Search engines in this digital age have the power of the internet, when people want to buy something 87% of New Zealanders using the internet turn to Google. For older generations, it may be easy to overlook the necessity to work on the digital side of your business, but for the younger generation, there has never been a world where you can’t use Google to search for everything you might want to buy or service you may look for.
The number of people utilizing search engines, like Google, is steadily growing every year. Not all of those searches are related to eCommerce but, research shows that 43% of all eCommerce traffic comes from organic Google searches. That is significant enough to start taking your search engine optimization strategy seriously.
How do you do this? To get ahead in the internet-search age you need to optimize your website so that search engines can more easily find you. This process, called search engine optimization, or SEO, it involves a lot of time, effort, and research to be effective, we can help with this. However, if you want to take on this task yourself, your web page can rank on the first page of Google, or any other search engine. This helps your businesses grow tremendously. For this reason, SEO has become a a game changer in the marketing industry.
Even if you don’t know much about search engine optimization, it is easy to learn the basics online. When it comes to your SEO strategy, it doesn’t get any more basic than keyword research for SEO. This is the first step to start your SEO strategy.
Why should you do your Keyword Research?
Google receives over 70,000 searches per second every day. This means that at any time of day, someone, somewhere, is searching for your product or service.
Ranking at the top of a search engine page is more tailored and more personalized than a billboard or any print ad could ever be. That’s the reason why Google Ads are so popular and effective. People know what they want, and a correct SEO Strategy is how you can show up in front of them, just when they want it.
You simply cannot rank in Google if you skip the keyword research for SEO, at the same time you could be wasting your time optimizing your site for a keyword you won’t likely ever rank for, it MUST be relevant. It’s even a waste of time trying to rank for a keyword that doesn’t actually fit your business.
Keyword research for SEO lays the foundation for the rest of your SEO Strategy. If you don’t have a good foundation of researched keyword, it could mean your time and effort is completely wasted.
Still not convinced? Maybe you have a physical store? Did you know that 39% of consumers visit a store within a day of their local search on a computer or tablet mobile phone. Having a planned SEO strategy in place that works by doing your keyword research for SEO can grow your traffic online and offline.
The importance of keyword research for SEO is by far more apparent when you understand what a keyword or a key-phrase is, and the different types there are.
What is a keyword/key-phrase?
Basically a keyword or key-phrase is a word or phrase that people type into a search bar on a search engine (like Google). Different keywords, even if they are for similar things, can have different competition and popularity, if you owned a Phone Parts business, using a keyword like iPhone 10 would be very inefficient as you are competing against iPhone 10 Phone Sales, iPhone 10 Cases, iPhone 10 Reviews, iPhone 10, iPhone 10 Community Groups and iPhone 10 Repair Store. Therefore, the more specific you are the better. The amount of monthly searches for one keyword might be much higher or lower than for another that is almost identical. Likewise, two keywords can have very different levels of competition to rank for them.
If you type “best chicken soup recipe” into Google, you will see a featured snippet highlighting the top result for this keyword, followed by recipe after recipe for chicken soup. But, if you just type “chicken soup” into Google, you will see a different set of recipes, as well as results for the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” franchise.
Both examples are of keywords, and although they seem similar, they lead to totally different results.