What Is Keyword Research and Why Should You Do It?

If you’ve been looking into the ins and outs of search engine optimization (SEO), then you’ve undoubtedly come across the term “keyword research” a few – if not many – times. At this point you may be wondering, why does everyone keep going on about it?
Well, it’s important! Keywords are used every time someone searches for something online, so knowing what they are is an essential part of an effective SEO campaign.
Let’s take a closer look at keyword research, and why it’s so important for SEO.
What is Keyword Research?
At its most basic, keyword research is finding out what words your target audience types into search engines when they’re looking for something that’s relevant to your website. For example, if your website focuses on coffee, you may find that your target audience uses keywords such as “best dark roast coffees” or “top coffee grinders”.
Once the keywords have been identified, then you can then analyze, compare, and prioritize the ones that will work the best for your website.
Why Should You Do Keyword Research?
The main goal of keyword research is often to improve the SEO of your website. It can tell you what search terms you should be targeting, how popular they are, how difficult it is to rank for them, and more.
Since you’ve already been looking into SEO, then you know how important it is to any digital marketing strategy. Your SEO needs to be on point if you want to rank organically on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs), and keyword research is the first step to an effective SEO campaign.
What are the Benefits of Doing Keyword Research?
Keyword research and its effect on SEO can help benefit your website in a number of ways.
Create Engaging, Relevant Content
Knowing what your target audience is looking for allows you to focus on creating content that will help you rank on SERPs. Your website may be full of relevant content, but it’s not going to affect your rankings if no one’s searching for it. This seems to be a mistake that many site owners make, as nearly 91% of content doesn’t see any traffic from Google.
Increase Traffic to Your Website
When you find just the right keywords for your content, you can increase its rankings in SERPs. This is incredibly important if you’re looking to drive traffic to your website, as the results on the first page of Google tend to see significantly more clicks than any other page. In fact, only about 0.78% of those who use Google click on a link from the second page of results.
Even your position on that first page matters. Just moving up one spot can increase your click through rate by almost 31%. So, anything you can do to increase that ranking is important, and choosing the right keywords is certainly a good start.
Keep an Eye on the Competition
Keyword research isn’t only beneficial for your own site – it also helps you keep an eye on the competition. For example, you can see if they’re outranking you for any keywords. If they are, you may want to focus on improving your ranking for those keywords in particular to attract more traffic your way.