What’s Keyword Research and Why Is It Important?

Ah, keywords – that’s a word you will most likely have heard if you find yourself in the digital marketing space. Regardless of what digital marketing work you do, and what tasks you specialize in, keywords will remain an integral part of your digital marketing expertise. And this is for good reason. To say it in the most basic sense, keywords help dictate the kind of topics and concepts you explore within your brand in order to appeal to the most number of audiences. Theoretically, great use of keywords will help you garner better conversions and even have better sales. However, doing this requires you to research your keywords properly. How exactly do we do this, though? What exactly is keyword research?

Keyword Research: The Basics

In essence, keyword research is a task under search engine optimization (SEO) that involves studying keywords, or phrases and words internet users put into search engines to look for information. With the right tools and approach, keyword research helps brands identify what keywords they rank for – or get associated with. Marketers use keyword research to understand if there’s a demand for certain keywords, and who else wants to rank for keywords you plan on using. If you do the right keyword research, a specific keyword can instantly lead to your brand, or you may have to compete with other members of your industry for it. 

1. How often should I do this?

Keyword research isn’t something you do once. For as long as your brand exists, you have to do keyword research to know what keywords you may have to use to stay relevant to your customers. These change depending on the trends in your industry, or as your audience changes. 

2. How should I do keyword research?

Keyword research can be a burdensome task if you don’t know where to begin. In general, marketers begin keyword research with a “seed” or the main idea, or topic that best relates to their brand. This is the word we want to get associated with your brand. With that word, we have to research how often they’re mentioned in various channels and communities, and if they have different variations. Other SEO tools feature tools that also help you find which websites use them, and how effective those keywords are for your industry.

3. Where can I use keyword research?

Keyword research is an extremely versatile tool, as it’s a method of analysis that helps you understand what concepts and trends work best with your brand. Marketers and digital marketing teams use this to do a variety of SEO tasks, such as content marketing, social media marketing, and even link building. In fact, if you want to build links, you need to do great keyword research and make sure your keywords are inserted naturally (or organically) in your posts so they can appeal to multiple readers. 

Keyword Research: Why Is This Important? 

Alright – so long and short of it, keyword research involves researching keywords and how they can be useful to a particular marketing strategy. This can be enlightening to a lot of beginner marketers, as some of us are led to believe that we just have to slap keywords into everything we release for search engines to recognize them. Turns out, this isn’t the case.

Thanks to new developments in SEO like Google’s BERT algorithm, search engines are learning how to “read” the context of articles thanks to language processing. This means you need to research your keywords more carefully so you or your writers can transform your pieces into SEO-attractive pieces. Why exactly should I start with keyword research, though?

1. Remember that half the world’s population uses the internet.

That’s right, that’s around 3.77-billion people. Even if your webpage gets viewed by 1-percent of that amount, that’s still a whopping  37-million people. If you manage to get your website or webpage popular enough to tap into what these 37-million people are researching, you’re going to be able to tap into a lot of audiences and, potentially, huge sources of customers. Understanding your keywords and what kind of audiences they appeal to can boost the chances of your content being visible to everyone looking for those topics.

2. Keywords determine what your brand will be known for.

For beginner marketers, we know that keywords are words we insert into our copy or web pages so people “searching” for those keywords can see our brand. However, if we look at it from another angle, we want our keywords to eventually define our brand. If we don’t research our keywords properly, other competitors will be stealing that definition – or worse, we might get negative SEO scores if we tackle those keywords improperly. Your keywords are the foundation of all your marketing efforts, so getting this right helps you choose the right audiences, identify the right marketing channels, and time your campaigns.

3. Keyword research helps us build more powerful content.

In the field of SEO, content can make or break a brand. The better your content is – be it a blog post, a social media post, or even a visual – the likelier it is for people to interact with your content. Good use of keywords allows you to tap into audiences that look into your particular keyword and, hopefully, find your content appealing. Some brands and marketers may even link back to your content, which also helps your team’s link building efforts. As such, keyword research is great for finding out what topics you should make content about, and what content can appeal most to other readers and clients.

4. Effective keywords help you build better networks and links.

If you’re into link building, great keyword research allows you to tap into the best websites, brands, and even influential personalities related to your niche. Keyword research allows you to tap into relevant keywords and build links with these brands, especially if they’re related to your niche. This helps promote building your links naturally, as content you share with them (or content they use) will be organically related to them. For instance, organiclinkbuilders, a digital marketing service provider that focuses on natural link building, take advantage of modern keyword research tools and organic link building methods to make sure their clients get backlinks from websites naturally. This means using keywords appropriate to the site’s target audience and niche in order to make great content, and not having to buy paid links from websites of unrelated niches.

5. Help our brands establish context and concepts in our niche.

Keywords are just empty words until we use them properly. And with search engines crawling through at least 1.22-billion websites for SEO content, great keyword research allows us to make sure search engines recognize our use of keywords in a unique way. Strategies such as using long-tail keywords (or very specific phrases) and even building content around a keyword and its related topics can help our brand be a more defined member of our chosen niche. Remember, keyword research allows us to find more efficient ways to include context and value naturally in our content. 

Keyword Research: The Foundation of Great Digital Marketing Campaigns

With the above taken into consideration, it’s important to remember that keywords will eventually become the foundation of all your digital marketing campaigns. As such, the more research about your keywords, the likelier it is for you to create a marketing campaign and strategy that not only appeals to readers using the keyword, but also connects that word into your branding. Great keyword research allows you to leverage that keyword’s appeal and relate it to products and services that you’re offering. 

The above crash course would hopefully acquaint you with the importance and of the basics of conducting proper keyword research. Remember, from keywords you can create compelling pieces, attractive multimedia posts, and even in engaging ad campaigns that can ultimately make your brand the most appealing of its kind in your industry. 

About the Guest Author

John Gonzales loves two things the most in the world – technology, and pizza. As a writer by trade, he spends a lot of time writing about food, travel, and the latest in tech developments. John is your guy when it comes to writing pieces on gadgets and consoles, games, health and medicine, and even marketing. As a techie himself, John wants to make sure his pieces aren’t just informative, but also very personal and tailored to reader needs. 

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