• Search engine optimization

Keyword research – why should every company look into it?

In this blog, I am going to address perhaps the most important aspect of SEO, namely keyword research and why your business should do it. As I said, search terms research is a very essential part of search engine coverage. With this “detective work” we learn about the search term data on search volumes and […]

Juuso Lainas

In this blog, I am going to address perhaps the most important aspect of SEO, namely keyword research and why your business should do it.

As I said, search terms research is a very essential part of search engine coverage. With this “detective work” we learn about the search term data on search volumes and how competitive the search words are and what words you should use on your website. In addition, you will learn to understand your customers better and how they search for the products or services in question.

Keyword research lets you anticipate market development before your competitors and meet people’s needs by creating services or products that your customers are looking for a solution for in search engines.

Understand your customer better with keyword research

Your customers may use completely different words when searching for what you think. Even if your product offers a solution to their problem, they may not end up on your site because you do not speak the same language. It may sound cliché, but in search engines, it goes just like that. A typical person looking for a particular product or service often starts searching with broad search terms, such as “guitar”. The applicant then browses the pages and returns to the search engine and retrieves, for example, an “electric guitar” or an “electric guitar for a beginner”. This is repeated for so long that the applicant is satisfied with where he or she has ended up with the search terms he or she has used. Imagine if you owned an instrument store and every time you searched, the applicant ended up on your site and found what they needed.

With the information from keyword research, you can learn to better understand your customers and build a site that logically matches your customers’ train of thought.

The types of keywords affect traffic quality and the ROI of your operations

The keyword research highlights key words that can have thousands and thousands of searches per month. We call such search words “short-tail keywords.” The short-tail keywords are broad in purpose, like the “guitar” I mentioned earlier. At this stage, the search engine does not know whether the applicant is looking for information about guitars or is buying a guitar. After studying the short-tail keywords, we take a look at the more specific search words, which we call “long-tail keywords”. Long-tail keywords are used when the applicant knows what they are looking for. The applicant, who previously used the “guitar” key word, did not receive the information he or she wanted from the search engine. Now they have familiarized themselves with the topic and will use an “electric guitar for beginner” search for a page they had been aiming for. Such a keyword also indicates that the applicant is likely to acquire the product in question.

According to some sources, the search volumes for short-tail keywords are only 30% of the total number of searches, and the remaining 70% consists of long-tail keywords.

Your company needs a search for a survey. Why would I do that?

The Internet is the single most important channel where you can reach your customers and where the customer searches for information, products, or services. Marketing on digital channels is also often cheaper than in traditional channels, not to mention how much more efficient and perfectly edible search engine advertising, for example, is. You can use search terms research as a basis for all digital marketing, from websites to social media marketing.

With the Internet being such an important channel, everyone wants to be visible there. Everyone should have a plan for implementing digital marketing and the idea of what kind of content future customers want to find. So do not be overshadowed by your rivals! Keyword research is one of the most practical ways to start systematic marketing.

Keyword research itself is not the key to happiness, but other actions are also needed

Once the keyword research is done, people will not just appear on your site. Content must be produced on the site to match the information obtained from the keyword research. This can mean creating new subpages, editing and updating existing content, or creating a new product category for an online store. Try to actively produce content, for example, with one new blog post a week. This requires resources, but in terms of search engine visibility, content can be a lifeline for your business, without which you will not succeed in search results.

Ideally, your awesome new content will bring traffic to your site, generate leads and sales, and elevate your entire site in search results by bringing in new external links.

How do I do a search for a search period?

First of all, it is important to list all the services and/or products and what words are currently used on the landing pages, how many search volumes these keywords have, and how the site you are viewing ranks with those keywords. When we do a keyword research, the customer fills out a questionnaire to help us understand the field, as we may not be experts in that field.

After the first step, we will start looking for keywords that fit the products and/or services offered by the customer. We use various tools to search for keywords, for example. Semrush and Keywordtool. These tools help us find different forms of keywords and the “long tail keywords” mentioned earlier. We also look at the websites of the customer’s competitors and what kind of keywords they use and how they rank in the search results.

Here is the top of the list of 325 different keywords found by KeywordTool with just one keyword related to electric guitars.

Another good tool is Google’s search engine itself, which offers search words for people to search. Here are the suggestions at the bottom of Google’s search results page with the search for electric guitar:

After this, we list the keywords and their data, e.g. where towards the purchasing process that keyword is compiled and we send it to the customer for scoring. The customer scores keywords based on how relevant the keyword is to their business. This allows us to distinguish between keywords that are important and relevant to the company’s operations and those that do not meet these requirements. This is a kind of “double assurance” by the customer for the work we do.

When the scored keyword research returns to us, we will start working on the content plan based on the keyword research. This plan is very detailed, which provides a good starting point for content production and, for example, the structure of a new site.

Summary

Keyword research is the most important tool for seeking search engine visibility, which can be used to achieve really good results with a good ROI. However, the keyword survey should still be updated at least once a year to keep it up to date.

If you really want an easy way to boost your digital marketing, do a keyword research, because then you will know what your customers are looking for online and what information they want to find on your website. After that, the only question remains whether you want to fulfil your customers’ wishes and take action.

Challenge:

I challenge you to think about important keywords for your company and list them. Then, see how you rank in search results, for example with this online tool. If you are not happy with your rankings and your competitors are ahead of you, keyword research is the best first step to rising in rankings! N.B. if you just search Google for that keyword, your site may appear first. However, your browsing history affects your search results, so it is always a good idea to check your ranking using the appropriate tool.

Let us help you and contact our experts!

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