It’s imperative for successful SEO and paid search marketing campaigns to do keyword research correctly or their performance can be significantly hindered, so we now take a look at the best practice for this process.
1. With Google’s AI advancements, keyword research now needs to consider:
- Topic Clusters: Instead of individual keywords, focus on comprehensive topic coverage.
- SERP Features: Different query types trigger different SERP features (local packs, knowledge panels, video carousels).
- User Journey Mapping: Understanding how keywords fit into different stages of the user journey.
- AI-Generated Suggestions: Leveraging tools that use AI to identify semantic relationships between topics.
2. Focus on Search Intent
Rather than focusing on how many people use a search query, focusing on the reason why someone is searching can lead to more business/sales.
3. Avoid Allowing Clients To Choose Keywords
Keywords provided by clients can often be too broad, don’t match search intent or are too competitive.
Keywords should be based on search data, not vanity or gut instinct.
4. Remember to Examine the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)
Take the time to see what type of content is ranking for your top terms and use that to inspire your campaigns.
5. Target keywords more broadly than just those with the highest search volumes
You could be missing out on better options by focusing just on high-volume keywords as they often ignore user intent and are highly competitive. It’s hard to stand out and rank well if you go after the same key terms as everyone else.
6. Avoid using Long-Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords often have a lower search volume, which turns some marketers away but sometimes, low search volume is a good thing. Lower volume key terms are often further in the sales funnel, meaning the user is much closer to making a purchase.
Using various contextual keywords can also ensure you cover a topic more broadly and are more likely to provide visitors with the content they need to convert.
7. Do keyword research before creating content and avoid ‘keyword stuffing’.
Avoid going back to “SEO” a post after writing of the content is complete.
Instead, keyword research should be done before a topic is even picked and terms should be added naturally where they make sense, without overusing them by ‘keyword stuffing’, which can be detrimental and penalised by search engines.
8. Avoid focusing on exact match keywords
With the addition of natural language processing, Google is becoming increasingly proficient at understanding context and it understands your terms fine with an “in” or even several words in between parts of a keyword, so it’s not necessary to use exact match keywords and to cram awkward phrases into the content.
Google returns results with related keywords, not just those that match exactly.
9. Pay Attention To Keyword Localisation
Avoid assuming that people in different countries (or even different parts of the same country) use the exact same terms when searching for a product.
This is another reason why paying attention to the actual SERPs is so important.
10. Avoid focusing on keyword difficulty
Most keyword research tools provide info on keyword difficulty or how competitive a certain term is in the SERPs. Many marketers ignore this stat to focus on search volume.
Sometimes, a lower volume and lower difficulty term will be easier to rank for and more lucrative in the end and keyword difficulty doesn’t consider a lot of factors.
A highly competitive keyword might not be hard for you to rank for if you have high traffic and rank well for similar terms.
You can read more about best practice keyword research.
If you want to know more about how the use of best practice keyword research can benefit your business’s SEO, please get in touch.