Keyword research is a pretty important part of your online marketing strategy. It used to be the be all and end all, with people keyword stuffing their pages full of invisible keywords to try to trick the search engines. Tactics like this no longer work, and the way you decide on your keywords has even changed over the past few years. Here are 5 reasons you’re not doing keyword research right, and how you can fix it:
You Haven’t Created A Seed List
A seed list is a list that you start with to help you get a rough idea of the different keywords you need. You want to try to be as vigilant as possible when thinking of all the terms you need. What problems does your product solve? What does it do? Write out different categories too, like the keywords you’ll use for your brand searches and product searches. If you haven’t created one of these, then it’s likely you could be missing some effective keywords.
You Haven’t Researched Your Audience
Knowing exactly who your audience are and how they search is important. How old are your audience? Where can you find them? What terms do they tend to use? Research them, reading the comments they leave on things, and anything else you can think of so you know what sort of thing you need to be doing.
authorYou Don’t Think Outside Of The Box
Thinking outside of the box when it comes to keyword research is very important. How are different demographics searching for the things you offer? What about on desktop, mobile, and voice search? Make sure you exhaust all of your options so you can do the best job of keyword research to your abilities. Only then can you be confident you’ve done a good job!
You’re Not Using The Right Tools
You don’t do effective keyword research without the right tools. There are a number of popular tools that people in the SEO industry like to use to help them. These include:
- Spyfu – great for researching your competitors and their strategies. You need to know what your competitors are doing to be successful!
- Google keyword research tool – get local data to help with targeting and marketing, as well as target people in the potential buying phase.
- Authority labs – provide competitor analysis for people you want to watch.
There are a number of other tools you can use too, but it all depends on what works for you!
You Don’t Have A Research Spreadsheet
Creating a spreadsheet dedicated to your keyword research can help you to see things more clearly. You can lay it out in a way you understand, enabling you to make good decisions when it comes to your SEO strategy. It shouldn’t take you too long to make one or keep it up.
Can you use any of these pointers to make your keyword research even more effective? Or have you got it all covered? Leave any of your own thoughts and tips in the comments. See you soon!
