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Keyword research is crucial to the success of any Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign. Half of the foreseen danger is avoided, so it’s helpful for website owners to know how to research keywords correctly. I would like to share some lessons learned and show how proper keyword research can help her better analyze her SEO performance.
Mistake #1 — Ignoring Search Trends
The first mistake is to launch an SEO campaign without knowing what will happen. Of course, we start by looking for the best keywords. However, rather than just determining your keywords and tracking your ranking progress, you should set measurable goals and his KPIs to understand if you are on the right track.
Keyword research is a good way to predict traffic by analyzing search trends. Seasonality, holidays, sales, what’s new with Google, all these factors can affect your clicks and revenue.
And how do you determine if your SEO strategy failed or succeeded? Compare the rise and fall of organic search to Google Trends search trends year-over-year or over time. This way, you can predict an increase or decrease in organic traffic. A comparison like this could explain why the traffic dropped. It’s probably an internal issue with the website or an external factor such as a Google update.
Related: 6 Effective SEO Techniques to Increase Site Traffic
Mistake #2 — Ignoring Search Intent
Another thing SEOs should include in their keyword research is search intent to optimize their landing pages.
It’s probably not recognizable from the start. It is difficult to analyze search intent because it can only be confirmed with tools such as SEO difficulty and search volume. Even grammatical forms can reveal different intents for apparently similar keywords. The Keyword Tool shows the same search volume for singular or plural terms. However, the SERP organic results for these keywords may vary.
For example, search for services such as: plumber or tailorThe singular may contain results that trigger general knowledge panels and disambiguate (tailor as profession and tailor as fish). Plural search terms, on the other hand, are more likely to trigger the local knowledge panel at the top and show nearby services.
When you search for a word in singular, it means a generic query that describes an entity. Searching for a plural term may mean that you want to select from a list. In this case, the search intent is exploratory.
Analyzing your keywords by distinguishing between short tail and long tail helps keep things from ambiguity. Long-tail keywords are more precise, so the search intent behind them is clear.
For example, the query The Best Keyword Tools of 2022 In most cases, you’ll see recent listicles reviewing your search. The intent behind the query is related to commercial research.
Queries ending in near me (This is automatically suggested by Google, by the way) is most likely to trigger a local knowledge panel using maps (for which the company has a Google business profile and everything related to local SEO should be optimized). Such queries imply purely transactional intent.
If you’re not sure about the search intent behind your query, do a Google search and analyze the pages that appear in the results.
Related: How to Pick Your First SEO Keywords
Mistake #3 — Forgetting Rich Results
The sad truth of organic competition is that ranking #1 is not enough. Google is testing more and more rich results, and users don’t even have to click a website to get the information they need. Today, Google is the number one website. The hard part with keyword research is learning how to leverage SERP-enhanced results to get users to click on her URL.
For example, there were several pages ranked in the rankings in rich results that contained featured snippets and frequently asked user questions. Many of these features require well-written content and schema markup.
And those snippets of FAQ results were doing a great job until they were all lost in Google’s big update last summer. The FAQ results came back a bit late, but the traffic loss was pretty frustrating.
RELATED: Local SEO can have an amazing impact on your business.Click here for usage
Mistake #4 — Choosing Generic Keywords for Your Brand Name
Common keywords in brand names have their strengths and weaknesses.
On the bright side, popular keywords may already have a lot of search volume. Exact match domain names can play a role in this game.We know the tactics are questionable and sites like best movies to watch on weekends be punished. However, there are still cases where a site with an exact match domain name has the upper hand. rank tracker.
On the downside, you’ll be competing with strong competitors for this generic keyword. First, it’s difficult to build and maintain brand awareness for names that should be more generic . Second, competitors may run better his SEO campaigns or his PPC ads to prey on your vital organic traffic.
For example, Google distinguishes Rank Tracker as a search term and as keyword tracking software. But even with that difference, it’s hard to rank product landing pages.
And this leads to the following typical mistakes related to keyword research.
Mistake #5 — Ignoring Too Much Competition
Pursuing keywords that are too competitive is a costly mistake that SEO beginners can unknowingly make. not.
Sometimes a clean site with well-written content is enough to rank, sometimes it takes patience and backlinks. Strong EAT signals (expertise, authoritativeness, trust) Without it, your page may not appear in the desired SERPs if your keywords are too competitive.
for example, technical SEO is a topic with 128 million search results. It proved difficult for our page to rank for such queries and required more effort.
So, if you are planning to venture into uncharted waters, learn your competitors’ top keywords, backlink profile quality, etc. and do some solid competitive research. Stay on the lookout for changes in the competitive landscape and stay ahead.
Conclusion
Strictly speaking, effective keyword research is about focusing on search intent when researching keywords. Additionally, consider his SEO metrics such as search volume, keyword difficulty, and competition. Learn from his SERPs of competitors and search engines. All the clues are there. Just use them with caution.
