Google Keyword Planner:One essential element of an effective inbound marketing strategy is keyword research. You won’t get far in your online business without understanding how it works.
Learn how your audience finds your site
To be effective, you need to pinpoint the keywords that your target audience is using to find your site. Here’s how that works.
Log into your Google account and visit Google Keyword Planner.
On the dashboard, click “search for new keyword and ad group ideas.”
Now, input your primary keyword. Let’s use html5 tutorials.
After clicking on the “keywords” tab, the table shows your keywords and their respective search volume for the month:
Here’s how that helps you.
When you research keywords, you’re getting firsthand information about your target audience, the information that they want to know, and how they want it.
For example, when someone searches for “html5 tutorials for beginners,” you know that the searcher is a newbie who might have searched extensively for solutions and wants content that helps with this topic.
That can guide you to write headlines and content that ranks well in the Google search results.
It’s helpful to figure out the buyer personas and customer lifecycle of your target audience, so that you understand what motivates them. Then, provide relevant page content that will help you increase your Google ranking.
Alexa can help you work out audience demographics, as in the example below for Upworthy.
Remember when I mentioned commercial and informational keywords?
When you do keyword research, you can easily figure out whether users are simply looking for information or wanting to buy.
That’s called user intent, and here’s how it looks for the keyword research example used earlier.
You need both informational and commercial keywords in your page content to improve the Google rankings of your website.
Commercial keywords target buyers who have been pre-sold (educated on the product) before coming to Google to conduct a search.
Informational keywords build on-going rapport with those who are not yet buyers/customers.
It’s your job to educate, inform, inspire, and build interest before recommending a product.
Informational keywords can be used to build email lists and nurture prospects before offering a product for sale.
When doing keyword research, don’t ignore long-tail keywords.
Rand Fishkin of Moz shows how targeting long-tail keywords produced an 80% increase in traffic & improved Google rankings.
Spy on competitors
If your competitors are ranking ahead of you in Google search results, it’s time to spy on them.
If the search algorithm likes them, you can learn and copy their strategies.
I like to use Google Keyword Planner for this because it gives me an accurate estimate of competitors’ keyword targets.
Let’s assume you’re in the “survival knife” sub-niche. One of the authority blogs that you can spy on is survivallife.com.
On the homepage, instead of inputting a seed keyword, simply type your competitor’s URL into the landing page box, then scroll down and click “get ideas.” Next, click the “keyword ideas” tab.
You will see the keywords that your competitor is targeting.
This works for any niche and can help you uncover hidden keywords that will help improve your ranking.
Boost lower ranking keywords
If you find your web page on page 2, how can you boost its ranking to the first page of Google?
You can use the skyscraper method, popularized by Brian Dean from Backlinko.
Find a post or article that’s ranking already, improve it, and promote it everywhere. This led to a 457% organic traffic increase for him.
If you want to do this for your topic (for example, “outsourcing guide for small business”), follow this simple guide:
- Extensively on the topic, including research studies.
- Identify the keywords to target using the strategies I’ shared with you in this post.
- Write a more in-depth post (that’s longer, more accurate, and actionable).
- Link out to authority blogs that are doing outsourcing well.
It’s also essential to write a powerful and clickable headline.
For example, if your first headline is:
Outsourcing Guide For Small Businesses
You can improve it like this:
The Complete Guide to Outsourcing for Small Businesses
An In-Depth Guide on How to Outsource for Small Businesses
X Ways Outsourcing Can Revolutionize Your Small Business
Contact the blog owners that you mentioned in your post and ask them to check it out.
Hopefully, you’ll get a handful of authority sites to link back to you.
Doing so will improve Google rankings on your page content.
Use keyword analysis to improve content
Let’s get one thing straight.
There is no optimal ratio for placing keywords in an article.
However, knowing the right keywords to target is of the utmost importance. That’s the basis of keyword analysis.
Wordstream defines keyword analysis as:
The starting point and cornerstone of search marketing campaigns. By understanding what queries qualified visitors to your website type into search engines, search marketers can better customize their landing pages to increase conversion rates.
Unless you know the queries that qualified visitors type into Google, you’ll find it difficult to improve your ranking and conversion rates.
By now, you know how to do keyword search engine research. That’s the easy part. The difficult part is knowing which keywords are bringing in organic traffic.
Earlier, I walked you through the process of generating the best keywords using SERP Scan. Now, we’re looking at the results to find the real keywords that people type into Google before your web page shows up.
You can use these to write on-page SEO content that matches user intent (remember that?). This will improve the Google ranking of your web pages.
How should you place your target keywords in the content?
Let’s assume you want to write an in-depth review on “best senior irons for seniors.” Here are some titles that you could use:
- Top 10 Best Senior Irons For Seniors
- Buyers’ Guide For The Best Senior Irons For Seniors
- Best Senior Irons For Seniors – The Ultimate Guide
To start your introduction, you could begin like this:
There are several senior irons in the marketplace. But knowing the right one for you is the most difficult decision. If you read this guide from start to finish, you’ll know the best senior irons for seniors that are affordable and reliable.
Or, you could start your introduction by asking a question:
Do you want to find the best senior irons for seniors? This page will not just tell you about the irons but will show how to use them to improve your golf game and provide practical tips on getting a huge discount for your purchase.
Do you see how I placed the target keyword in the first paragraph, without making it seem like spam?
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