Janelle Zacherl
May 28, 2021
Keyword research is important. Without it, your campaigns are just a black hole of hunch work. And solid data (the devil you know) is always better than hunch work (the devil you don’t). Especially if you’re trying to prove your worth to potential and current clients. It’s the foundation of every search engine and social media strategy. So how do you systematically dive into the data? Follow the checklist below, as the nerds do. #datanerds
You need to establish why consumers should do business with you instead of other companies. Do solid audience research to establish personas, and then develop your keyword categories from there. What problems does your product or service solve for them? What questions can your product or service answer? These categories can be quite broad as you want to use the basic concept to branch into multiple content pieces, conversations, questions, and analysis.
Seed terms are short (one to two words) without modifiers. They are simply a starting place for your more in-depth keyword research. Seed terms should be directly related to your product or business and can be somewhat broad as they will most likely be split into more specific keywords. Seed terms also help keep your website and blog content on track by focusing your content pillars onto more specific topics. The more topical content you have on your website, the higher it will naturally rank on Google. Here is a great blog post on how to come up with seed terms for your brand.
It’s not always the type of work that every digital strategist/analyst wants to do, but it’s the bread and butter of any digital strategy
At Ingram Digital, we prefer SEMRush, but there are many popular tools that you can use to analyze seed terms and form a long list of the best keywords for your objectives. Think about synonyms for the words you have chosen and how your target audience might search for them. Try them out with a simple Google search and see what kind of results you get. Are they related to your brand? Are they completely irrelevant? Make sure the keywords you are choosing will lead consumers where you want them to go.
This is where you want to get specific. Long-tail keywords are less popular, specific, and relevant terms searched by your audience resulting in a lower cost, competition rate, and keyword difficulty. You want to make it as easy as possible to gain a high ranking. Don’t forget to consider your own branded terms and competitor terms. Check out this article for other strategies on how to rank higher in SEO.
Again, SEMRush is a great tool for this. This tool collects all of this data for you making it easy to export and parse. Ingram Digital uses a special sauce formula to harness the power of the metrics from SEMRush to find good opportunities to use less competitive and expensive keywords. Keyword density and competitive density will allow you to determine terms that are less competitive and less searched but present the best opportunity to improve your search ranking. Check out this article from SEMRush to see how to specifically use this tool for your keyword research.
This could be as simple as Googling the keyword/keyphrase yourself and analyzing the results. We recommend doing this as a best practice rather than just going with your gut. Marketers don’t always have the grasp on certain topics that they think they do. A quick search will save you from yourself. You can also use Google Trends to get a firmer beat on topics and see the ebbs and flows of trends related to your brand.
Titles, meta-descriptions, tags, blog content, and social content. All your digital workflows from content marketing and SEM to website development will flow from identifying, optimizing, and sharing content that builds off your keyword base. Make sure your foundation is right before you build a digital architecture based on the wrong stuff.
May 28, 2021
