Approach to Keyword Research for SEO

Hi Learners,

Welcome back to Analogue to AI. In our previous posts, we went through a step-by-step process that helps us get started with SEO for our websites. Lets continue from where we left off.

Keyword Research for SEO

Keyword research is an integral part of your SEO plan. It essentially means identifying the final set of keywords you want to rank for. If you are a rookie, someone who is absolutely new to SEO, you should know that Keyword Research is not a defined process. Every SEO expert will have their own methods. No method is right or wrong. The best method is the one that brings you results & the one that works for your website. The goal of your SEO plan is the rank on Search Engines like Google for a certain set of keywords, themes, topics & conversations that are important to your business & have the potential to drive profitable business for your company. 

Understanding Google

Since Google is a leader in search engine traffic (its an open secret) we will consider Google as a benchmark and centre of our SEO conversations. It makes a lot of sense to understand How Google search works. Lets revisit the way Google Ranks website. If you haven't watched it yet, its a good idea to do so now. Watch the vide below to get a basic understanding.

You can learn more about Google's ranking philosophy by visiting the Inside Google Search page. If you find it interesting and want to dive deeper into Google's algorithm, visit Google's How Search Works section.

Understanding basic SEO terminologies

Before getting started, its a good idea to understand the standard terminologies used globally by SEOs. There are hundreds of pages out there with elaborate number of terms. However if you want to get started, you can access the terminologies here

Getting Started with Keyword Research

Now that you understand Google's ranking algorithm & basic SEO terminology, lets get you started with a fine-print on keyword research. Keyword research should be undertaken separately for the Home Page & inner pages. Every page has its own content, context & intent. Every page is competing with other pages on Google on 3 broad factors.

1. Keyword Relevancy - Google will first rank pages that are relevant to the keyword that was searched on Google search engine. This means that google will need hints that your page has valuable information & content that the user is searching for
2. Credibility - Google will next rank pages based on credibility signals of your page. Stuff like high quality outbound links, Mark of certification, awards, positive reviews & comments, etc.
3. Popularity - Google evaluates the shareable value of your pages based on instances where people have spoken good about your page outside of your website. Either on social networks, review sites, portals and many different types of pages across the internet. It also looks at various ways you allow your users to share the pages they love on your website.

This is the reason you want to be thoughtful about the keywords. you want to rank for.

 Keyword Matrix

Lets say you are a certified SEO expert from Mumbai, and you want to get qualified leads to your SEO consulting business. If you look at the above graph, the size of the arrow determines the potential of the keyword to drive qualified leads to your business. This means, a term that is very generic might not be a good fit for you even if it gets searched a lot on Google. What you need is a healthy mix of keywords that are relevant as well as profitable to your business. The length of the search term and the possible context of these terms determine them as either a Short Tail keyword or a Long tail keyword. 

Short Tail keyword

In the above scenario, ranking for a term like "SEO" might not be good for your business though it might bring lots of traffic to your website but it will not convert into leads. This is because it could imply anything (SEO agency, SEO books, SEO tools, etc) not necessarily your business. In general scenarios a term like that would be a Short Tail keyword.

Long Tail keyword

Ranking for a keyword like "Certified SEO Expert Mumbai" might actually be great for your business. It is as specific as it could get for you. It has a clear intent & the potential of this keyword to drive qualified leads is very high. Hence a specific keyword term like that would be called Long Tail Keyword.

My Recommendations

For interesting reads on this topic below are a few recommended books that would add value to your learning. A free kindle version of these books is available on Amazon. Check these out.

    

Hope you enjoyed todays post. Come back to read the next post to learn hands-on how to create & evaluate keyword lists & using tools to determine keywords that are best suited for your business.

Share this post with people who you think might benefit from it.

See you all soon.

Happy learning.

Mitul Shingadia