Keyword research is an essential aspect of SEO. If you are a professional marketer, it’s likely that you have faced some challenges when it comes to keyword research. As this is ranked as some of the most difficult tasks from any SEO professional, it may take some time to focus in on the research task or find a qualified group to outsource your keyword research to.
Whether you’re hiring someone to perform your keyword research or performing it yourself, you need to make sure that nothing is missed. Here are some of the top mistakes to avoid during SEO keyword research:
Ignoring search intent:
Taking a look at the content queries that come in for your site and what your users are looking for is important. Many website owners start to get obsessed with the idea of driving traffic into their website but creating content or offering services that lead to conversions is much more important. You want to find searchers that have the intent to purchase your product or searchers that are looking for expert advice from the content on your site. Driving content for the sake of having visitors on your webpage is never going to help your page rank.
Reading SERP’s incorrectly:
The intent behind every search query for your website can be examined using a variety of SEO tools. What you might soon discover is that the queries you are receiving on your website don’t match up with the content that you built for that keyword. Search engine data can sometimes interpret the data in your site differently than the product page or help page that you had created. Model your content around the type of searches you want to receive rather than focusing on keyword stuffing.
Avoiding long tail keywords:
A longtail keyword can be just as important as some of the highest ranked keywords in your market. Even though long-tail keywords do often, the lower search volume, they can help you be out the competition because they often help you capture searches from the full intent of a search. This can lead to exact matches in a search engine and make sure that the people coming into your site are seeking to make a purchase.
Performing optimization after content is written:
Your keyword research can quickly get shut down when your content seems unnatural. Optimizing previously published content with new keywords or inserting the keywords that you’ve researched into content you’ve already written won’t meet the needs of users. It often sounds unnatural and it’s never going to rank as well as content that is written with keywords in mind.
Missing geography:
If you aren’t using local search, you’re missing out on a large aspect of keyword research. Focusing in on local search and creating some highly specific content that focuses on your largest geographic audience can be important to maximizing your results.
Missing your referrals:
Checking SERP’s for content means checking out where users are looking for your website with each query. Make sure that you are checking all searchable properties to see where your website is gathering its visitors from. This can let you know the best platforms that you could target keywords on in the future and which keyword targeting is working on each platform.
Ignoring broad topics:
Highly specific content can be useful for answering questions from your users. Focusing on broad topics such as holiday messages or even checking trending topic clusters can be a great way that you can capture new traffic. Having a highly targeted blog for traffic or a website with heavily targeted content may have you missing out on capturing more user traffic.
Ignoring your competitors:
Doing some research into your competitors’ websites and their content can make sure that you can gauge the keywords that they are targeting. The terms you are trying to rank against your competition means modeling their search engine success. Competitor research always needs to be a big part of your SEO keyword strategy.
If you need assistance with your keyword research and SEO, contact our experts info@startup-n-marketing.com
