It is hard to give a flat answer. In this post, I will give it a try anyway.
Keyword research for me involves two things:
- before even starting, client meetings (to discuss directions), and
- hours of actual research work (only to get one keyword list prepared for one direction).
we need to know what we want to rank for in search engines.
How keyword research is done depends on how many topics we are researching. Is there only one topic? Or are there a few? To be precise, we need to know what we want to rank for in search engines.
Are we doing keyword research for paid ads? Or are we planning on implementing these words on our website and Google profile?
Let’s say we know at least one topic. For, e.g., we want to rank with our website.
We want “people searching for catering services for large corporations in and around Auckland” to find our website online. Eventually, we want to appear for specific searches on the 1st page of Google.
It is specific enough; it gives us an excellent base to start from.
Now we know the direction of the first keyword research. We will look for keywords and key phrases on this topic and prepare a list.
When you do proper keyword research, you could end up with a list of hundreds of expressions.
Even one topic can generate a log list.
Looking at this long list of words in your excel sheet, you could ask:
Which keywords to select for the website?
What keywords are the right ones?
You have to go through this long list of expressions and select the ones that are
- relevant to our business,
- have a large amount of monthly traffic (i.e., enough people searching for this expression),
- low competition,
- I also look at seasonal data, how the search trend for a particular keyword has changed in the last 3 months, and YOY.
I use software for this.
You could use the combination of Google sheets, Google Keyword Planner tool, and Google Search to perform keyword research.
Out of hundreds of expressions, you want to have a smaller list with 10, max. 15 words and phrases. Include these on a page you want to optimise.
Where to put keywords on the website?
I would include these words:
- in H1-H3 headings on my website (H1 is crucial).
- in the meta description on my pages.
- in the title tag.
- in image Alt descriptions.
- in the Google Business description.
- I will also double-check my Google Business categories to check if I have relevant categories added to my profile. If not, I would add more secondary categories.
Also, I would be thinking about rewriting the body content on my website. Including these expressions in the body of the text is a great idea.
It is keyword implementation in a nutshell.
I could have elaborated a lot more.
SEO is a long-term game. It takes time.
For immediate results, I would do a Google Ads Campaign. It varies by the campaign, but Ads can bring in results immediately. If you need help with a Google Ads Campaign, get in touch with me.
Follow my blog for more hands-on marketing tips.
Thank you for reading my post.
I am Shopi.
I help businesses build solid online foundations.
