The keyword (Keyword) is the term responsible for promoting the exchange of information between web pages and users on the Internet. This describes the theme that is developed in a particular URL and facilitates its location through search engines.
When we refer to keywords (keywords in English), it is inevitable to think of Google. Actually, the term began to be widely disseminated by the same tool until it became an important variable in Internet searches.
Today, keywords have come to mean much more than just a way to find a website on the internet. They represent the way of thinking of the market. Below I explain why the use of search terms is key.
The importance of keywords
Every day, thousands of companies are born in the world. In addition to the intention of generating money through google ads, companies are created with one purpose: to solve a problem.
Consumers are constantly looking for solutions to their particular problems. And how is this process carried out? Many times the search engines present on the web, use terms related to that situation that afflicts them.
In this sense, more than 100 billion investigations are carried out on Google every day and behind each search, there are specific words that will lead the user to find the product or service they require. And your company will likely be able to meet this requirement: do keyword research. The keywords then become key elements for the presence of your business on the web.
On the Internet, the main element that separates the problem of your target audience, from the solution that your company, is the keyword. It is exactly for this reason that when thinking about keywords, the mindset should not simply be directed toward SEO or Sponsored Links, but toward the company as a whole.
If you use the keyword only for a portion of the world wide web, SEM (Search Engine Marketing) for example, you would be wasting valuable dissemination opportunities.
If you have not yet done a study on the structured and prioritized keywords, with computer systems, the next section is for you. We are going to learn how to create your keyword list.
Study of the keywords or keywords
As I mentioned in the previous section, keyword research is really important, not only for SEM strategies but also for the overall company strategy.
The type of communication that a brand should have, the layout of a product, the focus of a Content Marketing strategy, and much more can be defined by the influence of keyword research, and it is for this reason that it is important to be vigilant in this stage of strategic planning.
We said before that the keyword is the main element separating your public from finding your company. Already having this clear, to carry out an excellent study of the keyword, it is necessary to have a deep knowledge of your target audience.
Since the same problem can be represented by different keywords, what will determine the type of study is precisely the person behind the word. For clarity, see the following example:
Suppose you have an online store that sells cakes/pastries in Colombia. How would you do your Marketing strategy for this web portal? Which of the two keyword options would you use?
To solve this problem, having knowledge of your target audience is a determining factor. The answer in this example is simpler than in other cases.
First, we need to analyze a comparison of the search volumes of the terms (using Google Trends )
Until this first moment of our analysis, investing in the keyword “cake” seems more interesting than investing in the word “cake”. It happens that, when moving to the second part of the analysis, other data begins to be more evident:
Is your target audience located in the south of the country? This is going to be very important to start defining your keyword. Is your target audience distributed throughout the country? You will need to make a personalized Marketing strategy for each audience. And in this way we are advancing, analysis by analysis.
After fully understanding your target audience and fully understanding how they are used to refer to the problem your business solves, you can start developing your keyword list.
How to make a keyword list
The hardest thing when trying to do keyword research is usually getting started. The justification is always the lack of creativity when it comes to producing keyword ideas.
But you can't fall for this. Keyword research has almost nothing to do with creativity. It is related to the deep knowledge of your target audience and the use of the indicated tools. I'll show you how to start the investigation.
The first thing you should do is create a list of all the sub-niches (categories) of your niche and link to each of them with a minimum of 10 related keywords.
Note: If your niche is already extremely specific and has no subdivisions, extract as many keywords as you can and apply them to the next steps below.
Once the lists corresponding to each sub-niche are finished, you should use free tools, specially made to generate more keyword ideas based on the ones you had already chosen.
You must put a little effort to think of the best and original keywords because it is from them that the tools will generate new ideas.
New keyword ideas with Google Ads
Google Ads is one of the best tools for generating new keyword ideas. I'll show you right away how to find new ideas through it.
1. On the home page of the tool, click on the “Tools” menu and then “Keyword Planner”.
2. On the next page, click on “Search keywords”. Type your original keywords and then click “Get Started”.
3. Next, you'll find a keyword panel with two header options: “Ad Group Ideas” and “Keyword Ideas”. Select “Keyword Ideas” and review all the suggestions the tool offers.
Studying the generated table, you will find more keywords that people normally search for in Google, and that is related to the ones you inserted at the beginning (your niche, as a result).
In addition to getting new keyword ideas, the tool will also give an idea of the search volume for each keyword. This is a determining factor to choose the best words for your campaign.
New keyword ideas with Ubersuggest
Has it happened to you that you are going to search for a phrase in Google and it is so common that the search engine completes the phrase before you finish? The Ubersuggest tool works under the same logic: you type the keyword in a more general and broadway, and it picks up plugins for that word from A to Z.
Using it is really easy, you don't even need to do a tutorial. You only need to enter it, change the language to Spanish, enter the keyword that will generate the ideas, and then click on “suggest”.
