There are a number of benefits of keyword research. Keyword research should always be one of the first steps in a content marketing campaign. We use it to learn what our client’s prospects may be looking for and if there is a large enough audience to tap into. Then we start with well-chosen keywords as we write our client’s website content.

Our goal? To be on that first page of course! We all know that most people never even look past the first page of search results. So take time to do the keyword research. It will help you learn what will attract your audience’s attention.

Here are a few more benefits of keyword analysis:

  1. An engaged audience. You want to create content that is interesting to your clients and prospects. Keyword research will help you figure out what your audience is looking for. Then you can write or create content around that. The content can be blogs, videos, eBooks, white papers, infographics, or other information. The key is your prospects want to learn about it.
  2. Increased conversion. If you are creating content your prospects find interesting they will want to learn more. But how do you know if your content is reaching the right audience? After you start ranking for the keywords you researched, check your Google Analytics. The statistics will help you see if website visitors are viewing or downloading the content. They should stay on the page and also visit other pages on your website. If not, then that key phrase (or phrases) may not be quite right.
  3. Marketing trends insight. Analyzing keywords will offer you insights into current trends and your prospect’s behavior. Keep up to date on what’s popular and important to your audience and use that to keep your content relevant.
  4. Prioritize your time. When you know what keywords to write for, you can strategically create content that is relevant to your goals. This helps you stay focused and on task with your efforts. Don’t forget to keep adding more content a little at a time. This will make a huge impact on your website’s traffic in the long run.
  5. Expand your net. As your website ranks for the chosen key phrases, look for relevant similar keywords. Then add more content that targets those additional key phrases. If your site is new, or not ranking for search try long-tail search phrases. According to SEOmoz, 70% of searches are long-tail searches. You probably found this article from a long-tail search.
  6. Place keywords in the right spot. After you identify your ideal keywords, then you need to put the keywords in the right locations. (This will have a huge effect on your organic search ranking.) Make sure your chosen keyword is not only mentioned in your content. It should also be placed in your page title, alt text, URL, and anchor text. This helps the search engine match the keyword to your content.

The largest benefit of keyword research is it can help your company or organization break into new markets. It also strengthens your visibility. It also helps define content that centers around a specific theme or audience.

You may be wondering, how do we conduct our keyword research? We use a combination of tools from Google and SEM Rush. Then once we pick our chosen keywords, we double-check the keywords by looking them up on Google. If our keyword search pulls up content from similar companies or organizations, then we know we found a winning batch of keywords!

Want to get started with Keyword Research, try SEM Rush for free, through this special offer:

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Topics: Marketing & Business Tips | SEO