How to Choose the RIGHT Keywords for SEO

Key Takeaways

if you're struggling to get your head around keywords what are they how do I use them how do I increase my sites ranking for them then this video is designed to help in this video we're going to go through a process that you can use to choose the best and most profitable keywords for SEO welcome people my name is Tim I'm heading into out exposure ninja I bring order to the chaos of digital marketing actually that's not true so in exposure ninja I bring chaos to order but that's another story keywords or search queries are basically the things that people search for really really important for SEO in fact one of the most important elements of SEO is a bit of a myth going around there keywords don't really matter in 2019 2020 2021 whenever you see this but I can assure you that keywords will matter forever so let's go through a process that you can use to identify the most profitable keywords for your business so he can help your website's ranking improve for them in this video we're gonna cover understanding your customers of buyer intent we're gonna look at your customer journey as well and you can identify keywords at different stages of that we're going to also take a look at how to analyze your competitors how to use some awesome tools to find the best keywords and also how to map your target keywords to the best pages for you let's go the key word is just a search term it's something that people search for a keyword can be competitive it can be uncompetitive it can be commercial it can be informational we're gonna look at all of these things so keyword can be broad so for example the phrase diamond rings is actually fairly broad keyword there's lots of possible intent behind that that might be someone who's looking to buy a diamond ring it might be someone who's looking for pictures of a diamond ring it might be someone who's looking to make diamond rings and they want instructions like there's loads of possible intent behind it so that's what we call a broad keyword now a more exact keyword would be something like platinum diamond engagement rings that is someone usually I mean they still might be looking for a picture but it's more precise definition of what that keyword is now platinum diamond engagement rings two carat Next Day Delivery UK that is someone who's got a holiday in two days they want to propose their girlfriend they know exactly what sort of rings she likes and they know how much they can afford that is a really really qualified commercial buyer this kind of broad an exact thing obviously the broader the keyword the higher the search volume might the hardly any videos going to be searching for that specific term but the people who do are likely to be very commercial buyer so they could be quite profitable so we'll look at how to target all of these different variations as we go on but firstly the question you're probably asking keywords really well let me tell you in 2019 keywords are as important as ever now previously in the olden days of SEO Google was really unsophisticated and just saw keywords as basically blocks of text which needed to see exact matches for in order to rank so if you wanted to rank for platinum diamond engagement rings to carat next a delivery UK you would just use that keyword in its entirety multiple times on your page you might even call your website platinum diamond engagement rings to carat Next Day Delivery UK and guess what you would rank for that term very easily Google's more sophisticated than that Google understands more the intent behind keywords and how variants of different keywords work and also the relationships between different keywords but I can assure you keywords are as important today as they always have been even if we take out everything remove SEO completely from the equation keywords are still important if your customer searches for platinum diamond engagement rings to cat Next Day Delivery UK those are the phrases that you need to use on your website to trigger that thing in their head which has ah this is what I'm here for let me tell you a little story we worked with a client who sold corporate massage so they go into people's offices and they would massage them and that was the business fantastic right great send him over the trouble was that their industry term for this is on-site massage so everyone in that space it was all targeting the phrase on-site massage because that's what it is that's technically what it is it's a massage it's given on-site rather than you know in the massages office whatever so everyone in the space targeted that term but when we did the research we found that customers had no idea what on-site such was at all it was a completely industry specific term with no meaning to the general public so what they've done there is they'd made a mistake with their key words all of the copy on the page was all talking about on-site massage rather than corporate massage your office massage which are things that actually mean something to people so that just illustrates the importance of getting these keywords right whatever Google is doing with latent somatic intend and all these different algorithmic understandings of what keywords actually are just talking your customers language is good practice with marketing and that's really exactly what we're doing with keyword research so keywords will always be important so let's look at some quick keyword misconceptions key word misconception number one is that you're looking for the definitive list with your keyword research I'm gonna break it to you there is no one right answer that's good news it's bad news good news is hey if there's no right answer then