Keyword Research

Keyword research is the first step in the SEO copywriting process and an essential part of your SEO strategy. Before you create your website’s content, you have to find out what search terms your audience uses. Their search terms are your keywords. Based on these keywords you can start writing useful and high-quality content. Here, we’ll take you through the many steps involved in keyword research.
Keyword research is part of SEO (search engine optimization). It’s the work someone does to come up with an extensive list of keywords they would like a website to rank for. To obtain such a list, website owners need to dig into their desired audience and search engines.

A focus keyword or keyphrase is the word or phrase you want a certain page on your site to be found for in Google. You determine your set of focus keyphrases by doing keyword research.

If you want to easily optimize a post or page for one of your keyphrases, you can enter this phrase into the focus keyphrase input field for a post or page with the Yoast SEO plugin. It will provide you with feedback on how to optimize your content for this phrase to improve the chance of ranking.

Long-tail keywords are more specific and less commonly searched for than, so-called, head keywords. They focus on a niche. The longer and more specific search terms are, the easier it will be to rank for them since there will be less competition. Even though there are less people searching for these terms, they might be more motivated to buy, subscribe, sign up or whatever you’d like them to do.
Your keyword strategy is about the decisions you make based on your keyword research. For instance, what content are you going to create first? Will you focus on the head or tail? How and where will you publish it? Will you create a piece of writing, a post or a product page, a video tutorial or an infographic?
Digging into search intent is key here: you have to discover what a searcher actually wants or needs. You’re not just looking at keywords, but the underlying goals of what a searcher wants to know, do or buy. Your content should provide a solution to the searcher’s “problem”. This is also known as content design.

How is keyword research done?

Determine your mission
Before starting anything, think about your mission. Reflect on questions such as: What is the main goal of your business or organization? What makes it special? Who exactly are you trying to reach? And, what promises do you make on your website? Take your time and literally write down your mission.
Make a list of keywords
The second step is creating a list of your keywords, preferably in a spreadsheet, such as Google Sheets or Excel. With your mission in mind, try to get into the heads of your desired audience. What will these people be looking for? What kind of search terms could they be using while looking for your amazing service or product? Which of their “problems” does your product solve?
Research your keywords
After you’ve created this first list, it’s time to dive a bit deeper into your keywords. Luckily, there are some tools that make your keyword research a bit easier. The first is Google itself. Google the keywords you already came up with and check the searches Google suggests while you are typing. Those are the questions people actually asked Google! You can also check out the “related searches” on Google’s results page.
Don’t forget the long-tail
When people start out with keyword research, they tend to focus on very popular “head” terms. Unfortunately, those head keywords are mostly taken by large businesses. Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, get less search traffic, but there’s less competition too. Therefore it’s easier for you to rank on those keywords. Moreover, long-tail keywords even have a higher conversion value, as they focus more on a specific product or topic: a niche!
Analyze the competition
Whether you should go after long-tail keywords largely depends on your competition. If the competition in your niche is high, you’ll have a hard time ranking on competitive head terms. If you have little competition, you’ll be able to rank for more of your head terms.
Google the keywords that came out of your keyword research. Start with your most ‘head’ term. Check out the search engine result page (SERP). These are the websites you’ll be competing against once you optimize your content for such a keyword. Take a closer look: Do you see professional websites? Company websites? Are you ‘equal’ to these companies? Does your website fit among these sites? Is your company of similar size and does it have as much influence in your niche?
Take a closer look at search intent
Today’s SEO strategies should, for the most part, revolve around answering the questions people have or providing the best solution for their “problem”. Whenever someone enters a search query into a search engine, they are on a quest for something. Every type of question needs a specific answer.
Try to find out which intent your audience when they type a certain keyphrase into Google. Do they have an informational intent (try to find information on a specific topic), navigational intent (want to access a specific website), commercial intent (want to research something before buying) or transactional intent (looking to buy something right now)?
Determine a keyword strategy
Based on the data you’ve collected now, you can determine a keyword strategy. If you’ve followed the steps above, you should have a spreadsheet with a substantial amount of keyphrases, and information about the competition and the search intent of your audience for those keyphrases.
Now think about this question: How does my website hold up compared to the websites in the SERPs? Are you of equal size and marketing budget: go ahead and focus on those head terms. If not: try more long-tail keywords first. Focusing on a whole bunch of long-tail keywords combined could very well attract a lot of traffic.
Start constructing landing pages
In theory, this step is out of the scope of keyword research itself. Nevertheless, creating awesome landing pages is essential if you want to get traffic to your website. So, you’ll need to build landing pages for your search terms, but you don’t have to create all these pages immediately – it can be a long-term effort.