Proper Keyword Research in 2017

Quite a few people are asking if keywords remain relevant in 2017, and the simple answer is, yes. Keywords still play a key role in online marketing, regardless of the medium, whether for ranking pages on your site or blog, videos, imagery, paid search or more, you’ll find that keywords are one of the fundamental items you’ll want to consider when planning your web content.

Plus, understanding the niche or market, what your competitors are ranking for, what keyword phrases are getting the most and best traffic is all ways to advance your business to the next level easier. I mean, who needs to shoot in the dark?

Let’s look at 5 critical aspects to consider when you begin to think about the keywords you’ll focus on.

5 Things to consider when embarking upon keyword research

• Decide what you’ll use keywords for – Almost certainly you have a plan for these keywords, and if not, now is a great time to clarify this. Are they going to be used for new content, web pages, social media, visual content (videos and more) or what? Knowing this early on is helpful, especially when it’s time to cross-promote.
• Figure out the keywords common to your market – Even just looking at the top site in your market you’ll be able to tell some of the more prominent phrases people are optimizing their content for. This will provide you a decent starting place for your research.
• Spy on your competition – There are tools you can use, or in the absence of tool help, you can just look at your competition’s content and glean what they are targeting by the words they are using in their titles, URLs, and what the content is about.
• Tools to do the job – There are plenty of keyword research tools available out there, from the Google Keyword Planner, SEMRush, and Keywordtool.io. These all have free versions and will get you started nicely.
• Discover the intent – Now comes the hard part, where you actually have to use your brain. The best keywords are the ones that people are searching on with the intent to take action. This usually isn’t the keywords everyone else is using. This is where you take your list, and attempt to get inside the head of the searcher and discover their intent. Doing this will help you outstrip your competition quickly!