Do you have a local business and want to learn more about keyword research to better rank your website in the search engines?
In this post, we’ll be discussing how you can find the best keywords to target which will bring in the right customers to your website who are looking to do business with you today!
1. Do you know what your potential customer is looking for?
There’s no one better to give insights and understanding about your industry than you as the business owner, after all you are the industry specialist, right? Well whether you are or not, it’s important you try and see things from your customers perspective as they may search the internet differently to you. Ask yourself questions like, ‘What would my customer search for when they’re looking for a service like mine?’, Would they include a suburb or city in with the keyword they typed? ‘What immediate problem does my business, product or service solve for my ideal client? By considering these questions, you can get a good head start before implementing the next few tips.
2. Hot keywords that will make you money
It’s all well and good to choose keywords that have a high amount of searches in the Google keyword planner (outlined in tip 3), however by understanding where a buyer or potential customer is at in the buying cycle when they type a keyword phrase in the search engine will essentially give you an idea if they are ready to buy now or not.
You should think of keywords that have commercial intent, or in other words from people that are ready to make a purchase from you, as opposed to just doing a bit of research and browsing around. An example of this if you are a plumber would be “how to change a tap” which has no commercial intent and “emergency plumber Sydney” which has commercial intent and would be searched for by someone ready to utilise that plumber asap.
3. Free Keyword tools that will help you find ‘Super Duper’ Keywords
One of the most popular keyword tools that are used by many SEO companies around the world is none other than the ‘Keyword planner’ by Google. This tool will give you accurate monthly local searches for any given keyword you choose, which will give you an idea if that keyword is worth targeting.
Another helpful tool for keyword research for your local business is Semrush which allows you to see what keywords your competitors are targeting as well as gives related suggestions for the industry you are searching in. By utilising these 2 tools alone, you can find some golden keywords that will bring in more business through the search engines to your website.
4. Spying on your competitors keywords
As mentioned in the previous keyword tip, you can also use SEMrush to spy on your competitors keywords, but you can also just utilise Google search itself. Try searching google for some of your competitors and take a look for patterns of keywords in their website titles and descriptions. Most SEO companies will place a client’s chosen keywords somewhere in the title or description of a page. After you have made a list of potential keywords from your competitors titles and descriptions throw those keywords in the Google keyword planner and see how many local monthly searches it’s getting.
5. Implementing your chosen keywords and categorising them for content creation
Once you’ve made a list of at least 25 keywords following the instructions above you should try and categorises them by broad topic. If your goal is to rank in the search engines for these keywords and get more clients then categorising your keywords by topic is what Google loves. For example as an online marketing agency we like to categorise our keywords under the services we offer, e.g Search Engine optimisation, Web design, PPC Management (Adwords pay per click advertising), Social Media etc.
Final thoughts to ponder on…
The above tips are just a few of the many ways you can find quality keywords for you business website. If you don’t have the time to do the keyword research and write all the content then it’s worth hiring a professional SEO company that can help you out.
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If you are considering hiring an SEO service you should read this helpful ebook (free of course) which lists questions you should ask an SEO company before hiring them.
