Keyword research is an essential part of any business’s SEO strategy. It forms the first step in the SEO copywriting process. Even before you create the content for your site, you should know the exact search terms your audience uses. In fact your keywords are nothing but the most widely used search terms entered by your potential customers. Content that doesn’t have such relevant keywords have no value in terms of online visibility and search engine ranking.
Keyword research: a key element of digital marketing
Keyword research should be the cornerstone of any online marketing campaign. Essentially, what a keyword research tries to find out is the search terms that your target audience use in Google and other search engines.
If you are unaware of the keywords that you might focus on or target in your site content or digital marketing campaigns, your site will struggle to rank in SERP and your online advertising may fail to get the results because few people will see them. Keywords are essential for strong link building as well.
There are multiple reasons why a proper keyword research is important for any business. The first reason is it helps you understand the various words and phrases your audience use while they search for products and services on the internet.
It is not rare to find marketers using words and phrases in product descriptions that are in no way related to the words used by their target audience. What happens is that potential customers won’t be able to find your site due to a grave word mismatch.
Whether to use a high volume keyword or a low volume keyword is a matter of concern, though. Going for a low volume keyword can sometimes be a smart marketing strategy, as there is less competition. By optimizing your content for low volume keywords, you may rank well on these particular terms, but you may fail to generate significant traffic and lose potential customers as they might be using other popular keywords. Thus keyword research is very important to the success of your digital marketing and brand visibility. Generally, optimizing for words that people don’t use doesn’t make much sense.
Keyword research tools
Several keyword research tools are available in the market that can help you prepare the most relevant and result-oriented list of keywords. You can also look at search intent to find out what exactly your audience is looking for. Some of the keyword research tools are free, but others are paid. Free tools include Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends. Paid keyword finder tools come with a lot of useful features.