When I say keyword research, I’m talking about words and phrases that the content on your website should have. This makes it easy for users searching for such content to find your website easily when they type in specific words into the search bar. 

The idea is to synchronize your understanding of the user’s preferences with the search engine’s data so that it can show your website up top when users look for those keywords. This is one of the most important elements of search engine optimization. 

And when you take care of keyword SEO, you have a better shot at beating the competition on the search engine results page. Thisisalso very useful when you are running a marketing campaign. 

Typically, the process starts with creating a list of keywords that are relevant to the content you are trying to optimize. It takes time and effort but the results are phenomenal and makes it totally worth investing your resources. 

Now, there is no one right way to do this. This means you will be engaging in some trial and error methods before you get a hang of it. But it is not entirely arbitrary. 

For instance, here’s a couple of things you should not do. 

A lot of individuals, including some professionals, look for SEOkeywords only once and don’t update them from time to time. Another mistake is to add only the most popular keywords which means you will be one of the many websites that have added the same set of keywords. 

I’ve talked about updating keywords being an ongoing process. That is because the internet, unsurprisingly, changes every so often and you need to keep up with it and updating keywords is like maintenance for the content on the website. The audience’s lingo is changing constantly and you need to be up to date. 

Whether you are dealing with a new website or writing for an existing one, you need to make sure that the structure is contemporary so that it appeals to potential visitors. 

This means you need people to recognize the content from the simplest means like the title and the accompanying description. This makes them feel like they are talking to a human, albeit a professional, and not a bot or an institution that is out of touch with the present world.

This also keeps your web page ranked on top since these will be the keywords your users are entering into the search bar. So, the takeaway is that keyword research is an ongoing process where the list must be refined periodically to remove old phrases and add the newer ones. You should always look for the competitive keywords but also add the ones that are specific so that you don’t miss out on the niche visitors. 

You must also work on diversifying the list of keywords which is a very important part of the game. That’s the bit about using more than just the most popular keywords. Add the odd ones out to make sure you can beat the competition. 

There are plenty of tools online that can help you find a bunch of keywords related to a subject but you must also do your own homework and make sure you keep a track of the results of your trial and error techniques. In the meantime, do not compromise on the content because at the end of the day, if you can’t retain your visitors, no amount of keywords can help you out.

Keyword research is all about figuring out what words search engine users (which is practically every internet user) are entering into the search bar and how popular those phrases are. This kind of knowledge also helps teams explore the different ways in which a particular topic is being researched by the users. 

This way, you can even build your content around those words like making the next post on your blog about the questions that users are asking on any given search engine. 

It’s like seeing a trending hashtag and putting something together to “ride the wave”. In the industry, this is known as creating targeted content. And those who find this content are likely to invest some time on your website and maybe even recommend your products and services to their friends and family members. They are also highly likely to put their money where their mouth is. 

Keyword research is also of great use to marketers in understanding the psyche of buyers. It tells them what is in high demand and how to use a popular keyword to optimize the content but also beat the competition organically. You also learn about the kind of language the demographic that is most likely to seek out your products or services is using.

Now, it is not enough to find the keywords. You need to know in what order to enter them to get the best results in terms of search engine optimization. The first order of business is to find high-attention or long-tail keywords for your content and add them in the title if possible and also in the body of the text. 

It is also highly recommended that you place it in the metadata like file names of the images and the URL (which is either the title by default or customized if you get that option built in). 

But it is also important to remember that some websites have thousands of keywords. This is called keyword density. But it makes sense only when the number of keywords are somewhat proportional to the amount of content you have on the website. 

You can’t add too many keywords in a limited amount of content because that’s essentially spamming your content with words and it is called keyword stuffing. Search engines not only recognize that but also frown upon such gimmicks. That’s because relevance takes precedence over quantity. 

So, what you need to do is understand keyword grouping. This is essentially a technique where you use a small set of relevant keywords for the content on specific pages. 

Let’s look at an example here. If you were running an online auto magazine, you might want to gather all the car-related keywords for that whole segment. Then you might want to break it down into sub-sections based on the automobile brand andsoon. Thisway, you have all your pages fundamentally optimized to at least to a certain extent. Once you have this mechanism in place, you can take it forward by: 

1. Add it to the URL 
2. Add it to the title of the webpage
3. Use its variations in the body of the text
4. Add it to the description and meta tags
5. Use it for image file names and alt text 

Now let’s move on to a much deeper method of optimizing your website. This means going beyond the micro and metadata. This is called on-page SEO and that’s our next chapter.