According to Flurry Analytics, iPad users spend significantly more on apps than iPhone users, a trend that has implications for both developers and consumers. In 2013, the average price of apps for the iPad was reported to be $0.50, while the price for iPhone apps stood at just $0.19. Android apps, by contrast, averaged a…
In order to establish effective communication with potential customers, it is essential to use e-mail. This method of approach is making it possible to forge the best relationships between brands and users, so it is essential to start using it now and, to do so, choosing the best software is key.Implementing the right marketing strategies…
To get a lot of sales online, one of the most infallible techniques that exists is to use email marketing. This direct communication channel with each potential customer generates a positive and profitable experience that often translates into sales, and that is the goal that the vast majority of brands are pursuing: to increase their…
Find out what is causing your subscribers to become complacent or even unsubscribe. Plus, you can learn how to use your mass email plugin to keep your audience engagedWhen it comes to email marketing, there is a fine line between keeping your subscribers engaged and being downright annoying. We’ve all experienced it—yet another email lands…
Online marketing has significantly altered the way of doing business in different companies, firms, and amongst personnel. As technology advances, it influences the online marketing evolution, increasing its benefits to the users. The technology and environment of online marketing keep evolving and changing over time. This means online marketers need to keep up with time.…
Is your website performing as expected? Is it driving traffic and revenue for your company? Are you getting good returns on your investment in your website? If the answer is no to any of these questions, then it might be an issue with website maintenance. Lots of business owners make the mistake of ‘setting it…
There is so much power sitting in your pocket, you might not know it yet! Did you know that you have immense information at your fingertips? This information helps you to take actions and make a difference in your life.For instance, there are several tools that you can also access, like Drop Cowboy that can…
Make the most out of your marketing automation strategy by learning what it can do for your company.In a day and age when we’re all going a hundred miles an hour and trying to complete dozens of tasks each day, finding ways to automate your repetitive day-to-day processes is essential. For many marketers, that means…
What is Keyword Research?
Anytime someone searches for something in Google, that information is stored and cataloged by Google.Even better – Google gives us access to this information.In other words, we can find out:- What people are searching
- How they are searching for it
- How many times those terms are being searched every month on average
Why is Keyword Research Important?
For a business looking to sell more products or services, understanding precisely what your potential customers are searching for (the verbiage they use, the problems they have, the questions they need answers to) is a compelling way to guide the strategy of your content creation & marketing campaigns.It's almost like the "What Women Want" of SEO.Remember that movie? Where Mel Gibson knew what women were thinking – he could tailor the "marketing" of himself precisely to what they wanted.Keyword Research allows us (business owners/marketers) to do the same with our audience – it tells us what they are thinking and searching for and gives us a direct roadmap of content and messaging that we need to create precisely what they need.How to Do Keyword Research
Instead of going into ALL the ways you can do keyword research and listing all of the possible tools and methods – we will focus on the primary ways to get most of your work done – this is called the 80/20 Rule, and it is imperative to keep in mind when doing keyword research.We will go through our process for doing keyword research so you can follow along and make some tangible progress with your digital marketing.Although there is no right or wrong way to do keyword research, it can quickly turn into a rabbit hole.So, to save you from countless hours of confusion & seemingly never-ending research, we are going to break down how we do keyword research that has worked for us to accomplish excellent results for our client's SEO campaigns, like this:Understand Your Consumer
Before you start looking for keywords, you want to make sure you understand your consumer – do your customer research and create your customer avatars.Fully understand the demographics, interests, etc., of who you are about to create content for, and you will have a much easier time when it comes to making your keyword list & content strategy.Understand Your Competition
A big part of doing keyword research is understanding your competition – aka doing your competitor research.The biggest thing to know when doing competitor research is understanding the difference between Direct & Indirect competitors.Direct competitors are the businesses in your space that provide similar products/services to your exact audience.Indirect competitors are the businesses in your space that are not providing competing products/services but are taking up your audience's attention -and the precious and limited space on search engines for the terms you want to rank for.You will want to have a list of your competitors already created before you start doing keyword research – we will reference it a lot through this process.Find Keywords
Start by getting a list of keyword ideas.We usually like to start by looking for seed keywords to use as topics or "hubs" or "buckets" – and then expand.The goal of this section would be to come up with 5-10 topics to start with (you can do more now or add to them later).How to Find Keywords for SEO
- Brainstorming
- Competitors
- Keyword Tools
Use Your Existing Knowledge to Brainstorm Keyword Topics
If you know your industry, you should start by using your existing knowledge to brainstorm some topics & subtopics.We are highly familiar with SEO, so we knew a lot of these already when we needed to begin to think about topics.Things like "keyword research," "on the page," "off-page," "technical SEO," etc.The same goes for your industry – if you are familiar with it, you should have a pretty good idea about the primary topics & subtopics that you can begin to organize.If you get stuck, you can always turn to Google.Search for your industry + the word' topic.'- Start your keyword research using your current & existing knowledge.
