Keyword study

The objective here is to prepare the design of your business website. It’s all about finding the right keywords that will help Internet users find your site quickly in Google search results. It increases the visibility of your site. This is what we call natural referencing.

It should be noted that it is thanks to keywords that Google ranks websites in the search results.

So identifying the right keywords will allow you to appear everywhere in Google search results, but also in social networks when people search for your Facebook page. These keywords will be used everywhere.

Some tools to help: Google Keyword Planner, semrush keyword

I will share with you an Excel file to better structure your keywords according to your different pages of your website.

All the modules seen above are a very good basis for your web strategy. If everything is well done, the result will be fantastic.

Why are keywords important?

Keywords are important because they are the link between what people are looking for and the content you provide to meet that need. In search engine rankings, your goal is to drive natural traffic to your site from the search engine results pages (SERPs).
The keywords you choose to target (the ones you include in your content) determine what kind of traffic you will get.

If you use the wrong keywords for your customer (or for you), you will attract the wrong visitors to the website, and no one will buy.

Where to start? Keyword research should answer the question, “What exactly does my target/audience want to know about my product/service?”

The key to success is to know your target audience and how they think.

How to answer these questions?
What is the solution (product or service):

• How will you solve the target audience problem?
• What mechanism makes this solution work?
• How is it superior to the competition?

Preliminary research (to use the same vocabulary as the audience) :

• Which articles are the most popular on this topic?
• What YouTube videos are popular (views, comments) on this topic?
• What questions are asked in the forums? Facebook groups?

Choosing the right keywords: the 3 main types

It is important to understand that there are three main types of keywords that belong to different stages of the conversion funnel.

The question or keyword shows where your prospect should land.

Here are the 3 main types of keywords:

• The keywords at the top of the funnel are informative (definition of…, the best way to do it for…, step by step for…, how to…)
• The key words in the middle of the funnel are commercial: the search for solutions and comparison (ways to…, advice to…, choose…)
• Bottom of the funnel keywords are transactional, focusing on high purchase intent (price for…, best…, order…, where can I buy…)

The keywords at the top of the funnel are informative in nature while the keywords at the bottom of the funnel are transactional. This is the biggest separation between your keyword list. I talk about it more in the article: conversion for semantics.

Decide on a strategy

Some tools to help: Google Keyword Planner, semrush keyword

I will share with you an Excel file to better structure your keywords according to your different pages of your website.

What type of keywords should I choose first?

In your content marketing strategy, each SEO campaign and keyword research must be done according to the objectives.

Should you focus on building a long-term relationship with the audience? Or on an audience looking to compare products? Or an audience ready to buy?

If you are planning a large, long-term campaign for your audience, it would be best to target the top of the funnel or even the middle keywords. But if you are building an SEO campaign for an e-commerce site, it would be best to target the keywords at the bottom of the funnel first.

That’s why there are many ways to do keyword research in SEO. Each project depends on the objectives, the target and the needs of the company.

Create a mindmap for your keywords, no matter what type of keyword you decide to focus on. This will allow you to track the path of your prospects on your site.

It’s best if the keywords and pages at the top of the funnel lead prospects to the next step in the funnel. And so on, until the purchase phase: the bottom of the funnel.

The number of keywords you will target depends on the size of the site and the SEO budget.

Tip: from your mindmap, map the keywords and compare the content you already have and the ones missing to establish a priority list.

Keyword research : Brainstorming

To start, think of ideas for keywords. Try to guess what phrases people use when they search for your products and services. Be creative, create a text file or spreadsheet and start writing.

Think in terms of questions and needs. People use engines to find the answer to a question. They use keywords to formulate this question.

Instead of thinking directly about keywords, think about the questions that people who need or want your product/service are asking.

Your site, your products or your services are the answers. So try to find the questions. Once you’ve come up with these questions, think of all the different keywords to express them.

Think of the perfect visitor

Your goal is to attract qualified traffic. By making sure you attract the right visitors, you put all the chances on your side to improve your conversion rate.

