In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) stands as a cornerstone strategy for driving organic traffic and enhancing online visibility.

At its heart, SEO is about making your content easily discoverable by search engines and, more importantly, by your target audience. While SEO encompasses a wide array of techniques and best practices, one critical aspect that often determines the success of your efforts is keyword research.

In this blog post, we’ll delve into the basics of SEO and explore why keyword research is indispensable for any content marketing strategy. Whether you’re new to SEO or looking to refine your approach, understanding the importance of keyword research can set the stage for a more effective and impactful online presence.

The Basics of SEO

“If you have a website, you want people to find it. That’s SEO,” says Suzanne Kearns, a Texas-based TWFH writer specializing in SEO. “SEO is what makes people see a website.” At its core, SEO involves optimizing your website and content to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

A few aspects that are important for SEO include:

• Title Tags: Make them compelling and keyword rich.
• Meta Descriptions: Keep them concise and informative.
• Header Tags: Structure content hierarchically using H1, H2, and H3 tags.
• Content: Be sure it’s high-quality and valuable.
• URL Structure: Use clean, descriptive URLs that include target keywords.
• Backlinks: Create links to your website from reputable websites, establishing authority and credibility.
• Social Media Engagement: Leverage social media platforms to promote your content, attract visitors, and act as trust signals.
• Site Speed: Note that fast load times are essential and help keep your bounce rate down.
• Mobile-Friendliness: Make sure your site functions well on all devices.

Gaining a spot on the coveted first few pages of SERP means more people find you, translating into increased visibility and more organic traffic, which can ultimately lead to more conversions and business growth.

And while it’s good to optimize as much of your website as you can, it’s important to know that good SEO is a result of a holistic, sustained strategy. As Kearns warns, “You can’t just do one piece of the puzzle. It’s got to be everything, combined at once.”

The Importance of Keywords in SEO

An essential part of SEO is identifying and using the best keywords. Gone are the days of keyword-stuffed blog posts and website pages, but the competition for ranking for influential keywords has not ended—it has simply evolved.

Search engines no longer look for content that is littered with keywords from the original search query. Instead, search engines like Google use algorithms that are sophisticated, finding content that best suits the user’s needs.

Says Kearns: “Google wants to know that when they are sending someone to your site, the user is going to get an answer to their question, and they are going to get good, relevant content. Google is not going to send someone to a site that uses keywords but doesn’t provide information that’s relevant.”

In other words, getting a good rank on SERP is now, more than ever, a matter of providing your audience with quality content. However, you still need to use keywords to track your rankings.

Knowing which keywords to rank for is essential in creating a robust SEO strategy. Identifying and using the right keywords will ensure that your content aligns with what your audience is searching for.

Find keywords to suit your SEO goals.

Deciding which keywords you need to focus on will largely depend on the type of service or product your website is selling and the kind of search inquiries that will lead users to you.

Here are the steps to identifying SEO keywords:

1. Brainstorm.

The first step to finding your perfect SEO keywords is brainstorming a list of words and phrases that are relevant to your products, services, or topics of interest.

Kearns gives the example of an imaginary online store that sells cowboy hats: “A keyword can be ‘cowboy hat,’ but you can even narrow it down more than that. Maybe you want to do ‘cowboy hat with feathers.’”

2. Use tools.

Once you have a few keywords, it’s time to head over to an SEO tool.

“When you have your ideas,” says Kearns, “like ‘cowboy hats with feathers,’ you will input that into the database, and it will show you how many people are searching for that a month. But it will also show you related keywords.”

The trick is having a look at the related keywords and finding the ones that are best suited to your needs and still have a relatively high search volume.

“You want keywords that are searched for enough that it’s going to make a difference. But you also want keywords that aren’t difficult to rank for. It’s a balancing act between those two things,” advises Kearns.

Specifically, Kearns suggests niche keywords that you have a chance to rank for. Tools that Kearns recommends for this step include SEMRush and MozPro.

Other handy SEO tools include Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, and Ahrefs.

3. Do a competitor analysis.

Knowing what your competition is up to is an essential part of running a business, and SEO is no different.

For this step, Kearns suggests using the above-mentioned SEO tools to have a look at what your competition is doing right and get a benchmark.

Moz, in particular, allows you to get a list of other companies in your industry, but you need to be able to pick out which ones are true competitors.

“For instance,” says Kearns, “if somebody is running an information-only site as compared to a site that sells products, you would want to go in and pick the competitors that have the same goal as you.”

Then, it is as easy as checking to see whether your competition is missing anything. “What information is the competitor not including? Is there anything out of date?” All of this can give you an idea of any opportunities you can make use of.

Implement keywords into your content strategy.

Once you’ve conducted your keyword research and compiled a list of target keywords, it’s time to integrate them into your content strategy.

The first step is to check whether you have any existing content that can be repurposed for your new content strategy using the keywords you identified. This includes any titles, descriptions, headings, content, or URL structures. Google will simply reindex your website and give it a new ranking.

Next, create fresh content that is in line with your strategy and that makes use of the keywords you identified. The trick here, says Kearns, is to “be useful, relevant, and better than your competition.”

The golden rule is to create valuable content that addresses the needs and interests of your audience. The more engaging your content is, the more likely your audience will spend time on your site or share your links, which will result in an increase in your position on SERP as search engines reward you for creating quality content.

Monitor and adjust.

It’s important to remember that SEO requires ongoing monitoring and adjusting.

If you find your content campaign is not hitting its goals, have a look at your key performance indicators (KPIs) and adapt based on what you’re seeing.

Sometimes it can feel like guesswork, says Kearns, but it’s guesswork based on your KPI results.

Kearns gives the example of losing 30 or 40 points in a couple of keywords. “That’s an easy fix,” she says. “Simply include those keywords in your next blog posts or in your website content.”

Another aspect is to determine whether you are using too many keywords, not enough, or perhaps even the wrong keywords. Either way, “Keywords are everything when you’re trying to rank,” Kearns reiterates.

Sometimes, however, keeping track of all these aspects of SEO can feel overwhelming, which is why Kearns recommends outsourcing this part of the business to professionals. “Hiring an SEO professional also means they can also think outside of the box and suggest things that other people aren’t doing.”

Using AI for SEO

Unfortunately, when it comes to SEO, AI programs like ChatGPT will always be a little behind. That’s because the program is trained using information from the internet that is at least two years old.

Kearns notes that AI is great for organization and research, but it can easily get things wrong. So, it is essential to double-check everything.

Conclusion

SEO is a necessary part of a website and essential to get your content to the right audience. By understanding and leveraging the right keywords, your content can connect with your audience and create conversions.

Remember that the most important part of keyword research is not finding popular terms but creating quality content using the language of your audience