You have built an amazing website and filled it with a lot of content, registered an awesome domain name, and hosted it on a top-rated server, but you are hardly getting any traffic on your website. Have you ever wondered why? The answer is simple- Nobody on the internet is searching for what you’re writing about and hence, your website is not getting any traffic. The main difference between a website that gets a lot of organic traffic and one that gets none is the keywords they use. This is why you need to know how to do keyword research the right way in 2020. 

If you’re struggling to pull in a decent amount of traffic to your website or want to sharpen your keyword research skills, it’s time for you to know how to do keyword research properly  in 2020. Follow these 5 important steps to do a proper keyword research and choose the right keyword. 

What is keyword research?

Before you learn how to do keyword research, you need to know about keywords. Keywords are the foundation of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). They are the words and phrases that people type into search engines like Google, Bing, and YouTube if they want to know about a particular topic. Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing the worthy keywords that you want to rank for in search engines. In simple terms, Keyword research is what you do to identify the phrases that are popular and frequently searched by your target audience.

Why is keyword research important?

Keyword research is the most important part of digital marketing. Good keyword research gives you the best set of keywords that you can use on your content to target your customers or clients. By including these keywords strategically in your website content or blog, you can rank higher in the search engine results, and eventually, you’ll get a high volume of traffic on your website.

5 important steps on how to do keyword research in 2020:

Understanding demographics and business requirements

The first step in doing keyword research is studying your niche. Begin by defining your goal. Ask yourself questions like, what is my website about? What kind of audience do I need for my website? What am I offering them? This is important for doing keyword research because it will steer you in the right direction to choose the best keyword. You also need to study your target audience. You might have a way of describing what you do but your target audience may use a different term to describe your brand, product, service, or your company. Try to think from the perspective of your potential customer. 

At this point, you would have identified a seed keyword. For example, if you are a digital marketing and branding company, the seed keywords might be best digital marketing company, top website development agency, and online marketing company

Competitor benchmarking

Learning how to do keyword research involves finding what your competitors are doing. The better you understand your competitors, the better it will be for you to do a good SEO. Competitor benchmarking helps you find terms that already attract your target audience and thus, you can leverage them for wider reach. Collect as many insights as possible from your competitors and use it to improve your keyword research and overall SEO strategy. 

Checking keyword trends

One important thing you need to know on how to do keyword research is checking keyword trends. Do you think that the same number of people search for the same thing every month everywhere in the world? Of course not. For example, the term ‘IPL CSK match 2020’ will be searched mostly in India during the IPL season. During this period, the search volume for this particular keyword will be high and if you use this as your focus keyword you are more likely to get good traffic on your website. But you cannot expect the same to happen for this keyword after a few months.

Understanding when and where people are searching for a particular keyword is useful for determining the focus keywords. You can use tools like Google trends for finding the trending keywords in a particular region at a particular time. You can even make use of Google search autocomplete for checking the keyword trends. 

Selecting the right keyword research tool

By now, you would have a seed keyword and a basic idea for a keyword in mind that you would like to rank for. This is where keyword research tools come in. Keyword research tools are simple yet powerful tools that will help you further refine your search terms. You can enter your seed keywords into a keyword research tool and it will suggest a list of keywords along with the monthly search volume, competition, and other variant keywords similar to your seed keyword. For example, if your seed keyword is ‘digital marketing’, the keyword research tool will suggest highly relevant, highly searched keywords for related terms such as ‘digital marketing class’, ‘digital marketing courses’, ‘digital marketing services, and so on. Some of the best keyword research tools are Google keyword planner, SEMrush and Uber suggest. 

Selecting the right keyword

The final part of how to do keyword research for finding the best focus keyword is identifying the right keyword. In the process of finding a relevant keyword for your content using a keyword tool, you will notice that the average monthly search volume and competition of those keywords vary greatly.  There are 3 main things you need to consider while choosing the right keyword.

Search volume:

Search volume is the measure of the total number of searches that are performed through search engines. It is usually expressed as the average monthly volume during the previous 12-month period. You need to select a keyword with a high monthly search volume. A search volume of more than 1k is considered high.

Competition:

Keyword competition is the measure of how difficult it will be to rank for a particular keyword. It varies depending on the industry competition. It can be high, low or medium. Selecting a keyword with low competition would be easy for you to rank high in the SERP.

 Long tail keywords:

Long tail keywords are those keywords with more than three words that are very specific to your business. The best way to choose a focus keyword is to find a long-tail keyword with low competition and high search volume. While there is no wrong in choosing a keyword with a good search volume and a high competition as your focus keyword, these types of keywords would make it more difficult for you to rank high in SERP due to the high competition.  Long-tail keywords are more descriptive and bring in quality organic traffic to your website.

For example, a long-tail keyword like ‘best digital marketing company in Bangalore’ would get more relevant traffic when compared to a seed keyword like ‘digital marketing’. Even if the long-tail keyword you chose has a smaller search volume, they often get a higher conversion rate since they are more focused on a specific topic. 

Long-tail keywords are more descriptive and bring in quality organic traffic to your website. For example, a long-tail keyword like ‘best digital marketing company in Bangalore’ would get more relevant traffic when compared to a seed keyword like ‘digital marketing’. Even if the long-tail keyword you chose has a smaller search volume, they often get a higher conversion rate since they are more focused on a specific topic. 

By using an effective keyword research strategy, you can find the right keywords that help you reach your target audience, grow your organic traffic, and improve your overall SEO rankings. So, if you don’t know how to do keyword research in 2020, just follow these 5 steps and you’ll have a good focus keyword to use on your article or website content.