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5 most effective ways to keyword research for 2021

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Only 0.78% of Google searchers click on something that appears on the second page.

But, this shouldn’t be coming as a surprise at this point. After all, how often do you get past the first few search results?

While digital marketing gives you many ways to get your page to the top, one strategy rules them all – Search Engine Optimization. SEO forms the soul of all your marketing efforts and can be applied to nearly every platform. SEO is quite justifiably one of the supporting pillars to your digital presence.

But, if SEO is the pillar on which your visibility stands then, keywords are the foundation that keeps the pillar in place. They decide the direction in which your audience shall move and whether or not reach you in time to see a conversion.

So, it goes without saying that everyone on the internet is battling it out to find the words that shall drive their leads. And guess what? We are here to tell you how to do it.

The easy way out is just visiting https://www.minttwist.com/services/seo/ and knowing that everything shall be taken care of.

Or you can understand how you can find the right keywords that do it all. Here are a few ways that can be very effective in the long run.

1. Build your buyer personas

The first and foremost task of keyword research is finding those who are searching for you. You should know your audience (and prospective buyers) in and out. This includes understanding what moves them, makes them think, and forces them to stop.

Once you relate to your consumers, you can grasp the intent with which they are wandering on the search engines. Buyer personas step in here.

Buyer personas are perspective images of people who are your target consumers. Walking in their shoes, you can build on their pain points, desires, and end goals. A buyer persona requires you to be very specific about gender, interests, income, achievements, and even age.

With the buyer personas at hand, you can find out how they search for your product and devise a keyword strategy accordingly.

2. Use Google suggest

The best way to rank on Google? Asking Google how to do so.

When you Google SEO guide, the engine will send across everything it thinks is relevant to your search terms. But, what if you didn’t press search right away? Google tells you the different kinds of phrases that people search for along with the words you have used. Now, this is a goldmine.

Just put in a single word from your target keywords and see Google open up with a bunch of different phrases that are not only relevant but also popular. Select the ones that match your buyer intent from the earlier research and you’re good to go.

3. Take competitor analysis seriously

Your competitors are doing hard work. Researching relevant keywords, building a strategy, implementing the plan and adapting to it from time to time. You, on the other hand, can do smart work. Simply find out which keywords they are targeting and start creating from there.

With a tool like SEMRush, you can check the keywords that your competition is already ranking for and find out all the metrics that affect their SERP including the position, volume, CPC and traffic percentage.

The advantage here is that you get a fair idea of the long-tail keywords you need to inculcate within your content. Additionally, you also get to know what’s working and what isn’t without going through your own tests. A keyword gap analysis can further be of great help in this scenario.

4. Try it, test it, try it again

If you didn’t know this by now, then you must understand that keyword research and generation is an on-going process. Once you have a tentative list of your keywords at hand, it is equally crucial to see how well they fare in reality.

Put them through the test. Evaluate whether they actually align with what your consumers are searching for. Run a search to find out who are your competitors and what’s the PPC situation like. Give it try with small campaigns and analyse the results.

Once you have the answers, then and only then implement the keywords into your SEO strategy. But, don’t stop there. Keep a close eye on how a particular keyword is performing and add or remove it as per the metrics.

5. Assemble a toolkit for 2021

Irrelevant how hard you slam on a nail; you’ll eventually need a hammer to get it in. The good thing with keyword research is that there is a whole variety of hammers available to choose from.

Google Trends and Google Keyword Planner are the most obvious ones. Diversify with out-of-the-box apps like Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, KWFinder, and Ubersuggest. As mentioned earlier, SEMrush is indispensable if you want to stay ahead of the competition. Platforms like Helium 10 and Jungle Scout allow you to leverage Amazon to get your products that much-beloved search volume. SerpStat is another tool that can help you get to the top of the mountain and get there fast enough.

Start with one tool at a time and keep adding them to your arsenal as you go ahead. Also, it is better to not blindly trust the tools sometimes and create your own actionable insights from the information provided by them.

Takeaway

No matter how many times we say this, it won’t be enough – Keywords are the most important part of your SEO efforts. All the internal and external strategies might come to a halt if the keyword research is not done correctly.

So, be very intentional about choosing the terms that shall essentially be the conduit to your business conversions. The tips given above are an inclusive and not an exhaustive list. Do your own research, figure out the results, and start putting in the work.

Because unless you do that, you’ll never find that one word that can turn the world upside down.

 




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