Foundations of Keyword Research

In this SEO bootcamp session from Conductor, we're going through the foundations of keyword research. We'll cover what keyword research is, who should care about it, and how to incorporate it into your process. Then we'll walk through the core factors of keyword research.

Keyword research is the process of identifying and analyzing the specific words and phrases. People type into search engines like Google. It helps you understand what keywords are most popular and the search intent of your target audience. In other words, keyword research is the practice of understanding the language your audience is speaking when they're looking for information products or services.

Lots of different teams can use keyword research in their from SEOs to content teams, to digital marketers to site merchandisers. Basically, it can benefit anyone interested in driving more valuable traffic to their website. The keyword research can also be a tool for guiding larger business strategy. Understanding how people are searching online is a window to the hearts and the minds of the customer and can provide valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences.

Let's take a look at how this fits into the content creation and optimization process. With new content, we can see that keyword research is right up at the front. By knowing how our customers are searching, which questions they're asking, we can better strategize content to create that meets their needs.

When optimizing existing content, it's essential in the phase of mapping target keywords basically is our content talking about important topics where our customers are talking about it. With good keyword research, we can implement the language that they're using so our content is more visible to them and search engines.

Let's walk through the basics of any keyword research project. There are two main factors to consider demand, or how big is the potential audience and relevance, or what is the right answer for our audience's question. Beneath each of these core elements are various key factors. Let's go through each in more detail.

We'll start with monthly search volume, which answers the basic question of how much interest is there. It refers to the average number of times during a month that people search for a given term. We can use it to check that we're using the right language to talk about our products and services as how people search may not be how we're currently talking about our offerings.

Consider the example of a clothing retail site that's titled a category page long dresses, but we can see here that almost three times as many searches are actually for maxi dress. We can use this information to optimize our content and match how the majority of our potential customers are searching for our products.

We can also use MSV to find related terms with high interest. For example, for this topic, we can see that people often search for certain color or style variations, which can help us make decisions about new landing pages to create or filters to optimize.

Also, important is not only how big the demand is, but how it changes throughout the year. Is interest steady or does it fluctuate? Are there moments of peak demand we can prepare for or respond to? By understanding search seasonality, we can prepare a website to be visible for those times when demand is highest,

and the last factor within demand is whether a keyword is a head term or a long tail term. Head terms are usually shorter with more search volume and high competition to rank well in search, whereas long tail terms are more specific with less search volume, but also less competition to rank well. When creating a keyword strategy, we wanna use a mix of both head terms and long tail terms and consider what content would be best for each.

Now that we've covered demand, let's talk about relevance. Just because a topic is widely searched for doesn't necessarily mean we should target it. It needs to be right for us based on our organization and our current business priorities.

Next to think about is what is relevant for our users. Search intent is the reason behind a person's online search. When looking at keywords, try to think about what it is someone wants to find when they type a query into a search engine and where they are in their buyer's journey. Ensuring that our content matches what people are looking for increases our chances of ranking higher.

Some common types of search intent include informational keywords where people are looking to learn more about a topic product or service evaluation. Keywords where people want to compare multiple products or services. Transactional keywords where people are ready to take an action on a website like purchasing a product or service, and navigational keywords where people are looking to quickly access certain websites or pages.

The last factor of keyword research is understanding what the search engine thinks is relevant. Take a look at what content is ranking well for the keyword that you want to target. Typically, the top results will all fall into the same search intent group, which gives you a good idea as to what the search engine is considering a valuable answer. What types of websites are ranking? Are the pages educational or instructional? Are they product pages or something else?

Taking a look at what types of results or ranking can also be helpful when thinking about what content to create or optimize. For example, people also ask results are prime real estate for informational content. If we see video or image results, we can think about optimiz, our multimedia. Do users want to visit a place in real life? Local results are a good indication they might be, and results like AI snippets where information is presented cumulatively may affect our potential visibility on the search engine result page.

With the insights you gather from effective keyword research, you can tailor your offerings and marketing messages to better resonate with your target audience leading to higher rankings and greater organic traffic over time.

Ready to start your next keyword research project. Conductors Research feature is a great place to start as you can research a topic, website or page and access an entire index of keywords.