One main piece of the complex SEO puzzle is keyword research. Considered the base of any online marketing strategy, keyword research should be completed in the early stages of development for your website, blog, or targeted campaign. If you want to increase your online presence, keyword research is a must! 

What is Keyword Research?

In order to reach your target audience, researching the works and vocabulary they are using when searching for specific products, services, information, or topics. A proper keyword research will include discovery of keywords, analyzing their estimated traffic, competitive analysis, and implementation of the best keywords for your business.

4 Simple Steps to Keyword Research

1. Initial KW Discovery

This stage of your keyword research is like a brainstorm for all of the words that can be used to describe your business. It will help you discover the main keywords to target along with any synonyms you will be able to use (don’t worry, we’ll talk about this more later). To get yourself rolling on the initial KW discovery, consider all of the words people might type into Google to find your business. 

For example, if you own a local flower shop with a single storefront, you will want to do a brainstorm for keywords around flower arrangements. Below are a few keywords you might have on your list:

Fresh Cut Flowers – Floral Design – Florist – Flower Delivery – Wedding Flowers

Once you have your list, you are ready to move on to the keyword analysis. It is easy to get caught up in trying to discover allllll of the keywords right off the bat. If you find yourself spending too much time on the discovery, remember that you might find new keywords throughout the rest of the process.

2. Individual KW Analysis

Now you have your list of keyword ideas, how do you know which are best and which ones you should target? Individual keyword analysis will help you decide which keywords are going to get your website the most amount of quality traffic. Utilizing standard SEO metrics such as search volume, potential clicks, and cost per click if you are going the paid route. 

There are a number of tools you can use to obtain the key metrics to perform your analysis. Our favorites are Google’s Keyword Planner and Google Trends.The keyword planner will help you see potential clicks to your website along with average cost per click. Google Trends shows you how popular a search query is and you can narrow your search area to your state or greater metropolitan area. 

Looking at each word and performing the analysis for each can take a little bit of time. However,  the results will give you your best keyword options to get the greatest return on your efforts. Individual keyword analysis will give you a good idea on which keywords to use from your brainstorming list, but evaluating the competition will narrow the list even more. 

3. Check Out The Competition

After narrowing your list of keywords you would like to target, examining your competition will give you further insight into your potential rankings. Looking at how well your closest competitors rank for the keywords will help you understand how much you are going to need to work to overtake them in the rankings. Additionally, you can see how they implement the specific keywords in their website and campaigns to gain recognition. 

While you are checking out the competition, you might find new keywords that you did not consider before. You can also see what they are up to and how well their strategy has worked for them so you can adopt it and take it to the next level. 

If a keyword has a lot of competition, you might consider targeting a different keyword. Thinking outside of the box and exploring synonyms can take a little bit of pressure off of trying to rank for highly competitive words. 

4. Implementation On Your Website  

After you have completed the discovery and analysis, it is time to actually implement the chosen keywords on your website and within your campaigns. Creating landing pages for your specific targeted keywords is essential to help your business website to rank for the keywords. 

If you go back to the flower shop example, say you want to rank specifically for ‘wedding flowers’ as it is one of the special occasions you supply flowers for. You will want to create a page based around your wedding day flower arrangements and services you offer. 

We recommend utilizing an SEO plugin to help with your keywords. SharpFinn utilizes Yoast SEO because of its simple interface and integration with WordPress. With this plug-in, you not only get to target your specific keywords or phrases, but also any synonyms that you would like to rank. 

Are you ready to take your SEO game to the next level?

Schedule a FREE consultation with SharpFinn and learn how we can help you increase your website traffic numbers and quality! We are experienced with businesses of every size and a broad array of industries. Take your SEO to the next level with SharpFinn Creative!