Cart is empty 
SEO is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies. It involves optimising your website to increase its visibility on Google and other search engines. The concept of SEO can be quite intimidating in the beginning, but once you master the main components, creating and implanting a strong SEO strategy should be easy.
Keywords are one of the most important elements of search engine optimisation. If you want your website to rank higher on search engine result pages and drive targeted traffic, you must use the right keywords. Here’s a quick guide on keyword research to get you started.
What is keyword search?
Before delving any further into keyword research, let us first look at keywords.
Keywords are the words and phrases that people type into search engines to find information on the internet. They are a critical component of your digital marketing strategy, but more so if you want to rank for organic search results. Therefore, before you get with any marketing campaign, it’s important that you know which words people use when searching for things in your niche, and this is where keyword search comes in.
Keyword research is the process of finding and analysing the phrases and search terms that customers enter into search engines to use that data for marketing purposes. Simply put, keyword research is getting to know the language of your target audience and using this knowledge to optimise your content.
Why is keyword research important?
Any marketing expert will tell you that keyword research is the basis of any digital marketing strategy. Here are some of the benefits of conducting keyword research.
Marketing trends insight
Conducting keyword research will give insight into marketing trends so that you can centre your content on trending and relevant topics.
Increased and engaged traffic
Google ranks content for relevance. Therefore, when you identify relevant keywords that match the searcher’s intent, Google will rank your website higher in SERPs, increasing your organic traffic.
Increased conversions
If your content offers customer’s solutions to their problems, they will be more inclined to buy from you. Keyword research helps you understand your customers’ pain points so that you can address them both in your content and your offerings.
What tools can you use to conduct market research?
There’s a great collection of both free and premium keyword research tools at your disposal. They include:
SEMrush
SEMrush is hands down the best SEO tool on the market. Some might say SEMrush is expensive. Or is it really? SEMrush is not expensive.
This tool gives you comprehensive data. It allows you to dig into the nitty-gritty like SERP features such as featured snippets, site links, reviews, image pack, etc., and granular analysis of current results.
Its Keyword Magic Tool is an international database with more than 20 billion keywords. It has a robust filtering system that allows you to group keywords by SERP features, search intent, topic, and so much more. To use SEMrush, all you have to do is enter your seed keyword, and the database will generate thousands of suggestions.
Google Keyword Planner (Free Tool)
Google Keyword Planner has been the go-to research tool for many marketers, but as SEO becomes more advanced, many of them are switching to more advanced tools. However, that is not to say that it’s obsolete; Google keyword planner is one of the most reliable keyword research tools because it’s designed by Google. That said because it’s intended for Google Ads, using it for SEO can be a bit difficult. GKP is free to use; you just need a Google Ads Account.
Google Predictions (Free Tool)
Google autocomplete is a Google search feature that provides search term predictions. As users type into the search bar, Google provides predictions until they find the search term they want to use. While this feature was created to make searching easy for web users, it can also help marketers and business owners conduct keyword research. By simply typing in your seed keyword, you can discover long-tail keywords frequently used by customers.
Before using Google predictions for SEO, ensure that you log out of your Google or use incognito mode so that your search history doesn’t influence your predictions.
‘People Also Ask’ (Free Tool)
The ‘People Also Ask‘ (PAA) box is a Google search engine results page feature that answers questions that people commonly search for on Google. Each answer comes from a web page, and Google provides a clickable link to the source below each one. You can use these questions to create useful content for your website visitors.
Google Related Searches (Free Tool)
Related searches are the eight search results at the bottom of a results page. Google generates them to give you more insight into who your customers are and their intent so that you can create valuable and relevant content.
SE Ranking
SE Ranking is comprehensive yet easy to use and affordable too. It allows you to find and analyse keywords against different metrics within a single interface. It also allows you to see your SERPS competitors, which is crucial when planning both organic and paid marketing campaigns.
Keyword research should be the backbone of all your marketing campaigns. If you need help finding the perfect keywords, contact us today to speak to our team of marketing experts.