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Secrets To Successful Keyword Hunting
Keyword research has become an art. If done well, a website can reach its intended goal, of being found. This article provides easy steps to enhance your website through appropriate keyword research. There are a couple of things you should understand prior to delving into this lofty subject.
First of all, Google – has between 81.5% to 92.9% market share for search engine usage, depending on the source. So, we will refer to Google a lot!
How does Google work?
Here is how the magic of Google Works, in a nutshell.
- Indexes the web – when searching the Internet on Google, you are searching Google’s index of the web. It’s builds the web on its servers with robots called ‘Spiders’, or ‘Googlebots’.
- Matches content to your search – Using a simple word, synonym, context, and semantic matches, Google first discards any web pages that clearly are not relevant to your search topic. The remaining pages then get ordered by coded algorithms with over 200 ranking factors.
- Uses Two clear criteria – relevance (usefulness) and popularity (trust).
- Utilizes a tool called a ‘User Behavior Feedback Loop’ – This is relatively new. Once a user types in a keyword, their behavior and patterns of iteration with the search results are closely monitored to provide feedback. If a website appearing in the fourth position is selected and people don’t spend much time on it, Google knows that this site is not particularly helpful and should be pushed down in the rankings.
What are Keywords?
- The technical definition is – “A keyword refers to any word or multi-word phrase that a search engine user types into a search bar.”
- Google’s definition is – “Words or phrases describing your product or service that you choose to help determine when and where your website can appear. … When someone searches on Google, your website could be eligible to appear based on the similarity of your keywords to the person’s search terms, as well as your keyword match types.”
- Don’s definition is – “Words or phrases used throughout your website that help determine the market exposure of your website and business.”
How to Perform Keyword Analysis and Research – finding the perfect keywords
Keyword Hunting
At the beginning of any website building campaign, we need to go ‘keyword hunting.’ We need to uncover keywords that share three important characteristics:
- Enough people are typing them into Google every month to render getting a No. 1 ranking.
- We need keywords that will be used. Essentially, keywords that will help us and have high levels of traffic.
- We also need to rule out keywords we do not have a chance in ranking due to high competition. Kind of like finding a puzzle piece.
Finding Keywords
We can’t do it alone. There are some great tools for keyword hunting. – I use “Ubersuggest“, “Google’s Keyword Planner Tool”, “SEMRush” and a ton more. Relax, we will do a step by step –
Step 1 – Create a spreadsheet like the one below. You can also download the Keyword Tool we use.
Step 2 – Brainstorm ‘common sense’ keywords. Put yourself in the shoes of your customers. What are they going to type in Google? Often, the most obvious keywords are the most profitable. Pick a few of the most obvious keywords that spring to mind as these will likely end up being your main target keywords.
Step 3 – Use tools that are available on the Internet. The most prominent that pop into my mind are Google Keyword Planner Tool, but there’s an array of others, like Ubersuggest, and Semrush. These will help identify solid list of key words.
Now you have your list of Keywords. A couple of recommendations.
- Focus on a few keywords. Too many keywords will be the death of any successful SEO campaign.
- Choose one primary keyword per topic page
- For every article you write, perform basic keyword research in order to establish a primary keyword to use in the title, as well as uncovering at least 20 ancillary keywords and synonyms you can use throughout the main body of the text.