- Use Google if you need help expanding your ideas.
Use Your List of Competitors to Find More Topics
Using your competitors to create your keyword topics is a tried-and-true method that we love using.Why? Because when you analyze other companies already established in your industry, they have done a lot of this leg work already.Pull up your list of competitors and look at their websites to find topic ideas.Here is how we did this with our keyword research.1. Pull up your competitor list2. Navigate to some of their websites and look for topicsPro tip: Good places to look include the menu bar, services page, and blog categories3. Add them to your Keyword listYou always want to be maintaining a list as you do keyword research. You can use a spreadsheet, an outlining tool like Dynalist, or a mind mapping tool, but however you want to do this, make sure you keep track.Build out your list with topics & sub-topics:Keyword Tools
The 3rd way we go about finding keywords & topics to start with is by using keyword research tools.Keyword tools can give you a ton of information on your topics very quickly.After you have created your list of topics, you can expand on them using various methods that we cover here in our guide to finding Long Tail Keywords.Our #1 recommended tool for doing topical keyword research is Ahrefs.Ahrefs Competitor Keywords Overview
Plug your competitors into Ahrefs and look at their Organic Keywords.Doing this with just one of our competitors, I can already see 900+ PAGES of keyword ideas:Ahrefs Top PagesUse the "Top Pages" report in Ahrefs to see what pages are bringing your competitors their traffic:Ahrefs Keyword ExplorerType your primary "industry" or topic into "Ahrefs > Keywords Explorer" & use the options in the "Keyword Ideas" sidebar to see an almost endless amount of ideas:Yes, many of the keywords won't make any sense but spend a few minutes scrolling through the pages, and you will get ideas to work with.Here are some of the keyword ideas that stuck out in just a few short minutes of looking through these results:- SEO tools
- SEO training
- SEO services
- SEO audit
- SEO software
- SEO analysis
- White hat SEO
- SEO techniques
- How does SEO work
Analyze & Understand Keywords
Metrics
Use a tool (like Ahrefs or Google Keyword Planner) to find and note each keyword's search volume & keyword difficulty.Targeting keywords with HIGHER search volume and LOWER difficulty is a good starting point for creating a strategy to drive organic traffic to your website.Pro Tip: Use a spreadsheet function to automatically color the SV (search volume) and KD (keyword difficulty) columns to see where the opportunities lie easily.Relevance
Keyword relevance is a significant part of developing a good SEO strategy from your keyword research phase.Make sure you trim out / ignore keywords that are not relevant.Intent
Intent (aka "search intent," "keyword intent," etc.) refers to the state of mind and the desired outcome that the searcher has.We cover this in detail in a previous lesson about SEO Keywords, so you should already be familiar with this – but the intent of a keyword will have a considerable impact on the profitability / ROI you will get by ranking for that term.Modifiers
Keyword modifiers are prefixes, suffixes, etc., that can be very beneficial to your business and the profitability of ranking for a keyword.They are the additional words (like you see in the above image) that change the intent of the keyword.For example, in our article "how to choose an SEO company," we also want to rank this term with the modifiers (adjectives) suitable, best, top, etc.So, we include that in your keyword research + planning.Variations
Keyword variations are essentially different ways of saying the same thing.This goes back to intent.For example, if I am looking for "business cards for lawyers," I might search "lawyer business cards" or "attorney business cards."The intent is the same.Google is getting better at understanding this, but it still helps to rank for all the keyword variations by putting them on your webpage – so be sure to keep an eye out for them during your keyword research phase and add them to your list.Map Keywords
Once you have landed on a list of keywords that you want to build, you must map them to URLs on your website – these can be existing URLs or pages you plan to make, but either way, you want to match up keywords to URLs on your sitemap.Remember: A sitemap is simply a list of all the URLs on your website.Mapping keywords to URLs help you:- Keep your website organized
- Plan the order in which you will start creating your content
- Avoid having multiple pages on your website optimized for the exact keywords (crucial)
With the rise of something new there are always a few that get on board early on, this is no different with the rise of Bitcoin. Several young entrepreneurs have made huge profits from the cryptocurrency which has seen a huge increase in value in a very short time and is expected to only become…
During this difficult time you might think about scaling back on some things, but don’t quit your current SEO plan! Your brand needs to stay present and relevant during a pandemic. If you aren’t moving ahead, you are falling behind, especially in a competitive market. Just like you need to keep up with caring for…
Most digital marketing agencies started off by bootstrapping, the process of starting a business by financing it personally. This usually means investing personal savings or borrowing funds from friends and family. Many will turn to this option when banks will not issue loans without a successful track record, or when they don’t have big investors.Because…