Keyword research, step 1: Work out what matters most to you

… That's the million dollar question.

As with everything else in life, you need to choose where your focus lies. What matters most to you to become more visible for?

Most often, you'll find the answer with two simple questions: “What do you earn most from?” and “What would you like to sell more of?”.

Once you have the answer, you can get started on your keyword research. Now you have your “goal”.

You know which area of your business you want to focus on, and this is where you need more sales-generating conversions.

Keyword research, step 2: Get clear on who you're optimising your website for

Targeted marketing requires you to know who you're talking to.

That's why you start by looking into who your potential customers really are.

The good news: you have plenty of ways to get to know them better.

Among other things, you can:

Dig into data from your website and your social media

Google Analytics gives you far greater insight into which content your visitors interact with and which pages drive the most traffic.

If you run Facebook ads, Facebook Insights can also teach you a thing or two. You can see which content your customers respond to and what their demographics look like.

Talk to your current and potential customers
If you want to understand your customers in depth, interview both your sales department and your existing customers.

You can also send out questionnaires and reach more people in less time.

The most important thing is to understand your customers' challenges, needs and questions. Find out how they interact with your business and which content they respond positively to.

If you want to see your potential customers' needs, challenges and questions even more clearly, dive into creating personas.

HubSpot are brilliant at that, so take our recommendation and geek out on it here.

Keyword research, step 3: Get an overview of what people google

You now know the business areas that matter most to you, and you know who you want to reach. So you can really get going with your keyword research.

Before you get impatient: keyword research is not a linear process.

You find lots of keywords and assess their potential. You swap some out, prioritise and find new ones.

Your detective work has to start somewhere. Begin with a long list of possible keywords.

Inspiration for tools you can use:
Ahrefs (paid),
https://answerthepublic.com (free),
https://moz.com/explorer (free),
Google Keyword Planner (free and requires a Google Ads account) + a grain of common sense, a dash of logic and a lot of putting yourself in others' shoes.

Let Google brainstorm keywords related to your business

You type in a few words that fit your business. You then get a long list of keyword ideas. Each idea shows the average number of monthly searches and the competition.

Download the list of suggestions, and then turn your attention to your competitors ↓

Check what your biggest competitors are found for

Look over your competitors' shoulders. It always gives you inspiration. In Ahrefs, you can see what your biggest competitors are found for that you aren't found for.

Not all the words will necessarily make sense for your business. The list is still a good way to learn more about what people actually google. It also uncovers any gaps in your own online presence.

Use Ahrefs' “content gap” feature. Enter the domains of three competitors and your own ↓

Add the words you think have potential to your keyword list. Now build on the list by…

… Looking into what you're found for right now

All optimisation starts with the situation as it is today. So look into what your website ranks for right now. Look at both what it ranks well for and what it ranks embarrassingly badly for.

You can, for example, use Site Explorer in Ahrefs or Google Search Console.

Once you know what the site ranks well for, you can dig into the data in Google Analytics. See whether the good rankings actually deliver healthy visitor numbers and valuable conversions.

If they do, you know that keywords like these are important to you. Then you can go hunting for related keywords.

You can also add the keywords you rank badly for to your list of possible keywords. Afterwards, you look into whether they have potential.

How, you ask? Read on. We're getting to it ↓

Map your potential customers' journey

So far, so good. You now have a long list of keywords, and it most likely contains both good and bad. The list can be better and more targeted.

Now it's time to zoom in on the questions and challenges your personas may have throughout the buying process. You also know it as the customer journey.

Why is that a good idea, you ask?
Most people don't wake up one morning, decide to buy a ventilation system and google “buy ventilation system”. Before the urge to buy, they've noticed a problem in their everyday life, and they haven't known the solution.

The customer journey is the key to understanding your potential customers' thought process. It starts when they feel their pain point and don't yet know the solution. It ends when they know what they want to buy, where and why.

At each stage of the customer journey, the searcher has different intentions and needs.

That's why they also type different words into Google.

Do you want to optimise your website so your potential customers find you when they need you and your expertise, and so you also convert your visitors? Then you need to deliver content based on the stages of the customer journey.

In short: keyword research based on your customers' journey lets you deliver the right content to the right people at the right time.

Short on time? Get a free SEO analysis from one of our specialists.

Find keywords for the awareness stage

The decision-making process typically starts in the “awareness stage”.

Here, the person googling discovers that he has a challenge or a problem. He's unsure how big the problem is and what it means. He doesn't know the solution.

Searches in this stage are called informational keywords. He's looking for information and has only just started researching. That's why he's far from ready to buy anything at all.

He's a long way from getting his card out. Even so, it's an enormously important stage to be found in.

This is exactly where you can plant a seed with your future customers: you know a great deal about the subject.

You're an expert. And you're even helpful and share your knowledge through landing pages, blog posts, infographics or videos.

Find keywords for the awareness stage with three questions:

Which challenges do you solve for your customers?
What outcome do you give them at best?
And which words do your customers use about their problems and the outcome they want?

