Market MindShift Team | SEO |

Diving into Keyword Research: Keyword Research Tips for Small Businesses

What do your real customers search for?

At first glance, this may seem like a simple question, but as you take a deep dive into the research and data things may become muddled. A word or phrase might be searched for often, but there is no guarantee that those are your customers.

Many business owners may resort to a paid search campaign to gain insight into “money” keywords; however, there are other ways to find out what your real customers search.

Keyword Evolution

Google handles about 2 trillion searches per year. Just like any business, Google works to improve their search engine to keep customers around. As search engines work to better understand the user, it is just as important for a company to know a lot about their own prospects and customers. A business must take advantage of any opportunities to get in front of the customer before the competitor.

In addition, a business must consider the growth of voice search and how that will impact website traffic and ultimately conversions. You may already be on this track, but if not or you’re wanting to enhance your research skills, then there are many tools out there to help.

Below are some of Market MindShift’s tools and techniques that will help you bridge the gap between average keyword research and targeted keyword research that lead to real customer visitors.

Step 1: Customer Mindset

The first step in the keyword research process is knowing your target audience, and we mean really know them. This means that you should understand the “pains” of your customers. Take the extra step to learn the questions that they are asking and how they describe their problems. Most customers will turn to the internet to find a solution, so you want your product to be the answer that they find.

SEO is marketing. That means your targeted keywords and content focus should be centered around this concept: solving a problem.

Step 2: Go Above and Beyond

Traditional keyword tools make our lives a lot easier by streamlining the process by finding some great words and phrases. But, don’t forget about the tools that may not be as apparent.

Demographics Pro is designed to give you detailed insights into social media audiences, which in turn gives you a sense of who might be searching for your brand or products. You can see what they’re interested in and what they might be looking for. This tool puts you on the right track to target words that your customers are using versus words your company believes people are using.

Similarly, a free and easy-to-use tool called Social Searcher can help you find data about prospects. To use this tool all you have to do is input your keyword(s), select the source, and choose the post type. You will be able to see recent posts, users, sentiment, and even related hashtags/words.

Another great tool to try is Seed Keywords. This is a great resource if you are struggling with your keywords or are in a niche industry. This tool makes it possible to create a search scenario that you can send to your friends. Once you have created the scenario, you receive a link to send to people. The words they use to search are collected and made available to you. These words are all possible keywords.

Step 3: Dig into Intent

After you find some keywords to target, it is time to take the research to the next level. This means understanding the type of content that is ranking for those keywords, which will give you an idea of what Google, and the searchers, believe the intent to be. To keep it simple, let’s focus on just two main categories of intent: buy and know. The goal is to optimize a page that will satisfy either the “know” or “buy” intent to get the customer to see the page.

There are many tools that can help determine what pages are ranking for your targeted keywords, such as SEOToolSet, SEMRush, and Ahrefs. You can click through them to establish the intent of the pages.

Step 4: Keywords to Questions

There is one thing that we can be sure of: people search questions. It is important to take advantage of all opportunities to answer the consumer’s question. So, remember to include the long-tail keyword. These are the three or four keyword phrases which are very specific to the product that you are selling. Whenever a customer uses a highly specific search phrase such as a question, they tend to be looking for exactly what they are going to buy.

Some of our favorite tools to find these questions are: Answer the Public, the new Questions Analyzer by BuzzSumo, and SEMRush.

Going the Distance with Market MindShift

In digital marketing and SEO, there are always new techniques and tools to make your job easier. However, the best way to reach customers is by knowing how to draw them in with the right keywords, questions, and content. The Market MindShift team can help you no matter where you are in the process. If you are looking to grow your business or looking to reach a new audience consider contacting us at (480) 750-2252 or get in touch online.