Why do some articles get better traction than others? Why do some stories blow up online, while others get resigned to the ethereal dustbin of digital history? These are good questions, with nuanced answers.
One way to begin to think about answering them is what keywords are these successful articles targeting? What keywords are they using to reach a broad audience?
When web publications are planning what articles they want to write, they’ll do what’s called keyword research to help inform their decision. Good keyword research can let you know which topics are worth pursuing and which aren’t worth the effort.
Judah Chambers, who writes for the business advice platform Solution Scout and helps grow companies with VNE Marketing, described keyword research as “a vital step in the process of understanding what people want to read about.”
This is the process of finding and examining search terms that internet users enter into search engines. It's done to use that data for a specific purpose, often involving search engine optimization or general marketing. Keyword research is used to uncover search queries useful for marketing and assess their ranking difficulty.
Keyword research helps digital marketers find which keywords are best to target. This provides valuable insight into the queries your target audience is searching for on Google. The results you get can be used to create an effective content strategy for your business. Other keyword research benefits include the following:
It's easier to grow your audience if you can answer questions people are asking. You can lead them through the buyer journey from the awareness stage to the purchase point by providing a call to action.
By researching keywords' volume and search intent, you can answer your prospect's questions.
Effective keyword research provides you with insights into current marketing trends. This helps you focus on relevant topics for your business and use keywords your audience is searching for.
Your rank in Google's search engine increases once you identify the best-fitting keywords for your content. This ensures you get a steady stream of traffic for your website.
Google ranks content based on relevance. That's where the concept of search intent comes in. Your content will only rank for keywords if it meets the needs of your target audience. Additionally, the content needs to be the best the searcher can get from that query. Besides, why would Google rank your content higher if the value is less than what similar content are offering?
You can end up ranking on Google's first page, but it won't result in website traffic if no one searches for your content. Volume is measured by monthly search volume (MSV). This means the amount of times the keyword is searched every month across all audiences.
Google gives priority to sources that are considered authoritative. This means you must enrich your site with helpful and informative content. You also need to promote that content to earn social signals and backlinks.
If keyword pages are already loaded with heavy sources (e.g. Forbes or Hubspot), your chances of ranking are incredibly low.
After knowing the keywords you want to rank for, it's time to refine your list to choose the best ones for your strategy. Here's a process you can use:
With Google's Keyword Planner, you can estimate search volume and traffic for the keywords you're considering. The seo tool will flag any terms on your list with too little or too much search volume.
However, it's important to use Google Trends to check certain terms' trend history and projections before deleting them. This lets you know if low-volume terms are something you can invest in now and reap the rewards later. You can also use Google Trends can also be used to know what terms are trending upward and need your focus.
In this case, "low-hanging fruit" refers to keywords that are easy to rank for based on your current website authority. By prioritizing these terms, you stand a better chance of getting your content noticed.
Large companies go after high search volume keywords, and it's effective because they are already established. Google considers this and rewards them with authority over a variety of topics.
As a brand builds its strategy and looks for keywords, consider keywords with little competition. These don't already have multiple articles battling for the highest rank, which means you can get the top spot by default.
Seeing as the goal is to write content worth discovering, you'll need to check the keyword MSV. Monthly search volume is the number of times a query or keyword has entered into the search engines every month. You can use tools like Google Trends or searchvolume.io to find the most searched keywords.
There are multiple SERP feature snippets that Google will display if used correctly. You can easily find them by looking up your chosen keywords and seeing what the first result looks like. To make things easier, here's an overview of the types of SERP featured snippets:
Head terms are keywords that are short and generic. They’re usually just two to three words in length. On the other hand, long tail keywords contain three or more words.
Having a mix of head and long-tail terms is crucial because it gives you a well-balanced keyword strategy. That's possible because head terms are searched more frequently and are harder to rank for than long-tail terms. But, Long tail terms are more specific and tell you exactly what the reader is searching for.
You can get quick wins from long tail keywords but don't forget to aim long-term for more difficult head terms.