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Why is keyword research important? That’s the question we’re going to be answering in this article.
If you want the best possible chance of sending organic search traffic to your website, you NEED to carry out keyword research.
You’re going to need to carry out keyword research, whether you’re:
Luckily, it’s quite a straightforward process (we’ll get into that later). But before we get into why keyword research is important, let’s define exactly what keyword research is…
Keyword research is the process of identifying words that you want to rank for in the search engines.
It’s all about identifying what words your audience is searching for and then making content around those words to lure them onto your site.
Let’s give some examples:
Hopefully, you get the point.
Whilst we wish it was as simple as identifying what your target audience is searching for, there are other factors that come into play. You need to pick keywords that you stand a chance of ranking for (more on this later).
In order for you to carry out effective keyword research, you need to understand why keyword research is so important.
Below, we’ve gave our top 6 reasons as for why you need to carry out keyword research on a consistent basis.
Whilst it may be obvious in some markets, understanding what you target audience is searching for is not always obvious.
It goes without saying but to get your website/business in front of your target audience, you need to be creating content centred around what their searching for.
Finding exactly what your target audience is searching for is the first step towards making sure your website is the very first thing they see.
The next reason as for why you need to carry out keyword research is because not all keywords are the same.
There are informational keywords, navigational, commercial, and transactional keywords:
Informational keywords are keywords that people are searching for in order to find information – An example of an informational keyword phrase is “Why Is Keyword Research Important?”.
Articles under this phrase serve no other purpose than to provide the reader with information. Informational keywords are great for attracting traffic but not so great for generating sales.
These are keywords that people are searching for in order to find a specific page or website.
For example, Neil Patel (a leading website in the SEO space) has a keyword tool called “UberSuggest”. The term “Uber Suggest” generates tons of search queries from users trying to find the keyword tool. This is a navigational keyword.
Commercial keywords are terms that people are searching for in order to receive information on a brand of a product.
Commercial keywords are targeted through the following types of content:
As you can probably guess, transactional keywords are keywords that people are searching for in order to buy something.
Targeting popular transactional keywords is the basis of any E-Commerce SEO campaign. Transactional keywords often include:
The next reason as for why keyword research is so important is because it allows you to analyse the competition.
Through identifying and analysing keywords within your niche, you’ll start to gain insight into what your competition is doing. Here are a few examples:
Whilst your whole marketing strategy shouldn’t be centred upon your competition; identifying how you stack up against them can give a helping hand when planning out your own strategy!
The most obvious reason as for why keyword research is important is because it helps you to identify content opportunities.
One of the most painful things to see is writers putting hard work into their articles, only for nobody to visit their articles because they didn’t do the keyword research that was required.
And when we’re talking about keyword research, this is not limited to one platform. You can identify content opportunities for multiple platforms through keyword research. Here are a few examples:
Hopefully, you get the point!
As we mentioned in the last point, obviously you want to do keyword research to identify content opportunities but you don’t want to choose just any keywords.
If that was the case you could probably just guess keywords that your audience is searching for! Here are two problems with just picking any old keyword:
That’s why you want to go after long-tail keywords (especially if you’re just starting out). These are keyword phrases that are a bit longer and usually consist of several words.
Because they consist of several worlds and are less popular than the short keywords, they usually haven’t been covered by the bigger names in your organisation. This gives you a chance to rank for them!
The sixth and final reason as for why keyword research is important is because it allows for you to better understand your market.
Understanding your market is one of the core steps to building a great digital marketing campaign. Here’s why:
Keyword research can provide you with a glimpse into what your target audience are reacting to and what they’re not. Which as you can imagine is very much worth knowing!
Whilst we could write a whole article on how to conduct keyword research effectively, we’ll try to whittle it down to just three main points.
Remember to take into account the size of your website, if your website is pretty established in your niche then you may have a chance of ranking for the most popular keywords. On the other hand, if you’re new then stick to the least difficult keywords (we’ll explain how below).
The first thing you want to do when carrying out keyword research is to start broad.
By not pigeon-holing yourself into a very specific niche, you can gather a whole collection of keyword ideas and start going after different subsections of your target audience.
You may even be able to introduce completely different audiences to your website/business; an opportunity you wouldn’t have if you were being super specific with your niche.
The second tip i have for you is to make your life 10 times easier by using an SEO tool.
You can choose from the likes of:
These tools can automate a lot of the keyword research process for you, they can do stuff like:
Whilst most high quality SEO tools do require a paid subscription, the likes of Semrush and UberSuggest offer a daily free sample so you can get started today!
Our third and final keyword tip is to look for keywords that are high in volume and low in competition (especially if you’re starting out).
By making sure that the keywords that you target are high in the number of searches per month, this makes sure your content creation efforts are worth it and that you’re going to reach a large audience.
Similarly, by making sure that the competition for your keyword is on the lower side, you’ll know that your content has a chance to rank. Competing for highly competitive keywords is normally an uphill battle for websites that are not as established as their competition.
Here’s how you can identify high volume keywords:
Both of these will give you an estimated search traffic for each keyword.
To identify low competition keywords:
Hopefully this article has been helpful with explaining exactly why keyword research is so important.
If you would like to read more about the subject then check out this article by the guys at WooRank, it provides a fantastic take on the importance of keyword research.
If you would like to read more from me then check out this article that i wrote on getting started with SEO for free. Hopefully, you’ll find it as informative as this one!
And last but not least, if you’re looking for help with your SEO efforts, there’s no better SEO agency than Dhillons Digital Marketing (we may be a little bit bias). Be sure to shoot me an email at morgan@dhillonsdigitalmarketing.com.