So at the beginning of your organic SEO strategy, try to describe your perfect visitor. Here are some questions to help you define it:

• What is this knowledge?
• What is he looking for?
• What language does he use?
• What questions does he have?

To go further, make a good persona.

Think laterally

Lateral thinking allows you to look at things from a new perspective. Indeed, knowledge is sometimes a disadvantage, because you know your product/service/industry too well and you can’t understand someone who doesn’t know your industry.

For example, if you are a plumber, you probably use very different terms than your customers. Avoid using specialized vocabulary to describe your services and prefer general concepts. How would you describe the products offered by other industries that you have little knowledge of? Don’t hesitate to ask your customers how they found you!

Top tools for keyword research

There are a plethora of tools and techniques to create a list of keywords from a single idea. However, not all tools are created equal. Some offer additional data such as search volume. To carry out this quest, access to a tool with keyword ideas and indicators of one keyword relative to another is an absolute necessity.

For your information, Google recently blocked access to search volume data in its planning tool to anyone without an active account.

But how to determine and find the most searched keywords? Here is a list of tools that will help you conduct your keyword research (in order of preference).

SEMRush: SEMRush is a keyword tool that is known for its huge database of keywords in 26 different countries. SEMRush results return keyword ideas, estimated search volume, estimated CPC, keyword difficulty score and currently ranked domains for a keyword. One of the most complete databases after Google.

Keywordtool.io: this tool retrieves keyword ideas from Google, YouTube, Bing and even Amazon. You can choose suggested keywords in each country, language and Google location. With the free version, you will get hundreds of suggested keywords, but you will need a paid subscription to access search volume estimates.

Ubersuggest (from Neil Patel): Neil Patel (famous marketer) offers his own dedicated keyword explorer by buying the Ubersuggest tool. You can use the tool from anywhere in the world to perform your search. Filtering options allow you to exclude your specific query term to get more ideas, or even choose only question phrases that contain your keyword. Keyword results include query ideas associated with the estimated search volume.

Bing: While not the obvious choice, Bing’s keyword tool can still provide useful information on related keywords. You must have a verified website in Bing Webmaster Tools to use the tool, but it is otherwise free to use. The keyword ideas are not as broad as those you might get from other free keyword tools.

Wordstream: Primarily a paid tool to help marketers manage their PPC campaigns, Wordstream has a freemium keyword tool that allows a limited number of searches. Wordstream’s free results show search volume by keyword.

SEOQuantum:

SEOQuantum’s “Keywords Suggestions” tool is a free, easy-to-use tool that shows you the results of keyword suggestions from search engines like Google, Amazon, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Bing…

First, go to Keywords Suggestions (https://www.seoquantum.com/keywords-finder) and enter a broad keyword in the search field. For example, if you are searching for insurance-related keywords, you can use the keyword “insurance”:

Keywords Suggests will automatically show you the suggested results on the different sites.

You can download the results to a CSV file by clicking on the download icon in the upper right corner of the page:

Keywords Suggests will automatically show you the suggested results on the different sites.

You can download the results to a CSV file by clicking on the download icon in the upper right corner of the page:

How use the keywords?

Once the list and the choice of keywords have been validated, you can now move on to the integration or content creation phase for this keyword. There are 7 key elements (also called “hot zones”) where you should place your keywords:

• The Title tag
• The Meta description tag
• Hierarchical titles
• The content
• The images
• THE URL
• Link anchors

Show Excel file for keyword use

As you have understood, choosing keywords for SEO is of great importance. This choice will determine the success or not of your referencing. Now that you know the basics, I suggest you go further by discovering how to clean up this list of keywords and select the most relevant words: the 2 techniques to use to choose the right keywords.

It is not mandatory, it depends on your activity. Don’t be like most people who choose a slogan that clearly describes what you do: function slogan.

Of course, it doesn’t work for everyone, but it’s worth thinking about.

If you can use phrases found in your keyword study, it is even better to improve your visibility.