Keyword Research Best Practices: Your Path to Successful SEO

Keyword research is the process of finding and analysing the words and phrases that people use to search for information online. By understanding what your potential customers are looking for, you can optimise your content for the keywords that match their intent and needs.

Key takeaways:

• Keyword research is important to discover what topics and questions your audience cares about, identify the best keywords to target for each piece of content, rank higher in SERPs, and create relevant and useful content that solves problems.
• The basic steps for keyword research include defining your topic and goals, brainstorming seed keywords, using keyword research tools, analysing keyword intent and relevance, and choosing the best keywords for your content.
• To optimise your content for keywords, use one primary keyword per page or post and include it in key locations such as the title tag, URL, headline, introduction, conclusion, and image alt text. Additionally, use secondary or related keywords naturally throughout the body of your content.
• Avoid keyword stuffing or overusing keywords, and focus on creating high-quality, engaging content that meets your audience’s needs and interests.

Why is keyword research important?

Keyword research is important because it helps you:

• Discover what topics and questions your audience cares about
• Identify the best keywords to target for each piece of content
• Rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) and drive more organic traffic
• Create relevant and useful content that meets user expectations and solves their problems
• Align your content strategy with your marketing goals and customer journey

How to do keyword research?

There are many tools and techniques for doing keyword research, but here are some basic steps you can follow:

• Define your topic and goals. Before you start researching keywords, you need to have a clear idea of what your content is about and what you want to achieve with it. Think about the main topic or theme of your content, the audience you want to reach, the purpose of your content (e.g., educate, entertain, persuade), and the desired outcome (e.g., generate leads, increase sales, build awareness).
• Brainstorm seed keywords. Seed keywords are the core terms that describe your topic or niche. They are usually broad and generic, but they help you generate more specific and relevant keywords later on. You can brainstorm seed keywords by thinking about how you or your audience would describe your topic in a few words. For example, if your topic is “how to grow tomatoes”, some seed keywords could be “tomatoes”, “gardening”, “vegetables”, etc.
• Use keyword research tools. Keyword research tools help you find more keyword ideas based on your seed keywords, as well as data on their popularity, difficulty, competition, and variations. Some popular keyword research tools include Google Keyword Planner, Moz Keyword Explorer, Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, etc. You can use these tools to enter your seed keywords and get a list of related keywords with metrics such as monthly search volume (how many times people search for a keyword per month), keyword difficulty (how hard it is to rank for a keyword), cost per click (how much advertisers pay for a click on a keyword), etc.
• Analyse keyword intent and relevance. Not all keywords are equally valuable for your content. You need to analyse each keyword’s intent (the goal or purpose behind a search query) and relevance (how well it matches your topic and goals). For example, if your goal is to sell tomato seeds online, a keyword like “tomato recipes” may have high search volume but low intent and relevance because people searching for it are not looking to buy seeds but rather cook with tomatoes. On the other hand, a keyword like “best tomato seeds” may have lower search volume but higher intent and relevance because people searching for it are likely interested in buying seeds.
• Choose the best keywords for your content. Based on your analysis of intent and relevance, you can choose the best keywords to target for each piece of content. Ideally, you want to choose keywords that have high search volume, low-to-medium difficulty, high relevance, and high intent. You also want to balance between short-tail keywords (one or two words) that are more general and long-tail keywords (three or more words) that are more specific. Short-tail keywords tend to have higher search volume but also higher competition and lower conversion rates, while long-tail keywords tend to have lower search volume but also lower competition and higher conversion rates.

How to optimise your content for keywords?

Once you have chosen the best keywords for your content, you need to optimise it accordingly so that it ranks well in SERPs and attracts qualified traffic. Here are some tips on how to optimise your content for keywords: 

To optimise your content for search engines and improve your visibility to potential readers, it is important to use keywords strategically. One effective strategy is to use one primary keyword per page or post, which should be the main focus of your content. This primary keyword should be included in key locations such as the title tag, URL, headline, introduction, conclusion, and image alt text. Additionally, using secondary or related keywords throughout the body of your content can help support the meaning of your primary keyword and provide context for both users and search engines. These secondary keywords can be variations or synonyms of your primary keyword and can be used naturally in subheadings, paragraphs, and other areas of your content.

However, it’s important to remember that keyword stuffing or overusing keywords can actually harm your content’s ranking and readability. Make sure to use keywords in a way that feels natural and relevant to your content, and focus on creating high-quality, engaging content that meets your audience’s needs and interests. By incorporating these keyword research best practices into your content strategy, you can improve your chances of ranking higher in search results, driving more organic traffic to your website, and ultimately achieving your marketing goals.

If you have a headache reading this and need some assistance with professional and expert keyword research, we would be more than happy to help!

by :

Eamonn O'Raghallaigh, PhD