Finding the right keywords is often not given the attention it deserves. Identifying high volume keywords that will convert is ultimately the key to successful search engine marketing.
Imagine an SEO or PPC campaign that drove a lot of traffic, but none of that traffic contributed to growing your business. This is primarily why identifying the right keywords is so important.
1. Identify relevant keywords
Think of what your customers would be searching for when they are looking for a product or service like yours.
Understanding your business aims is key here: what types of leads or sales are you trying to acquire? B2B vs B2C? A specific high value product or service?
2. Ensure it is your potential customers who are searching your keywords
This one can really make the difference between a PPC or SEO campaign that helps grow your business or not. It’s important to understand the intention behind a search, to know if a user searching your keyword will really be interested in your product.
To do this, Google the keyword itself and see who appears in the space already. Google is great at giving searchers what they are after, so if the results are irrelevant to your product/service this keyword is unlikely to work for you. Whereas finding your competitors there is a great indication you have found a winner.
If targeting overseas, use a VPN like NordVPN to check results from other countries.
3. Verify the keywords have search volume in your target markets
To ensure PPC & SEO will be able to bring potential customers to your website, you want to make sure there are people searching for the keywords you have identified. There are a few tools for checking this, our preferred are;
AdWords Keyword Planner
Ahrefs
SEM Rush
If your product is new, and people are not searching for it, you need to identify your target demographic and understand what they would be searching for.
For example, our client TheGivingMachine is a cashback website that donates this to a charity of your choice (great idea, check them out). Their issue is no one is searching for their ‘product’. Instead, by understanding their demographic we chose to target “Fundraising Ideas” a high volume keyword, their target demographic would search for.