Why Keyword Research Is the Most Important Part of Digital Marketing. When you check Google Analytics, SEMrush, and other online tools, keywords explain where organic search traffic comes from. That’s because nobody who needs marketing help is searching for the general term “marketing.” This doesn’t mean there’s no value in ranking for the term “marketing.” According to Google Adwords Keyword Planner tool, it’s a heavily searched term. Some people may know it as Internet marketing, while others refer to it as digital marketing. If you focused all of your SEO and content marketing around soda, you’d miss out on the pop and Coke regions. It’s time to learn how to get started with your own keyword research! Don’t ignore Google’s tools for keyword research. “Computer marketing” is a search term I wouldn’t have come up with on my own, but it has some search traffic. But even I learn something new every time I perform keyword research. When was the last time you performed keyword research for your website?
We’ve all done some basic keyword research.
It’s easy to take for granted how important that first step is.
It’s not a one-and-done deal, but something that should be performed regularly.
Keyword research is how we keep our ears to the ground. Can you afford to fall out of touch with your audience?
Let me set the stage for this.
The Internet is the single most important channel for reaching people today, with 50% penetration of the global population.
That’s 3.77 billion people!
Think about that.
You can reach half the world’s population online. You just have to understand how to make your content available to them.
That’s more people than cable television, which only reaches 48.61 million subscribers. In fact, cable has already been surpassed by Netflix beginning in 2017.
Netflix is just one internet service. We’re not even including Hulu, Amazon Prime, and other video-on-demand services available online.
The print industry isn’t doing much better, and projections show magazine publishers shifting to digital revenue models.
Because the internet is so important, digital marketing has exploded. Everyone has their hand in a variety of advanced online marketing techniques.
Here’s a breakdown of the most popular Internet marketing trends of 2017, according to a recent survey from Smart Insights.
SEO is rated lower than techniques like content marketing, big data, mobile and social media marketing, and conversion rate optimization.
However, keyword research isn’t just about SEO. It’s the foundation of all of these other digital marketing practices.
When you check Google Analytics, SEMrush, and other online tools, keywords explain where organic search traffic comes from.
Keywords determine what your company is known for.
Using the right keywords, your content marketing team understands what content to market. Your CRO funnel can be built with a wider mouth.
Keyword research is the blueprint for your online marketing efforts, driving every decision you make.
It makes everything down the line more efficient.
And, like I’ve said before, if you don’t know which relevant keywords should lead to your site, you can’t drive traffic, sales, and an ROI.
Here’s where my traffic comes from.
Still, I meet a lot of people who don’t do regular keyword research for a variety of reasons.
They don’t understand long-tail keywords, are heavily focused on a handful of focused keywords they found work, or think it’s too complicated.
It’s not!
In fact, it can be done in 60 seconds, as I outlined in my video.
In this blog, I’m going to teach you how to maximize your keyword research to bring in the most qualified leads.
These tools and techniques will help you increase conversion rates and generate revenue.
Let’s get started by understanding why the intent of what people search for online matters.
It’s all about context
The easiest way to explain the concept is with an example, so we’ll take the keyword “marketing.”
When searching for “marketing” on Google, we’re presented with general educational information about the topic of marketing.
It’s mostly general information, and even the ads are geared toward students interested in the study of marketing.
That’s because nobody who needs marketing help is searching for the general term “marketing.”
This doesn’t mean there’s no value in ranking for the term “marketing.”
According to Google Adwords Keyword Planner tool, it’s a heavily searched term. Entrepreneur and Investopedia clearly saw value in the query.
However, this volume is unlikely to lead to qualified leads because of the user’s intent when searching this term.
It’s beginners and students looking for general information.
The suggested bid is the lowest in the screenshot ($1.15), because only academic and reference organizations are competing fiercely.
Being known to these people is great for branding purposes. Ten years down the road, they may run companies that could become paying customers.
But we need to go deeper for our conversions. We need people searching for help and consultations with their online marketing strategies.
Marketing won’t cut it. We need to narrow the search.
Online marketing is getting a lot closer, but even that doesn’t cover the full range. Some people may know it as Internet marketing, while others refer to it as digital marketing.
These differences in terms seem minimal, but they can affect whether or not we show up in the SERPs.
Still not convinced it’s necessary to cover digital, Internet, and online marketing?
Think about the generic term you use to refer to a carbonated soft drink. Is it soda? Coke? Pop?
Here’s a map that breaks down who uses each generic soft drink name by region.
If you focused all of your SEO and content marketing around soda, you’d miss out on the pop and Coke regions. To sell soft drinks around the country, you have to cover all your bases.
This is why we cast our keyword research net as wide as possible. Reaching broad audiences with mass appeal is how genius-level marketing content is created.
Looking at the Google Trends report from 2004 to 2017, the terminology has shifted from Internet marketing to digital marketing as the most popular term.
Don’t let yourself become irrelevant over time.
Now that we have the basics covered, it’s time to get even deeper and refine our searches beyond just these short phrases.
We start to really refine our research into customer intent with longer phrases, which is one of my favorite subjects.
Long-tail keywords are important
Google and other search engines pride themselves on their ability to dig through the 1.22 billion-and-counting websites for the best information.
As I discussed in the previous section, this means programming algorithms and web crawlers to understand the context of keywords.
While longer searches such as sentences and descriptive phrases draw much less traffic, the conversion probability increases.
You’ll have a hard time convincing someone looking for “shoes” to buy yours specifically.
But when they’re searching for “mens running shoes” or “best nike track and field cleats under $100,” they’re likely looking to buy.
Being known for mens shoes and running…
COMMENTS