Take a look at the list. Find the keywords that make sense to you, always keeping your target audience in mind. Also, pay attention to words that can generate more ideas.
There are many other tools on the market that are capable of generating insights similar to the ones you create here. However, not all of them are free or as effective as the ones I have mentioned. With these two tools and a lot of dedication, you will be able to generate robust lists to work with.
I already made my list of keywords, what now?
With just the list of keywords, from a business point of view, you have already contributed powerfully to all company strategies. However, from an SEO point of view, the keyword list has no significant value.
Imagine that there is a list with 100 keywords to take into consideration in your SEO strategies. Where to start? What should I focus on? All at the same time?
It is for this reason that I now want to show you the ideal way to interpret a list of keywords so that you can more clearly see the potential of your list.
interpreting keywords
When analyzing keywords, we need to take their attributes into account. I usually say that a keyword must be evaluated in 4 different aspects:
- Search volume;
- Positioning difficulty;
- Purchase intent;
- Current position for the keyword.
For us to better understand this system, we are going to delve a little into each of these aspects:
keyword search volume
So that the weight of this aspect is very clear, I am going to give an example that will be very useful for the explanation of this and the next ones:
Imagine that you have a store that has very good prices and high-quality products. It is an excellent store. However, your store is on a street with tiny movement. You could have the flashiest sign of all, which will still be hard to attract customers.
In the example I mentioned above, the street would be the Google results page, the store would be your website, and your sign would be the snippet (the result that appears on a search page consisting of the title, description, and URL of the website). ).
A street in a neighborhood with little movement would be equivalent to a keyword with little search volume. For this reason, it is interesting that we are always where there is more movement of users.
Takeaway: Prioritize keywords that have a high search volume.
Keyword positioning difficulty
You discovered an ideal street to place your store! It is a very busy street, with a lot of visibility, which helps to attract a good number of people. However, later you realize that for that very reason, the price to place your store in that region is quite high.
With SEO it would be practically the same. The difference is that the currency of SEO is time/effort.
Takeaway: Before choosing a keyword and prioritizing it, you need to analyze how difficult it will be for it to rank. Sometimes all the effort and time that will be necessary will not be remunerated with the traffic that you are going to obtain.
How to Assess Keyword Ranking Difficulty
There are a few tools that could do that analysis:
- MOZ is a tool capable of analyzing positioning through an indicator that they created. However, it is not free. In addition to knowing the difficulty of ranking for the keyword, you will be able to see the potential for “SEO gain” with the keyword. It's worth a try.
- The SEMrush tool (paid) also has this functionality, which will allow you to evaluate the characteristics of your keyword.
If you don't have access to any of these tools, you could evaluate the individual indicators of each website ranking on the results page, related to your keyword.
The analysis will become more subjective, but it may be enough to obtain the necessary knowledge of your strategy.
Learning: Keywords with low positioning difficulty are always excellent tags. These will give you faster results with less effort.
Intent to buy keywords
For a good price, you were able to locate your store on a busier street in the center of your city. Many people pass by and see your store every day. However, later you realize that most of the stores on this street sell electrical appliances specifically, a niche that your store also works with, but not specifically.
Some consumers who walk down the street may even think that your store is interesting, but most are looking for a more specialized service.
Ranking for a keyword that has many searches and low positioning difficulty is not always the best option. If the keyword does not represent well what your store sells, it may not be a good business to invest in it.
Actually, SEO is concerned with attracting a lot of traffic organically. If using it you were not able to generate customers, it does not make much sense to invest in it.
Be very clear about all the stages of the purchase process of your target audience. Many times, a keyword may not seem advantageous from a sales point of view, but you should still do the analysis to understand if that superficial interest of the visitor in your subject will not evolve in the future for a greater interest and will become a keyword. sale.
Long tail keyword
Long tail keywords (or long-tail) are basically the possible variations that can exist of the same word. Normally made up of more than one keyword, they show a greater purchase intention than the other keywords. To make it clearer, consider this example:
User A – Logged into Google and searched for “tennis” in the tool.
User B – Goed into Google and searched for “water-resistant Nike jogging shoes”
First question: Which keyword probably has the highest search volume? Probably the keyword “sneakers”, because it is much more general, should have more searches than the word “water-resistant Nike jogging shoes”.
But now, let's go to the second question: Which user probably has a greater intention to buy a pair of sneakers? Very likely user B has more purchase intentions since he has a much more specific need and knows exactly what he wants.
The relationship between long tail and short tail* (*short tail would be the shortest and most invariable version of the keyword) is precisely linked to the purchase intention. For this reason, you must have this knowledge when evaluating the purchase intent behind the words.
Takeaway: Even if a keyword has a low search volume, there is a chance that it will generate more sales than a keyword with a high search volume. Always analyze this point.
Current position for the keyword
To explain this aspect, instead of using the example I used above, we are going to use research done by Advanced Web Ranking.
