches per month – but they guarantee more sales. Long-tailed keywords are typed in by those consumers who are hungry for the product and are ready to buy it instantly; hence, they are specifying many words in their keywords to find their exact product.
A person who wants to buy an oven to bake cakes will simply type in oven for baking cakes. These customers belong to the first phase of the purchase life-cycle. They are not sure what to buy; hence they spend time looking all over the internet for an oven. Once they start searching and reading others’ promotions on ovens, the customer realizes that instead of just an oven, he also requires to toast snacks and grill meat. So, now he will look for a combo like: best oven toaster grill with rotisserie. After which he’ll boil it down to: [brand name] with rotisserie 40 liters 1200 watts discount.
4) Silos
What if your website is selling many different products whose related keywords are entirely different? Do not worry. Use the siloing method and categorize your products under different sections on your website. Google loves any website/blog whose information is well organized. Websites with organized content automatically qualify to rank higher than websites that don’t have an organized content.
Organizing and siloing your website’s content is fairly simple. Put each product under their respective category. Let’s consider an example to make this clearer. Suppose that you are selling four products in your website: deodorant stick and after shave lotion for men; and body spray and perfume for women. Your website will now be organized accordingly. There will be two main sections: For Men’ and For Women’. Under For Men’ will be best deodorant sticks’ and best after shave lotions’. Under For Women’ will be best body sprays’ and best perfumes’. Then, all your products will fit under the appropriate fourth level sub-category, after being properly categorized.
Once your products are listed on your website under appropriate silos, your search engine would love to promote it because of its organized information. Also, provide further links to other products on your website via anchor texts. The content of each individual promoted product must also contain its respective LSI keywords. An organized content – with interlinking and LSI keywords – is a favorite website of any search engines’ algorithm.
5) Keyword Trends
After choosing the most appropriate keywords for your website and products, and organizing them perfectly, you must take into consideration that the same keywords will not yield the same results in the future. Today, people who are searching for computer peripherals, use different keywords than they did five or six years ago. As technology changes itself continuously, and new features are being added to existing products, you need to stay updated with them, and update your content again with the most suitable keywords of the present time.
Believe it or not, but even the marketing strategies keep changing with the times. Google offers three amazing platforms, namely: Trends, Insights and Analytics; to keep up with the consumers needs, market changes and other developments. Learning how to utilize these tools for optimum benefit might keep your website ahead of the times.
To begin, use any keyword search trend tool and see how your keywords would perform in today’s markets. With Google Trends you can also know what other topics related to your keywords are “hot” in discussions around the web. You can easily target such audiences. Take it one step further with Google Insights and read charts of various activities of the users using your targeted keywords. The charts include various variables like location and time ranges regarding your keywords. Finally use Google Analytics and investigate the traffic of each of your targeted keywords.
Keep updating your website’s contents the moment you notice a major shift in keyword trends. It is very important to adapt your keywords and content to what people are searching for, at the present.
6) Competitive Analysis
This analysis is conducted to see what the competitors are up to. You must study your competitors if you want to gain an extra advantage over them in the online world. Understand, that before you, your competitors landed in the market and started selling the products that you are selling. They followed certain trends and introduced a few trends as well.
A competitive analysis is conducted to come up with a unique content which consumers have never read before. Any consumer would obviously buy from a website that provides in-depth content about the product, rather than from a website where only the manufacturer’s marketing content has been copied and pasted.
The main motive behind competitive analysis is not to compete; but to come up with an original content using the latest trending long-tail keywords, that attracts your buyers’ attention and enables them to buy the products from your website.
If you’re using the same keywords that your competitors have already used, then you will simply be competing with them in bringing in buyers to your website. Remember that: they already have an advantage in the search engines. Instead, you should eliminate competition by conducting a competitive analysis; and optimize your website with unique information containing relevant long-tail keywords.
Final Thoughts
Now you have with you six very important and professional keyword research tactics. When applied properly, these simple steps have the ability to propel your website to even the first rank in any search engine. It all depends on how well you use relevant keywords in developing your very own unique content for the promotion of your product(s).
As with any other skill, keyword research also requires patience, practice and persistence to be highly successful. Invest in specialized software tools for conducting various researches related to your website’s keyword research.
To create a highly optimized SEO friendly website: find your sub-niche; think of the needs of your prospective customers; use relevant long-tail keywords; organize your website’s content; keep up with the latest trend changes of your keywords; and study your competitors deeply to come up with a unique content.