What You Need to Know About Keyword Research
If you are reading this post about how to do keyword research, it’s likely that you’ve started your SEO journey and are ready to rank on page one of Google. However, tackling the world of organic marketing and SEO is a journey. Our goal is to help you understand how a well-optimized website can drive traffic to your website and impact your bottom line.
What Are ‘Organic Keywords’ in a Website?
Organic keywords refer to the search terms or phrases people use to find your website through search engine results. Organic search results are the listings on a search engine results page that are not paid ads.
For example, if someone types “newborn photographer” into a search engine and your photography website appears in the search results, “newborn photographer” would be considered an organic keyword for your website.
There are two types of keywords to consider; long-tail and short-tail keywords.
Example of Broad vs. Long-Tail Keywords
photographer = broad, not specific
newborn, baby, and cake smash photographer = long-tail, very specific with clear intent
Knowing which organic keywords drive your website traffic can help optimize your content and improve your search engine rankings. You can use various tools, such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console, to track your organic keyword performance and identify opportunities for improvement.
How Does Keyword Research Factor Into Organic SEO?
Keyword research is a critical factor in organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) because it helps you understand what your target audience is searching for and how you can optimize your content to meet their needs.
Here are some ways keyword research factors into organic SEO:
- Content optimization: By researching keywords your target audience uses to search for products or services, you can optimize your website’s content to include those keywords. Keyword research can help your website rank higher in search engine results for those specific keywords.
- On-page optimization: Keyword research can help you identify the most relevant and popular keywords for your business, and you can use them to optimize your website’s title tags, meta descriptions, headers, and other on-page elements.
- Competitive analysis: Keyword research can help you identify which keywords your competitors are ranking for and what content they create around them. Again, keyword research can help you create better organic content that outranks your competitors and drives more organic traffic to your website.
- Identifying new opportunities: Keyword research can help you discover new opportunities to create content like blog posts your target audience is searching for but your competitors may not be targeting.
Keyword research is essential to organic SEO because it helps you understand what your target audience is searching for and how you can optimize your content to meet their needs and rank higher in search engine results.
What we love most about keyword research is that keyword research tools help you find keywords and topic ideas seen in search queries for search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.
What Are Some Quick Ways to Get Organic SEO Results?
While there are no shortcuts to achieving long-term success with organic SEO, you can use quick tactics to get some initial results. Here are a few:
- Optimize your website for speed: Website speed is critical to SEO. A fast-loading website can help improve user experience and reduce bounce rates, which can help improve your search engine rankings. You can use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to check your website’s speed and identify improvement opportunities.
- Optimize your website’s metadata: Your metadata, including the title tag and meta description, can impact your search engine rankings. Ensure your metadata includes your target keywords and provides a clear and concise content description.
- Use internal linking: Internal linking can help search engines understand the structure of your website and how different pages are related. Make sure to link to relevant pages within your website using descriptive anchor text.
- Publish high-quality content: Creating high-quality, informative, and engaging content can help attract more traffic to your website and improve your search engine rankings. Optimize your content around your target keywords, include relevant images and videos, and use a clear and easy-to-read format.
- Build backlinks: Backlinks from high-quality and relevant websites can help improve your website’s authority and search engine rankings. You can start by contacting other websites in your industry and asking them to link to your content.
Remember that these quick tactics are just the beginning of your organic SEO journey. To achieve sustainable long-term success, we suggest you invest time and effort into a comprehensive SEO strategy that includes ongoing keyword research, content creation, and link building.
Now What
Ranking number one in a Google search takes a comprehensive SEO strategy. And your keyword ranking for SEO matters. Otherwise, while you might gain traffic, you won’t draw the visitors most likely to convert to paying customers.
Regardless of where you are in the SEO process – a DIYer, ready to hire an expert, or just started your SEO journey – understanding organic marketing will give you the confidence to dig in. And when you are ready to take it to the next level or have any questions let’s chat!
Happy SEO Gains!