Starting at the beginning…

Keyword research starts a successful online presence and marketing campaign. But what is it? How can you do it better and what does it actually mean?

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is about what people type into search engines to find what they need.  It is essentially the gathering of search terms which are firstly relevant to your website and secondly that people are actually using. For example people who wish to buy a bicycle may type in the word bicycle into Google’s search box.

How do I find more information on keywords?

Google has a handy tool called Keyword Planner which you can access if you setup a Google Ads account. You can use it in different ways to give you keywords ideas and their search volume. The Keyword is the term typed into Google and Search Volume is the amount of times that keyword is typed into

Let’s run through an example. If I owned a Bicycle store and wanted to research keywords where would I start? How about the words around Bicycle? Would you target cycle, bicycle or bike? If we look at these words in Google’s keyword planner we can see the results below:

We can see in keyword planner that bike and bicycle have search volumes of 33100 and cycle has a much lower volume of 6600. What is interesting is that by also searching for the plurals bikes is also a top volume term of 40500. We might therefore think about targeting the keyword bikes more than we would cycles.

Competing for a search term like bike on its own will be extremely competitive. Let’s say our example business is actually a specialist in children’s bikes. So we need to think around the word children and bike and research the combinations of children, kids, boys and girls with the bicycle words.

Keyword	Avg. Monthly Searches (exact match only)
kids bikes	14800
girls bikes	9900
boys bikes	5400
kids bike	3600
girls bike	3600
childrens bikes	2900
boys bike	1600
childrens bike	1000
kids bicycle	590
girls bicycle	480
boys mountain bikes	390
boys bicycles	260
children bike	210
kids bicycles	170
girls bicycles	140
kid bike	110
children bicycle	90
child bicycle	70
boys bicycle	70
kid bicycle	30

 

It is interesting to see the difference between some of the plurals and how much more search volume there is around girls than boys.  But what about delving deeper into what are known as long tail keywords such as a coloured girls children’s bike?

Keyword	Avg. Monthly Searches (exact match only)
pink girls bike	140
pink kids bike	40
kids pink bike	40
pink girls bikes	20
pink girl bike	10
pink girl bikes	10
pink girls bicycle	10
pink kids bikes	10
pink childs bike	10
kids pink bikes	10
pink kid bike	10
pink kids bicycle	10
pink childrens bikes	10
kids pink bicycle	10
pink girl bicycle	10
pink kids bicycles	10

 

We can see above that the keywords “pink girls bike” has the most potential traffic. By taking these journeys through the keywords we can start to build a strategy and target the keyword that has the potential to drive the most traffic.

What should I do with this information?

The information can help create the strategy for the website in terms of content, how to describe the service being offered in the most valuable way and most importantly how to drive relevant traffic to the website.  For example, when creating a website you can group related keywords into categories and think about creating category pages on the website to target that specific market. In the example, we might want to think about creating a page targeting the words pink, kids, girls and bikes. By creating content that’s relevant with associated terms like pink girls bikes, this in turn will help the website rank for the shorter keyword searches “bikes” and “girls bikes” where the larger search volume is, while also obtaining high rankings for the specific long tail search. Also, by targeting the long tail keywords around pink girls bikes it might be that you are targeting people who have the intention to buy rather than people who are just researching the topic.

In summary keyword research essentially helps create and refine a website to market itself to the people searching for it. If you know how people are searching for what your business provides, you have found your market.