you can't be wrong the bad news is you're gonna be constantly iterating your keywords based on the data that you're getting back from search console and from your conversion tracking so this thing that we're doing today where we're analyzing and identifying your top performing keywords and our top target keywords it's gonna be a constantly evolving process so when we're working on a client campaign this is something that we'd revisit typically every six months to one year depending on traffic volumes the second misconception is that tools and data are your biggest assets you'll notice in this video that we spend very little time talking about tools and there's a very good reason for that tools can give us data about the specific keywords that we're looking to target but what they don't do is provide a common sense approach to the phrases that your business should be ranking for and actually this common-sense your brain is the biggest asset with keyword research so lots of what we're gonna be doing is kind of brainstorming having a look at competitors yes but filtering everything through common sense if it makes sense in the tools but it doesn't make sense in your brain trust your brain your brain always wins misconception number three is that if you don't target a particular keyword you won't rank for it that maybe was the case in the olden days when Google looks at just that all that specific block of words is that specific block present if yes great if no are not relevant now Google is much more sophisticated than that so even if you're not targeting a specific keyword the fact that you've got content about that topic or related topics on your site doesn't mean that you won't rank for it so don't panic so let's look at the different types of keyword that you might be targeting in your keyword research so we're going to be doing so we're gonna have a look at broad and exact keywords so broad obviously the really kind of basic head terms and exact with a very specific much narrower focus and then we've got this kind of spectrum between informational and commercial so an informational keyword is something where people are doing some research they're not really looking to buy commercial is something where there's a very clear purchase intent so what I'm going to do we can have a look at some different keywords and then talk about where they fit on this spectrum so first keyword that we're gonna look at Range Rover what do we think well it's a pretty broad term and it's also pretty informational lots of potential intent behind that yes someone might be looking to buy a Range Rover but they're probably if they're going to be looking to buy a Range Rover they're probably going to be having something a bit more exact and it was something a bit more specific so that is what we call a broad and informational term Range Rover for sale now that moves into the commercial terms right so that's a commercial term but it's still fairly broad there's nothing specific about that that tells us that this is a really kind of longtail phrase Range Rover SVR fuel consumption right so this person is looking for a specific model and they're looking for a characteristic of that model right so that's what we call an exact term now is this person looking to buy maybe but it's pretty unlikely based on that term what they're probably looking for is information right they're just wanting a number from that most likely that's an exact and informational term Range Rover Sport dynamic black tan leather nottingham well that's a fairly exact term and it's also fairly commercial because they've added the area there as well which would indicate that they're in the market to buy that and they're looking for that model in that specific area so that's an exact and commercial term so what you can do as you're running through your keyword research today you can have this kind of mental model in your head of is this a broad term is this an exact term and now as it fit on the informational commercial spectrum as well okay what is the keyword research process look like well we've got a few different stages first up we start with some brainstorming this is where we get all of the possible ideas down on paper the rule that we tend to use for this is that we'll just get as many keywords as we possibly can down and then we can start filtering and digging through later once we've brainstormed then we'll expand these with tools so we'll look for related terms we'll look for terms that competitors might be targeting by using tools once we've done that we then start adding some numbers so looking at how competitive they are how much commercial intent there is behind them and then from that that allows us to them begin prioritizing them so we've got these four steps just to help you out because we're super lovely here explosion injury we've put together a very simple spreadsheet that you can use to start doing this stuff yourself so if you go to bits thoroughly keyword then you can have a look at this spreadsheet so just download a copy or whatever or copy into your Google Drive I don't know how these things work but you can use this to go through the process that we're going to be looking at today so first up we're going to be looking at keywords and the categorization of them so let's start with this first step in the process brainstorming possible keywords we're gonna start in a whole bunch of different areas but the first thing that you can do is start looking at your competitors so you're gonna go straight to Google and you're gonna start typing some keywords and you're gonna be noticing what brings up the most ads which are the keywords that bring up the most google ads because these are