If you want to attract Google traffic to your website content then you must perform keyword research. If you are new to keyword research, we will explain the fundamentals of it in this blog post. People that do not use the benefits of keyword research rarely receive significant traffic from Google and often they wonder why.
What is a Keyword?
A keyword is a term that someone uses when they want to find something using Google search. Keywords can be one word or several words. “One word” keywords are used a lot but they are not specific. If you enter the keyword “dogs” into Google you will get search results but what is it about dogs that you are interested in?
Alternatively, if a user enters “how can I train my dog” this is much more specific and is much more likely to provide them with the answers that they need. These kinds of keywords are called “long tail” because they contain three or more words.
Why are Keywords so important for Google Traffic?
When you know what keywords Google users are entering to find what they want you can create your content around them. In the example above we used “how can I train my dog” so you could create some content that answers this question for example.
Sometimes it is easy to guess which keywords Google users will enter to find what they want. But there will always be keywords used that you would never have thought of. This is where keyword research comes in.
What is the aim of Keyword research?
There are several things that you can find out when you conduct keyword research. The most important thing is the search terms that people use in Google to find information related to your niche. Sometimes this will be a very long list of keywords.
Secondly, you want to know how many times the keyword is used every month by Google users. Why is this important? Well if a keyword only gets one search a month then you will probably be wasting your time creating content for this. However, if there are thousands of searches each month for the keyword term then it is worth creating content for it.
The other important thing that keyword research can tell you is the search volumes by country. You can choose which country you want to target or you can target a number of different countries. If you only sell a product or service in the United States for example, it is a waste of time you knowing what the keyword terms and search volumes are in other countries.
What can you do with your Keyword Research List?
With any keyword research exercise, you want to end up with a list of the keywords that are relevant to your niche and the associated search volumes. You can then go through the list and decide which keywords you will use for your content.
You can use your keyword list as your guide to future content creation. It is not always easy to come up with new content ideas for your website and when you have a keyword list you can create new content based on it.
A website that uses keyword research as its base will always attract more Google traffic than a website that doesn’t have this. You can perform keyword research yourself by using a tool such as Google’s Keyword Planner (https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/) or you can contact the team at Valorous Circle to do this for you using this and other keyword research tools.
This Valorous Circle blog post on keyword research contains licensed content from a third-party source.
