Choosing the correct keywords in your SEO or Google Ad campaigns is the most important aspect. If you choose keywords that are too competitive you might never rank high enough to reap the rewards and if you choose the wrong keywords you might focus on things that won’t yield much return compared to other search terms that your competitors might be taking advantage of.
Below are some steps you can follow to ensure you are focusing on the right keywords.
Step 1: What Are Your Customer’s Actually Searching For?
The first step is to determine what your customers are actually searching online so you can decide on the best keywords for your SEO campaigns. By knowing your customers and what they want you can create a powerful SEO strategy that will provide the results you are looking for. Keyword research, customer research, competitor research and Google trends are some great ways to do this.
Sometimes business owners and marketers ‘assume’ what their customers are searching rather than looking at the hard data…..Make sure to complete competitor and customer research as well as using some of the tools we have listed down below.
Step 2: Understanding The Buyer’s Journey!
Consumers are typically at one of three stages of the buyer’s journey:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Decision
Below I will break each of these down in more detail but it’s important to know that marketers and SEO guru’s typically focus on ‘decision’ stage keywords as those customers are much more likely to convert which is true but you can still drive tonnes of sales and revenue into your business by focusing on Awareness and Consideration stage keywords as well!
Awareness – The buyer becomes aware that they have a problem.
Consideration – The buyer defines their problem and considers options to solve it.
Decision – The buyer evaluates and decides on the right provider to administer the solution.
– Below are some example search terms for each stage –
Awareness – ‘why is my website getting no traffic’
Consideration – ‘how to SEO my website’
Decision – ‘SEO Agency in Cambridge’
Sometimes you might find that decision stage keywords are too competitive or have a low search volume so it might be best to focus your attention on consideration keywords instead!
Step 3: Find the Right Keywords Tool to Use
Earlier we mentioned doing keyword research so here are some tools you can use:
Each of these tools can tell you how many people you can reach, average monthly search volume, other related phrases, and more. Knowing where to start with the keywords is essential to the success of your campaign.
You can then audit the relevant keywords you pull off and mark down at which stage of the buyer’s journey the ‘search intent’ is at.
Conclusion
Choosing the best SEO keywords will make or break your SEO campaign. Hopefully the information above will help steer you in the right direction. If you want to really take your SEO campaigns and performance to the next level then book in a free audit or consultation with us today!