typically the ones that have the highest commercial intent and are likely to be the most competitive if people are spending money to advertise for these terms then it usually means that there is some commercial intent behind them if they're tracking conversions so therefore they're going to be profitable to rank for now have a look at all so when you're running through your competitors and you're looking at that Google search page what are the keywords that your competitors are using in their page titles so those blue links that are showing up insert what are the specific phrases they're using particularly at this start of those page titles because that can give you a good indication that they think that keyword is gonna be really important for their business you can also have a look at what your competitors are ranking for in a second I'm going to show you SEMRush and we use SEMRush a lot at exposure ninjas to identify what keywords our competitors or clients competitors more accurately are ranking for so what we'll do is we'll put the competitors site into SEMRush and they'll show us all of the different keywords that competitor is ranking for so we're looking through this list and we're taking out keywords and then we're putting it in our spreadsheet that we're gonna crunch the numbers on a bit later now also we need to think about your services and products so what are the different names that your customers have for each of your products or services and you can think here about the different stages in the buyer journey so if we go back to the Range Rover example and there's a guide that will put links somewhere down below about how oldest works but you've basically got four stages of awareness you've got awareness you've got interest you've got the decision and then you've got action AI da now the awareness phase is when people don't really know too much about what it is that you're selling so in the SUV or Range Rover example this person might be looking at best luxury SUVs right so there any awareness they're thinking hmm I might want me one of those Range Rovers but they don't really know what it's called they might not know which one is the best one for them so they're just kind of really top of fun or informational terms there's something like best SUVs or something like Range Rovers when they're just kind of beginning to be quite interesting then we have the interest stage this is where they start to become a bit more educated and they have a bit more knowledge about what it is that you're offering so here they might be thinking much did you know what I'm quite interested in that Range Rover SVR that looks pretty funky makes a nice sound I think I might go for one of them so at that point they're starting to kind of qualify themselves they're starting to get a bit more of an understanding now they're gonna have different keywords for each of these different stages aren't they when they're any awareness they're gonna be targeting really broad really informational terms as they start to move down the funnel though those terms are going to become more exact and more commercial so phase 3 is the desire or the decision at that point they're making the decision they're saying you know what screw the environment forget the world global warming let's go I'm gonna get one of them SVRs right so they've made a decision that they're purchase or they've got the desire that they're gonna purchase the final step is action where they decide right okay here's what I'm gonna buy it this is what I'm gonna do and they actually do that thing so when you're brainstorming and you're putting all your different keywords down you want to think about the keywords that your audience is gonna be using at different stages here and remember focus on what your audience is going to be saying not what your industry or what you might describe your product or service as if that feels like a big step it is a big step there's a lot of work that goes in there the next thing to think about is differentiators and USP for example a differentiator might be that you offer same-day delivery or next day delivery or free word delivery these would all be things that people might be searching for so platinum diamond engagement rings next day delivery that might be a really good keyword for you it's going to be easier to rank for that than platinum diamond engagement rings next day delivery means that there's commercial intent and it ties into a USP the you break key word for you so think about your different chases and USPS and how you could add them to your key words and put all of these in a big bad beautiful list and then you can also look at what your ranking for already so stick your site in semrush if you don't have so much then go to Thank You ninjas comm and get a free trial it's on us what are the terms that your ranking like page 2 or page 3 that you could maybe push to page one that you think would actually be really relevant and really profitable for your business add them to your list as well the next prompt for coming up with brainstorm keywords is your customers so are you a local business if you're a local business then you're going to want to include your location and nearby locations or if you go out to people the locations that you serve the best exercise that you can do with keyword research is to just talk to your customers when they come in or when you're talking some on the phone and say what would you search for if you're looking for us you'll get a whole bunch of really random stuff right and you're typically going to want to ignore the first answer and ask them what else would you search for what else would you search for and get them to kind of dig through