Top 5 Best Practices for Keyword Research
Keyword research allows business marketers to peek directly into the search habits of target markets. It’s like being able to read minds: rather than making guesses about what your audience might search for, you can learn precisely what they do search for.
When you know what your target market searches for, you can create content that meets their needs using language that your audience understands and uses. When you can meet the needs of your potential clients this way, your content will rise in search rank as well.
1. Choose the right tools
Many savvy business marketers use Google’s free external keyword tool to do their keyword research, but a simple search online will reveal many keyword research tools. Google Trends is another great tool you can use to compare search terms and phrases over time. There are also free plugins like KGen, that allows you to see what keywords are strong on particular web pages you visit, which may enable you to pull good keywords from your competitors.
2. Be as specific as possible
In most cases, you won’t be trying to rank for a single big keyword. For example, trying to rank high in search engines for the word “balloons” is an uphill battle. There are 86 million results for that search today, and will probably be more tomorrow. Instead, you might try ranking for “mylar balloons” (1 million results), or “mylar balloons in Raleigh, NC” (28 thousand results). Be as specific as possible when choosing keywords and phrases that you want to rank for.
3. Pick highly relevant terms
It’s fairly straightforward to be relevant if you are trying to sell a very particular product in a specific geographic area, but it can be more complex depending on your business goals. If you are trying to solicit donations for a non-profit or building awareness around a new business, you will need to create a much larger keyphrase list and set up several tests to determine how best to achieve your goals. In any case, the more relevant you can be to your business, the better. Don’t waste valuable content generation time or money creating articles or mini-sites on tangentially-related items or ideas; stay as tightly connected to your main product or service as you possibly can.
4. Incorporate variations
Not all of your searchers will use the same terms for your products and services. Where some people will search for “tee shirts,” others will type in “t-shirts.” Order your keyword lists by search numbers (what terms get the most searches) then decide which markets you want to compete in. It may be that you’ll choose a wide variety; that simply means you’ll need to create web pages with content that uses those target words. Search engines don’t rank sites as a whole; they rank pages.
5. 3 keywords or phrases per page, 3% density
It’s generally a good idea to use no more than 3 targeted keywords or phrases on a single page of content. You want to use the targeted words in the title, headers, and content, but don’t stuff your content full of keywords. Three percent keyword density is considered a suitable baseline for good SEO ranking.
Calvert Creative helps businesses improve their search engine ranking by incorporating smart keyword research and generating keyword-targeted content. Contact us today to see how we can help you gain leads and sales.