Let's say you make a living from speed-optimising websites.

Then your potential customers in the awareness stage might search for, for example:

“slow website”
“check slow website”
“why is my website slow?”
“how do you speed-optimise a website?”
“best way to make a website fast”
“make website fast” or “fast website”.

Find keywords for the consideration stage

In the next stage, the person googling knows his challenge. He also knows that there are different solutions. This is especially when the buyer puts on his solution-oriented glasses.

The person googling is actively looking for a fix. And he now knows that there are companies that can speed-optimise the website for him.

That's why the keywords in this stage become much more specific and informed.

Zoom in on these questions when you need to find keywords for the consideration stage:

Who are your competitors, and what sets their products and services apart from yours?
What are the pros and cons of your product or service, especially according to your customers?
Which questions do your customers often ask about your product?
What synonyms exist for your product or service, and which words do your customers use for the product's category?

Examples of typical searches:

“Your product name” vs. your “competitor's product name”
“Your product's name/product type/product category” + city
Advantages of “your product's name”
Disadvantages of “your product's name”
Company/brand + product type
Reviews of “product type”
Prices of “product type”

Find keywords for the conversion stage

In the conversion stage, your potential customer uses transactional keywords. The searches come at the end of the buying process. The customer is close to buying your product or ordering your service.

Brainstorm keywords based on these questions:

Do you have discounts or subsidy schemes?
What's the quickest way for a customer to add your product to the basket, order your service or book an appointment with you?
Do your customers often ask particular practical questions just before they buy your product or service?

Searches in the conversion stage are often fairly straightforward. You see searches such as:

Buy “your product/service”
Order “your product/service”
Booking “your product/service”
Discount on “your product/service”
Download “your product/service”
Sale on “your product/service”
Where to buy “your product/service”

Find keywords for the delight stage

Unfortunately, many people forget the last stage. The delight stage is easily overlooked, because your customer has now actually become a customer.

Surely you also want a happy customer who feels seen and heard?

That's exactly what your content, and therefore your keywords, should focus on in the last stage.

Think about which questions your customers often have once they've bought your product. Do you have good advice on how they get the most out of the product? Or how they avoid running into problems?

Now it's a good idea to sort your whole long list of keywords by the stages of the customer journey.

Put them into a Google Sheet. Then you have them ready to clear out when you reach the next step of your analysis. Don't worry, it's the last one: you need to analyse the potential of each individual keyword ↓

Keyword research, step 4: Analyse the keywords' potential

Assess each keyword with three questions before you decide which keywords to go after:

Does the keyword fit what you offer?

The biggest mistake is choosing keywords solely on the basis of the traffic they can bring.

The keyword also needs to be able to convert the traffic that comes in. That way, you get relevant traffic.

So the question is: does the search intent match what you offer?

If a searcher types “plumbing”, for example, you as a plumber need to work out what the intent is. Does the person want to book a plumber for a job, such as clearing a blocked drain? Or is the person looking for a webshop selling plumbing supplies like a bath mixer tap or a new water pipe?

Look at the results currently on page 1 for the keyword. That will tell you more about the intent.

Do they match what you offer?

If they do, the world's biggest search engine has judged that people are searching for what you offer. That suggests your keyword has potential.

Is there enough to go after?

The next important question is how many people search for the word each month.

As we see it, no number of monthly searches is in itself too low or too high to go after, if you have unlimited time in your calendar.

Few of us do. That's why it pays to weigh the number of monthly searches against what a single customer who converts on the keyword is worth in hard cash.

The search phrase “How much does a bathroom renovation cost” currently has 30 monthly searches in Denmark.

That's not many. But if just 1 of those searches turns into a customer who wants their palace of a bathroom renovated, that one customer can quickly pay back all the SEO work for the keyword.

So search volume is only one part of the equation. Assess what ranking number 1 for the keyword gives you, compared with how much work it takes to get there.

Is it achievable?

… Which brings us to the less fun part. Or maybe the really fun part. You naturally need to look at the competition for the keyword.

The question here is: how easy is it to dominate your keyword?

Search volume often gives you a general idea. The more monthly searches, the greater the competition usually is.

If you want a more precise answer, look at Moz's or Ahrefs' difficulty score. Among other things, it's based on your domain's link profile.

Also assess for yourself whether you can deliver SEO work as good as those currently ranking highest. They're the ones you need to beat.

As the icing on the cake, you can look at the potential organic click through rate for the keyword. SEO guru Rand Fishkin has written a really good article about it.

Don't have time for all this?

Okay, okay. We get it.

The work pays off. And just like with money, it costs time to save time in the end. A half-finished analysis only gives half-finished results.

We're happy to give you a free SEO report to get you started.

If you lack the resources for a well-thought-out SEO strategy, write to us at seo@amplify.dk. You can also reach the rest of the team at info@amplify.dk.

THANK YOU for reading!

Choose keyword research over gut feeling