According to research, the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) click-through rate works as follows:
POSITION IN GOOGLE CLICK RATE BY POSITION
1st place 29.81%
2nd place 16.05%
3rd place 9.97%
4th place 6.74%
5th place 4.85%
6th place 3.57%
7th place 2.7%
8th place 2.1%
9th place 1.68%
10th place 1.33%
As shown in the table above, 71% of the clicks are in the first 6 places on the results page. For this reason, before thinking of a super strategy to position a new URL on the first page, check that you do not have a "badly positioned" URL.
A URL that is in 12th place can easily get on the first page and be within the top 6 positions, with content optimizations and link building, for example.
Takeaway: Before creating a new page to rank for a specific keyword, check that your website doesn't have any pages “pre-ranked” for that keyword. To rank a URL that is on the second page of results on the first page, may not take as much effort as creating a web page from scratch.
Remember that through Google Analytics you will be able to consider some content performance metrics (visits, entries, time spent, etc.), by URL made for that keyword, not by the keyword itself.
What to do with each keyword
The Mindmap below shows the main actions we can perform with a keyword:
Basically, there are 4 actions: create content, optimize (SEO), buy in Google Ads, and leave it as it is.
When to create content for a keyword
Your company must create content for a keyword when it appears beyond the 100th position of Google, that is, it does not appear even among the first 10 pages of the search results.
Taking the RD Station keyword list as an example, you can see that we rank poorly for the terms “SEO tips” and “blog tips”:
This is probably because we don't have content on the subject actually using those terms.
In a situation like that, where the company already has some authority over Google, by creating content about the misplaced word, the page should at least move into the top 100 results. However, the position will depend on the difficulty and proficiency of each word.
There is another case in which it is worth creating new content: when the page that is in the top 100 positions does not reflect the topic well or is already optimized for another more important term.
When to optimize content relative to a keyword
There are two cases in which a certain keyword can be optimized, both when the term already appears in the top 100 positions.
In the first case, if the term is on a page and it has a bad On-page SEO score for that word, the first thing to do is optimize it for keywords. As an example, we are going to show the term “monitoring of social networks”:
There are several actions to improve On-page SEO: use the word in the Page Title, and repeat it a few times throughout the page, among others.
In the example below, we use RD Station to assess the current state of a page's optimization for the term “social media monitoring”:
Another case in which SEO should be optimized for a word is when it appears in the top 100, but is still in a bad position, and its On-page SEO score is good, as is the case with the term "web analytics":
In that case, what we should do is draw up a link-building strategy, to get links from other sites and add authority to Google.
One of the most effective ways to achieve this goal is by making Guest Posts and inserting in that material, which will be sent to the publication on another site, a link to the page that needs to improve its position.
When to buy a word in Google Ads
There are many cases in which a word can be bought in Google Ads. From generating more traffic, and more conversions, to disclosing an offer, whether direct or indirect.
One of the options that arise as an opportunity when analyzing a keyword panel is to buy the word when there is a combination of a bad position and low price.
That option still coincides with what we said about SEO optimization of a certain page: by buying the term on Google and directing the ad to a Landing Page, your company can measure the conversion rate of that word and decide if it is worth the effort to appear on the first page of Google.
It is worth evaluating also terms that are important and have a good conversion rate, which can be quite useful to gain volume, even if the company is already well positioned. To find out if that optimization is worth the effort, analyze the cost per Lead before making the decision.
When to leave a word as is
When your word has reached the first position, you no longer need to worry about executing any type of action, except monitoring to make sure that it is still at the top of the results.
Another situation in which you do not have to do anything is when there is a combination of high prices, bad location, and high competition. An example is the term “email marketing tool”
The click price for that expression is so high ($1.68) that it's impossible to buy that term in AdWords. The competition for it is also high, meaning there are a lot of people advertising and probably also vying for the organic position on the first page.
In that case, it would be better to dedicate resources to other words that will bring many times better results or, even, focus on long-tail expressions, that is, much more specific terms with less search volume. For the previous case, an example would be: “how to set up an HTML template in an email marketing tool”.
Finally, it is not worth optimizing the site for very generic terms, such as “Marketing”:
That term is too generic and will surely attract many unqualified visits that do not cover the audience we want to attract, such as Business Administration students doing a paper on Philip Kotler.
Finally, what to do in those cases in which it is not interesting to carry out an action for a word? The answer is simple: search for long-tail terms, such as the one mentioned above, and search for synonyms, to discover if your company's site already has a good ranking or if some action is needed.
Conclusion
The keyword is the bridge between you and your audience. Use all available resources to ensure the maximum efficiency of this bridge. Even though the last few lessons of this article had a very focused direction on SEO, with little effort it is possible to turn the instructions given into a business vision.
If you have any questions about keywords, leave us your comment. On the other hand, if you are ready to take your Digital Marketing strategy to the next level, try RD Station Marketing for free. Generate more traffic, and leads, create automation, new sales, and relationships for your company.
