What does “keyword research” actually mean and how can it be used to improve a businesses SEO
Introduction
So, carrying out keyword research is important, that’s because, your business, or your digital marketing agency, needs to know which words they need to focus on, in order to move your business up Google’s SERP’s. So, whether you sell, designer sofas, chocolate, or whiskey online, your seo agency should carry out keyword research, so they know which words to improve your organic for.
Thankfully, there are SEO tools, such as Ahrefs, which help us with this work, yet you could also use Google Search Console, which is really good, plus its free.
Why is carrying out keyword research so important?
So, often one product is described in many different ways, so take for example an “electric car”, well, that could be called an electric car of course- but it could also be referred to as an “EV”, as an “electric vehicle”, and you might be thinking well they all, all refer to the same thing, right?
Well, the point we are trying to make is this, a really good marketing agency might be successful into getting your business on the first page of Google, for say “electric cars- which in itself, is a huge accomplishment.
Yet, when you run a search on Google.com for a similar term, lets say for “electric SUV”, rather than search on Google, for electric cars, well, your business might be on page 10, rather than where you rank for electric cars, which might be on page 1 of Google.com.
This why is there sometimes such a large difference in terms of where the business ranks on Google, for different keywords, yet the keywords, might basically all describe the same product, “electric cars” yet, because different keywords are used by the customer, when searching on Google, your business will rank in different positions, depending on how good your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is for that term.
So, it goes without saying, if the marketing agency is focusing their efforts, on getting your business to rank higher on Google for “electric cars” your business should rank higher for that keyword. However if the digital marketing agency have never optimised your company website, for “electric suv’s” well, your business might not even be ranked on any of the pages, from page 1 to page 10, of Google, if no seo work has been carried out, to improve where the business, ranks for electric SUVs.
Which keywords do you want your business to rank higher for on Google.co.uk and Google.com and Bing.co.uk?
So, here is one of the most important thing that you need to consider, do you have the marketing budget in order to get your business onto the first page within the organic section on Google or Bing, or are you simply setting off on a journey that you might not be able to complete? Now, we say that because, lets say to get your business, on page 1 of Google.co.uk, within the “organic SERP’s” for a term such as “car insurance”- this is likely to cost millions to achieve, in our opinion.
What do we mean by setting off on a journey that you might not be able to complete?
Well as the old saying go, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, and this is the same when it comes to search engine optimisation, and is when you’re starting the SEO, process well it’s like staring up at the top of a large mountain, and you’re at the bottom with your rucksack on, and hot drink ready to climb.
You might be full of ambition and you might be thinking well, I am ready to climb that mountain, the only problem is search engine optimisation, you’re not the only person that wants to climb that mountain.
You will be faced with thousands of direct competitors, which may have been scrambling to get to the top of that mountain long before you. So, take the example of the car insurance industry, there are likely to be thousands of car insurance companies, that are investing in seo, that have been paying various seo agencies for long time, and are likely to have inhouse seo teams as well, so the point we are trying to make is, that’s one high mountain to climb, it will be one massive challenge.