How To Do Keyword Research For Your Small Business So You Get More Leads

There are important things to know when it comes to how to do keyword research. Keyword research for SEO and keyword research for local business can both produce results with this type of research. Let’s start with the basics.

What Is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is mining the data available on the internet for ranking keywords. The right keyword research will tell you how many times your chosen keyword shows up monthly. It will hopefully reveal related keywords and their frequencies.

The main thing to know about keyword research is that you might discover new ones. Within every subject, there is our understanding of what people search for. Then there is what is really going on on the internet.

People might use more colloquialisms when they search than you might guess at first. Or they might use different phrases altogether.

How Does Keyword Research Help Us Deliver Content?

It’s not easy to know how to do keyword research for SEO. It definitely takes some practice. But the end goal is usually to create content that ranks.

 Keep in mind that individual pages, not whole sites, usually rank for keywords. Ideally, you will create a page or more per set of keywords you want to rank for.

Keyword research does a few different things for our content.

Keyword Research Makes Content More Relevant

You always want to know what people are searching for on the internet in relation to your website, right? Well, the way to find that out is to do keyword research.

When you discover clusters of related keywords and the “long tail” of a keyword, you will gain in-depth knowledge of what questions people are asking. For example, you may run a boutique online with a blog that carries designer shoes.

If you were to do research on your chosen keyword of “shoes,” you would find a lot of general content. But if you start to type invariants of keywords that have been typed in on your own site’s search bar,  such as “black Prada pumps size 7,” you will find more targeted content.

The idea is to make sure that your content doesn’t have a scatter tactic. You want to research so you find clusters of keywords that have a point and answer specific questions.

Keyword Research Tells Us What Questions People Are Asking

Staying relevant on the internet and ranking as a page is all about answering the right questions.

But it’s hard to just pull questions out of a hat and rank! You’ve got to understand what specific questions people are asking and answer them well.

For example, when people want to know if a Prada pump is cut narrowly or on the wider side, they don’t just search for “Prada shoes.” If you do keyword research around “Prada shoes narrow” or “Prada shoes wide” discover the questions people are asking.

Other related keywords will come up if you search for things like “Prada versus Louboutin” or something similar.

Keyword Research Tells Us What Is On the Internet Already

The goal is to create unique content that is useful. You can’t create a bunch of pages that are similar to other people’s and expect to rank with any ease. It would take a lot of consistent advertising to accomplish that.

Putting out unique content is a much better plan.

So when you are ready to find out how to do keyword research and you are ready to create unique content, realize that the stuff that is out there has been done already. If you are working on competitive keywords that rank highly, you need to come up with a strategy.

Repurposing the same information that other people use in the same category is not a good plan.

How To Do Keyword Research For Your Small Business

Step 1: Ask

The first thing to do is to start with questions. Ask yourself the who, what, when, where, and why around your keywords. Even if it’s something as simple as ice cream sales, be very specific with your questions.

Step 2: Specify

Study your niche well. Make sure you pick a niche! Terms that are too broad won’t target a specific type of customer or user easily. Be specific in your proposed topics.

Remember that sometimes things that make great content are not always big ideas. Amazing photographs of ice cream cones with information about unique local flavours can rank well despite not being overly complex.

Step 3: Find a Keyword Tool

Once you’ve asked a lot of questions and done some preliminary browsing on the internet for keyword clusters and related questions, type your keywords into a tool. There are several good ones.

Step 4: Intent and Context 

Research your intent. Good search engines will try to make sure that people always find exactly what they are looking for. Study the context of the words you are working with. Make it as easy as possible for people to find your topic online.

Step 5: The Tail

Then you need to look at the whole keyword “tail”. The related keywords comprising the last 70 percent of the keyword “tail” with lower frequencies are called the “long-tail keywords.” You should focus on creating content around these keywords heavily.

Step 6: Competition

After you’ve asked questions, done some browsing, and looked at the tail of your keywords, you need to see how your competitors are ranking for the terms you’ve got on your list.

Be sure you don’t create something too similar! Use a unique SEO strategy where possible.

Step 7: Refine

Then, put your keywords into a keyword planner to help you refine your list.

When you’ve come up with a strategy that is comprehensive and works for a manageable set of keywords, you’re done!

How Does Keyword Research Benefit Us?

It’s not easy finding out how to do keyword research for a local business or how to do SEO research. But it’s worth taking the time to find out! Keyword research gives us a unique perspective into the mind of our customers. We can learn what they are thinking.

When you create content over time, you will discover things about your customers and users that you never knew. Keyword research that is relevant is a great way to build customer relationships.

Want to see a list of keyword your website is currently ranking for? Contact us today and we’ll send you the list FREE.

Thanks for reading.