Tips on conducting SEO keyword research

Get our top tips for conducting SEO keyword research.

Black and white portrait - Sabrinna Veloso
by Sabrinna Veloso
Digital Marketing Specialist
Tagged SEO in How to
| 19 Sep 2022 | 5.5 min read
5.5 min read

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is key to the way a lot of us conduct our online business and build digital marketing strategies. Making sure a business pops up when a relevant term is searched for on Google (or Bing if that’s your vibe) is essential to ensure you’re reaching your ideal customer, so businesses work really hard to improve their site’s organic traffic. One of the steps taken to improve SEO rankings may include conducting comprehensive keyword research. Marketers do this to best understand how users are searching in relation to what the business sells, then compile a list of keywords for the business. After the list is finalised, marketers can use this data to build content on the site including blog posts, product descriptions, and metadata. 

However, if you’ve ever done keyword research for your own brand or for someone else, you likely know how overwhelming it can be. Conducting keyword research can be tedious, time-consuming, and confusing if you’re not 100% sure about what you’re looking for. So if you’re doing keyword research for the first time or the fiftieth, and you’re looking for a little bit of guidance, here are some things to keep in mind. 

Keyword Relevancy

Seems obvious, but the first thing you should ask yourself is if the term is relevant to the business. When you do a keyword search, there’s a chance that hundreds of possible keyword ideas will come up and you can’t prioritise every single term. Knowing which keywords are relevant to you is especially important if the product, service, or brand name contains words with more than one meaning, or if the brand name references an entirely different thing because you have to assess which definition the user is actually searching for. 

Let’s have a look at Kathmandu as an example. Kathmandu is both a retail clothing store and the capital of Nepal - so there will be a slight overlap between the two searches despite differing content. Google circumvents this issue by assessing multiple factors, including user location, previous search history, and site cookies if enabled to provide the best user experience, but how do you know which search terms are relevant in this case? 

The first thing is common sense. If Kathmandu flights come up or places to eat in Kathmandu, you can safely assume that the user isn’t going to be interested in clothing. If the term can potentially be used for both the city and the brand, the best course of action would be to check the term’s parent topic and then do a reverse search using a keyword tool to check what the other related terms are. If the term overwhelmingly relates to either the brand or the city then that shows us what the user is interested in. As you can see in the image below, the generic term “Kathmandu'' ranks more for the brand than the city despite being a shared generic term.

data about the keyword kathmandu represented in graphs and tables

Assess the Keyword difficulty

Keyword difficulty refers to how difficult it would be to achieve a top 10 SERP ranking and is usually represented on a 100-point scale depending on the keyword research tool you're using. If you are building a new website, it’s important to keep in mind that it’s likely you won’t be able to rank for a term that has a high keyword difficulty and it’s best to focus on easier terms initially to improve your ranking. Say your business sells dresses, if you were to only optimise for the keyword "dresses" the business would be competing more directly with companies like ASOS and The Iconic. However, if the business optimised instead for "black mini dresses" (assuming they sell black mini dresses of course), then there is a higher possibility of achieving a high search ranking.

Graph showing keyword search data about the terms dresses and black mini dresses

That’s not to say you can’t include those harder difficulty terms at all - they’ll usually make an appearance on your site anyway if they’re relevant to your business. If your site has been around for a while and already ranks within the first few pages for the term, then you have a bit more freedom with the terms you decide to target and can aim for keywords with a higher difficulty score.

Variation between long tail keywords and short tail keywords

Usually, long tail keywords are lower volume but more conversion focused (think wedding florist Sydney) because they’re more specific, whereas short tail keywords (florist) are more generic and have a higher search volume. More generic high-level terms are usually more competitive and have a higher keyword difficulty, as more businesses will attempt to rank for those top-level terms. If we take a look at the florist example we just mentioned, the image below shows the generic "florist" term has a higher keyword difficulty (KD) and higher volume, making it more difficult to rank for in comparison to the long tail term "wedding florist sydney."

Keyword difficulty and volume for variations on florist keywords

When selecting keywords for an organic search strategy, variation between the two types is essential in capturing users who are ready to buy, but also remaining top of mind for those who are beginning their research. We always recommend, focussing on keywords that bring both you and your customer value. If your goal is to sell flowers, then you should be using keywords that facilitate purchase - which brings us to the next tip…

Choose keywords with the right intent

Keyword intent has always been important but only recently have keyword tools like SEMRush begun to attach p to their keyword reports. Keyword intent is split into the following categories:

  • Informational: The user is looking for an answer to a specific question.
    • Example: “Greek salad recipe”
  • Transactional: The user is looking to complete a purchase.
    • Example: “Greek cookbooks Australia”
  • Commercial: The user is searching for a brand or service
    • Example: “Greek language schools Melbourne” 
  • Navigational: The user is looking to navigate to a specific website or page.
    • Example: “Stalactites restaurant Melbourne”


Before building a keyword strategy, you should decide on which goal you’d like to achieve with your website. Are you an informational resource? Do you sell a service? Assessing your goals gives you a better idea of which keywords would be most beneficial for your business to target because you can select terms that have an intent that matches your goals. Looking at the example we used in the intent category breakdown, if the business sells Greek cuisine cookbooks, then transactional intent is the most valuable for the business.

Check the keyword’s seasonality

Depending on your business, you may be using keywords that trend depending on the season - for example, if you sell Christmas tree ornaments it’s likely that the relevant keywords (Christmas tree, Christmas decorations, etc.) will only be popular from October to December, so it’s important to prepare for this trend by creating and releasing content early. If your business sells evergreen products or services, then consider using keywords that are consistent throughout the year.

graph depicting keyword popularity over two years for "christmas tree ornaments"

If we take a look at the graph above taken from the Google Ads keyword planner, we can see that “Christmas tree ornaments” spikes in November but starts to gain traction in August. With that information in mind, our SEO strategy would prioritise creating content with the trending term from July until December.

Takeaway

Keyword research is a necessary component of a good SEO strategy, acting as a guide for all the content you produce and how you optimise your on-page SEO. As a result, it’s important that you’re selecting realistic and relevant keywords to prioritise for your business. By taking into account keyword relevancy, difficulty, variety, intent, and seasonality, businesses can effectively position their SEO to achieve overarching goals. 

If you’re interested in an SEO strategy from Devotion’s expert marketing team, please contact us for a free discovery session and find out how Devotion can help your business achieve its digital goals. 

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