Ask any marketing professional and they’ll tell you — SEO isn’t an optional component of a digital marketing strategy, but a critical aspect of brand growth. Once you’re on board, SEO keyword research is an essential first step to improving your marketing and content strategies.
The right keywords help a business build a powerful, converting strategy by providing data-driven insight from the people who matter most — your target audience!
How to Find SEO Keywords for Your Business
When performing keyword research, you’ll identify the topics and words that people use to search for in the search engines. The different types of keyword research categories often include:
- Head terms — Broad category keywords that are more general
- Primary keywords — These are the main drivers that represent your brand or offering
- Long-tail keywords — Typically 4-5 words that have less search volume but are still drivers
- Competitor keywords — Keywords and phrases your competitors are targeting and ranking for
- Contextual keywords — Keywords often found in the SERPs (search engine results pages)
- Popular keywords — Keywords and phrases that your target audience searches or is interested in
Once you’ve found relevant keywords for your business, you’ll want to consider the following metrics. These will ensure your SEO keyword research will garner positive results for your marketing and content strategies.
Search Intent
This identifies what a person is looking for when they type in a keyword or phrase into Google. Matching the keyword you use in content with the user’s search intent is best practice and will improve your visibility.
Monthly Search Volume
This metric represents the number of people who search for any given keyword or term in a month. Selecting keywords with a higher monthly search volume (MSV) should improve your ranking, especially if you’re creating content that matches the search intent.
Ranking Difficulty
This number (typically ranked from 0 to 100) shows how competitive or difficult a keyword will be to rank for. The higher the ranking, the more challenging it will be to rank for the keyword in the SERPs.
Benefits of an SEO Keyword Analysis
An SEO keyword analysis is often performed to paint a clearer picture of a brand’s current SEO strategy and identify potential improvements that can be made. Other benefits include:
- Better understanding of your audience: By knowing the terms that your target audience is using, you can better target them in your content marketing strategy.
- Boost a content marketing strategy: If your content feels lackluster, a keyword analysis can provide insight into what words your audience is using and can inspire new content that targets these terms and topics.
- Improved customer acquisition: As your content provides more value for your leads, you may see your customer acquisition score improve. Once leads feel seen, get their concerns addressed, and the information they need, they may be easier to win over!
- Improved SERP visibility: As you create content with the keywords that people use, your website rankings will improve over time. As your ranking improves, more people will find your website and perform the actions that your content is pushing for.
Ultimately, an SEO analysis will provide answers to help your business rank higher online, grow your reach, drive traffic, and boost sales.
Power Up Your SEO with Brand Creative Solutions
For many companies, SEO is a foreign language, with keyword research feeling like an impossible homework assignment that will never be completed. That’s where we come in!
Brand Creative Solutions is completely focused on results, from SEO to web design, strategy, and content creation. Whether your brand needs a strategic overhaul or guidance with specific challenges, we’re here to help. Contact us today to learn more.