until you get to those really kind of basic stupid Google searches that we all make I don't know if you're like me when sometimes you search something on Google and you're like oh my god I hope that no one's looking at my searches cuz that's just really stupid I wanted to find the name of a song the other day so I was like what's the name of the song fats duh I got it eventually but that sort of useless search time you kind of want to dig into your customers psyches and just say right if you had no idea about us what would you be searching for and you'll get a whole bunch of really random stuff another good thing you can do is listen to sales recordings from inbound leads what if the customers actually asking for are they asking for on-site massage or are they saying hey can you come to my office and do a massage right because that's a very very different term so your customers will often tell you their target keywords in sales recordings so you're gonna start brainstorming and sticking all of your keywords in the bitly keywords spreadsheet so step two is to expand your keywords with tools now we're gonna use so much because we always do hear explosion and you absolutely love so much as it's a fantastic company as well so you can go - Thank You ninjas com if you want a free trial of semrush here we can see an example keyword research that we're doing and for the broad term disability equipment now this ability equipment is a fairly commercial term it's a fairly broad term as well and what we're doing here is firstly we're looking at the volume and the CPC's but really what we want to do is find related terms - this one that we can add into our brainstorm list so for example at down here you can see the phrase match keyword so these are other keywords which include the phrase disability equipment so here we can see disability equipment for the home so we'd want to add that to our list secondhand disability equipment if we offer that then we've won about that's well as disabled equipment shops right so we'd add that Twala see you can start to expand your list here you also see related keywords as well so these are other terms which are may be similar so disability aids disability aids is an alternative way of saying disability equipment so we don't have a whole bunch of disability AIDS phrases as well so again you'd add all of these to your brainstorm list you can go even further you can then have a look into all of the organic search results and if you click on any of these URLs it's gonna show you all of the keywords that this particular website is ranking for so you're brainstorming list by now is going to be like 100 million pages long I'm only joking I only picked the stuff that's relevant to you that'll keep it nice and snappy and you can also have a look at the ads that are running too so here we can see the different ads that people are running and we can see some of the keywords that they're targeting or that they think are important in the ad headlines so for example disability equipments we can see equipment for disabled so there's another kind of variation keyword equipment for disabled disabled equipment suppliers so these might also be keywords that you might want to add to your list so check out so much really useful tool let's say that we click on the related keywords and just have a bit more of a look at that and go a bit further in depth so here we can see a full list of all the different related keywords again we can add them to our list we're also going to add in the search volumes and cpc's that'll save us a bit of time later on you can click the little export button in the top right hand corner to export that so you don't have to do all manually who does things manually these days right who knows right so we've got all of our keywords with brainstorms competitors we've brainstormed different stages of the bio process we've brainstormed the keywords that we're already ranking for we've brainstorm elite keywords phrase match keywords the keywords being targeted in ads we've got a big old list now it's time to crunch some numbers so the numbers that we're specifically looking at other keywords search volumes and the keywords CPC now CPC is a pay-per-click metric it means the cost per click so how much people are willing to spend to advertise for that particular keyword generally the higher the CPC the more profitable that keyword will be to rank although not always the case and I'll explain why in just a second now the trap that people fall into here is when they start putting in their data they look immediately for the keywords that have the highest search volume because you think well if that keywords got a hundred thousand searches a month I could get a hundred thousand people on my website every month yes that'd be amazing and then they start doing the math about what that would mean for sales well the trouble is the highest volume keywords are often the broadest so they don't have as much commercial intent size isn't everything people often going for a very specific keyword that has clear commercial intent even if it's lower search volume we'll be more profitable for you because a that person is more likely to be a buyer but B because it's going to be easier to rank for those more specific keywords now the high cost per click generally means that there's commercial intent although it can mean if it's a very broad term it can mean that there's just lots of dumb money piling in so it's all about the relevance as well as the CPC there's no definitive formula that you can use that says yes this is a great keyword because like I said you have to pass everything through the filter of your brain is that a sensible phrase for you to