How to Boost Your SEO Content Strategy Using Keyword Research
How to Boost Your SEO Content Strategy Using Keyword Research Tips
Content marketing has become a top priority for most businesses. The SEO world has certainly evolved, however, keyword research remains the cornerstone of any successful SEO content strategy. Google algorithm updates are designed to place more emphasis on content quality, but at the end day, people still have to type something into the search field to get results.
Fortunately, any marketer can improve their content strategy by following some simple practices. Below we will look at some keyword research tips to consider for more effective keyword selection.
- Target Longtail Keyword Phrases
It is important to choose keywords that are specific to your particular market, also known as long-tail keyword phrases. For example, the term ‘training’ alone could refer to anything from sports training, to dog training which is not exactly a niche audience.
It is important to be specific in order to optimize content for the right people. For instance, ‘Sales training’ is good, but ‘B2B sales training’ is better, but ‘books on B2B sales training’ beat them all. Long-tail phrases tend to have lower competition in search results, which increases the odds of higher page ranks in Google.
- Know Who Your Audience Is
This is the most overlooked part of keyword research and yet it the most important. Before choosing keywords for your website, you need to understand who you are optimizing for. Marketers should research extensively in order to get into the heads of their target audiences. The first step to narrowing down the keywords that are most likely to draw clients to your site is understanding the topics that are important to them.
- Make Use Of Different Variations
There are numerous free keyword research tools out there designed to help marketers select effective keywords. For instance, Ubersuggest is a great keyword suggestion tool and an excellent asset for any SEO content strategy. You can simply type in a generic keyword, and the tool will return a vast of potential phrase variations to consider. If you want to expand your keyword portfolio, try to utilize relevant phrase variation.
- Identify Areas Of Opportunity
Google AdWords Keyword Tool is another great free keyword tool. While the tool is officially used for AdWords pay-per-click campaigns, it can also be an excellent asset for organic search. One can analyze search volumes and identify which keywords represent the best opportunities by plugging in various phrases in the search field.
- Let Keywords Drive The Content Process
Most SEO content strategies involve optimizing pieces of content after the fact, for instance, writing blog posts than going back to find relevant keywords to plug in. The inverse of this process works as well. Marketers can use created keyword lists to identify opportunities for fresh content ideas. With this kind of approach, everything that is created will have a target phrase from the start, eliminating the need to scramble for keywords later on.
- Use Different Keywords To Say The Same Thing
There is more than one way to get a singular point across according to renowned content marketing guru Marcus Sheridan. For instance, when working on his swimming pool company’s blog, Sheridan decided to create a post about how much certain types of pools cost. After that, he created a post covering the price of those same types of pools.
While these two topics may seem to be the same type of content, Sheridan realized that search engines would recognize "how much does it cost” and "what is the price” as different keyword phrases. Sheridan created content that was optimized for both and hence able to increase the odds that customers would find his content no matter how they searched for it.
- Leverage Traffic Analytics
Reporting tools like Google Analytics can help with the keyword selection process for your SEO content plan. Marketers can identify which types of keywords are driving visitors to their site, and build on those trends with future content by analyzing traffic trends.
Search engine optimization has changed quite a bit over the years, however, keyword selection is still a critical part of any successful SEO content strategy. Marketers can put their content creation and brands in the best position to increase search engine visibility and get a leg up on the competition by targeting the right keywords at the very beginning. Those seven keyword research tips above should help you improve your content marketing efforts. If you need help with creating an effective SEO content strategy, we can help you out at https://copypeer.com.