What is keyword research?
Keyword research is the foremost important thing to research before starting to optimise a website for search engines.
Researching keywords within your industry will help determine which keywords are being most searched for, which are the least competitive and which we can optimise successfully to increase website conversions.
How to keyword research for SEO
At Point & Quack, we conduct our keyword research by looking at three different metrics:
- A keyword’s monthly search volume.
- A keyword’s competition.
- If the website has any current rankings for a keyword that we could improve upon.
As an ideal scenario, we would be looking if a website has a current ranking, if the competition is low and if the search volume per-month is high.
However, this is sometimes not the case — therefore, we have to establish rankings from scratch first.
Which keywords to implement?
There are different types of keywords to look at these include;
- short-tail keywords (“SEO Services”),
- long-tail keywords (“Affordable SEO Services in the UK”),
- latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords (“Marketing Companies in the UK”).
The first type of keyword (short-tail) is the most difficult to rank for. It’s often only 1–2 words, which is why it’s so competitive. For local SEO, it’s often the case to append the location of your business after this keyword — becoming your primary keyword.
The second type of keyword (long-tail) is something that a “guaranteed results” SEO company may offer (something you should avoid).
They are often extremely easy to gain page-1 ranks for, however, don’t bring in any conversions for your business — mainly because they’re not being searched for, at all.
The third type of keyword (LSI) is something you should include on your pages to accompany your short-tail keywords with.
These are keywords which relate to your primary keyword. For example, “Marketing company in the UK” could relate to “British SEO Company” — therefore, should be included on your page.
Finding related keywords (LSIs)
Finding related keywords is something that’s made extremely easy by Google. It’s basically looking at related search terms that people are searching for when you search for your keyword in Google.