be targeting or is it very broad so you're gonna fill in the volume and CPC channels in your keyword sheet and you can export it all from the SEMRush if you like using that super thing so what you can do is just download it you can use the little export thing and then you can just get that in a CSV copy and paste it all into your into your key word sheet so you now have to do all manually so by now you've got your keywords you might have even categorized them you've got your search volume and you've got your CPC so next we're gonna look at how to prioritize them and are they in your very top priority your priority 10 list here's how we generally prioritize keywords the most commercial and most exact keywords tend to be the keywords that you'll be targeting in the short term so short term really depends on how much work you're putting in and how competitive your market is but for us at exposure in just short term keywords are usually the ones that we would expect to see some ranking improvement over maybe the first three to four months okay so they're going to be the most commercial and most exact obviously it depends on how competitive they are as to what sort of improvement you're gonna see but that's a good kind of short term guide the ones that are slightly broader or slightly less commercial maybe more informational they will typically be your medium-term keywords and actually as we go from exact abroad the competition tends to go up which is a big kind of a defining factor on how long it will take you to improve ranking for these phrases and then the most broad the most informational they are your long-term target so those are the ones that you're going to be targeting really over the long term so here are some quick kind of prioritization things that you can use so your short-term keywords are generally going to be the ones that you want to target immediately so you're expecting to see some improvement next three to nine months if you're not doing much work or you're in a very competitive market they're gonna have a healthy CPC so there's gonna be some commercial intent there might not be the highest commercial intent ones they might take a little bit longer to rank for but there is gonna be some commercial intent there they're gonna have a lower search volume or competition level and they're gonna be super relevant now your medium term keywords are generally can have a higher search volume so short term ones are gonna have a lower search volume but they're gonna be easier to rank for as you start getting into medium long term they're gonna have a much higher search volume medium term phrases might have a higher cost per clicks there might be more competition for them they may or may not be more commercial but there's always going to be more competition for your medium term phrases which generally means that they're gonna have a higher CPC and they might be phrases that you'll be targeting over the next six to 18 months and then your long term phrases the most competitive ones of all they're generally going to be the broader shorter tail phrases things like Range Rover or engagement rings these are really really long term keywords if you're a brand new business or if your website you're effectively a brand new website right you haven't done much SEO before then they're just gonna be long term keywords because you're not going to rank for Range Rover very quickly and they also tend to be a lot of informational searches as well so you can target things like knowledge base content around those as you start building out the content on your site now the CPC might be low or it might be high really helpful they're right CPC might be low because they're informational research keywords so your competitors might not be valuing these people as much as they should do on the other hand your cpc's might be high because if you're targeting a phrase like divorce lawyer London for example that's gonna have a massive CPC because there are loads of divorce solicitors in London that wants to target that phrase so it's broad its informational and commercial and it's very high competition which means it therefore has a high CPC and they're gonna be the ones that you're looking for ranking improvement over the 12 months plus typically at exposure ninja we won't necessarily be targeting long term keywords on a day to day basis we'll be targeting shorter and medium-term variants and that will bring us an in ranking improvement for the long term phrases over time for example if you're targeting a term like engagement rings what you might do is put together a knowledge base on the site which is all about different types of engagement ring some buyers guides and stuff like that so you're not specifically targeting engagement rings because you might be targeting platinum engagement ring gold engagement ring silver engagement rings the perfect guide to choosing an engagement ring but you know that by doing all of that work you're gonna pick up better ranking for your broader longer term phrases so I hope you found this video useful remember if you have any questions about the keyword research process outlined stick him in the comments and we will reply to them don't forget also if you want some help with your SEO if you want to improve the ranking of your website then check out the exposure ninja free website review it is awesome go to exposure ninja com forward slash review and you'll be able to fill in a bit of info about your business and one of the team pay you a 15 to 20 minute video which shows you how to increase your website's ranking there's no charge no obligation this review is killer so I definitely recommend that you do it until the next video see you soon