Keyword research, is well exactly what it says, keyword research. The act of searching for specific keyword or phrases that your target audience use to search in Google, Bing or whatever search engine they prefer, to find the content they need.
The point of using keywords is so that you can creating content that your target audience needs, positioning yourself right in front of the eyes you’re trying to catch and bringing traffic in, loyal readers and people that are going to potentially make you some monies along the way. So whether you’re looking to start your newest e-commerce brand or you’re writing a personal blog, understand the importance of keyword research will be a fast way to fast track your success.
Why Keyword Research is Important
Doing anything without purpose can lead to negative and unexpected results and even end result could be completely different from what you intended it to be. This rule goes for writing on your website blog, if you have no purpose and you’re writing gobbledygook for the sake of writing gobbledygook then this great article you have just written which hasn’t include specific researched keywords will never be able to hit your target audience because you were writing on assumptions rather than on ‘facts’ – ballpark facts, but still, it’s better than going in blind.
Keyword research allows you to properly shape up your article into what your website needs it to be, which if you’ve done your research correctly you’ll be able to get this article in front of the correct pairs of eyes so that this post and any future posts can generate you tons of traffic, and just like a snowball rolling down a hill your website will spiral out of control and turn into something that could generate you dollar dollar for many years to come.
Basics of Keyword Research
Now assuming you’re going about the content creation yourself, you’ll need to know the basics of keyword research before you can get started, but if you were just here to understand why keyword research is important then you’re free to leave…that is assuming you’re using a service to do the hard work for you. Services like clickburst.com.au offer a content creation service, which uses their own niche keyword research to create content for your website that is fully catered to the sites needs and objectives.
If you’re here to learn the basics of keyword research, keep on reading, we’re going to help you get started.
Assuming you’ve already gotten your target audience, which if you haven’t you should probably take a step back and ask yourself what the hell you’re doing. If you’ve just jumped into a niche you should at least have some idea of what sort of people you’re trying to attract.
So, with your target audience in mind, you’ll need to research the keywords that your target audience search for in a search engine for when they’re looking to resolve a problem they may be having.
Doing this is simple, there are a range of tools which will allow you to check specific search volumes on words and phrases, typically people use Google handy auto-suggest which gives some indicator towards what people are looking for i.e what problems they may be having or information they need – simple terms, these keywords should be the focus on any and all future articles on your website.
A great tool which utilizes this auto-suggest feature of Google is Answer The Public, which provides you with types of things Google suggests for when people search a topic, in this case, let’s use ‘Keyword Research’ as our example.
Like all keyword research tools, they feature some form of ranking system that lets you know how valuable this keyword phrase could be in generating traffic for your site but with this it also means that its a competitive keyword, meaning a lot of people could be trying to target it with their content, with this, sites like Answer The Public can’t help you much, you have to figure out what is best and what works for you but at least these ballpark estimates get you off the mark.
And that’s it really, a lot of it is testing what works, changing up which research site you’re using from time to time and overall creating some killer content that is going to help you be to beat everyone else and get you that number 1 spot we love.
To Recap – Keyword Cheat Sheet for Answer The Public:
- Know your target audience so you know what is is you should be looking for
- Use your generic niche focus keyword (Dog Collars, Flat Earth, T-Shirts, whatever the main focus of your site is) in your keyword research tool
- Create some killer content that is going to solve problems and answer questions in your target niche from the results you have been given.
- Shoot to rank 1 for your desired keyword and reap the rewards (potentially lots and lots of $$$)
Best Keyword Tools Online
We’ve spoken about Answer the Public in this specific blog post, mainly because it was fresh on the mind because that’s what we’ve been recently gravitating towards when we’re looking for niche keywords for our Extollo Marketing clients and for our own in house work. But there are many more research tools out there that give offer you similar results, with better interfaces or even more in-depth analytics.
Free Keyword Tools
Additionally, I’m going to leave out any paid keyword tools that might exist, since its this is a beginner guide, there would be no use in recommending you tools you should not be buying anyway – don’t waste your money with paid tools if you’re new to all this, and regardless just because it costs a fee doesn’t mean its better than the free tools. So, below are all the tools we have used before one time or another which we recommend looking into if you’re a beginner.
Answer the Public
It needs no introduction at this point, we’ve spoken about it Answer the Public further up this page but it is seriously one of the better keyword tools out there. Recently come out of the woodwork, it’s a service that utilizes the powerful but underrated feature of Google Auto-suggest, truly taking a unique angle on what you’d typically find from other keyword research tools.
Keywords Everywhere
Keywords Everywhere is a handy little Google Chrome extension that gives you a ballpark search volume depending on the location you set it with. The reason why this may be ‘better’ than the others on the list, or at least than the previous one is that fact that it offers some insight into the CPC (cost per click) people could be paying to rank for this keyword within their Adwords account in Google, which shows just how valuable this keyword is to some companies.
Google Adwords: Keyword Planner
A nice little segway there, Google Adwords I one of the most obvious tools to use if you’re on your keyword search journey. The primary benefit of using Google Adwords as your research tool of choice is that the information is easy to see and you can’t pull the data directly from Google themselves which is a search engine you’re most probably going to target when creating content for your site.
On top of that, the planning features allow you to save keywords, so perhaps you’re writing a piece of content on a keyword one week, you’re doing another the next, Google Adwords Keyword Planner tool allows you to keep track of the words so you can remember what you wanted to look for previously.