Keyword research plays an essential role in any SEO campaign. It helps to identify the search queries you want to focus on and ultimately have the pages of your website ranking on the search engines. So, when creating a keyword list, it is essential to plan it while focusing on a few critical elements of each stage.

Consider a few factors while conducting SEO keyword research. First, it will help you answer the simple yet necessary query of whether you want somebody entering a specific phrase in Google to engage with your company.

Factors to consider while conducting a Keyword Research

1. Keyword relevance-

Keywords are the topics or search queries that summarize the website’s content. While choosing keywords, your main motto should be to rank your website in the top position of the search engine results.

For instance, if you own a brand that sells NBA apparel, you will want your product page to rank for specific keywords like “Puma T-shirts.”

Though there is a critical search volume around keywords like “T-shirts” and “Puma,” ranking for either one of those by themselves is not aligned or relevant to the “Puma T-shirts” that you sell on the page where you want traffic from your customers.

2. Find global monthly search volume of keywords-

Once you have created a list of keywords, put them into the Google AdWords Traffic Estimator.

It will help you to find Global Monthly Search Volume, among other statistics, to help you find the right keywords to target for different purposes. Say, for example:

Keyword: Air travel

Global Monthly Search volume- 37,200,000

Keywords: Bus

Global Monthly Search volume- 2,740,000

Keyword: travel by train

Global Monthly Search volume: 165,000

As you know, the Global Monthly Search Volume of keywords, you must look at other factors to choose the right keywords. For example, the keywords like travel, bus, and travel by plane are too general. Are your customers looking for information on airplanes and buses or the price of the tickets?

Based on the clear focus of your website, you must narrow your keyword list more. These could include bus tickets, train tickets, or train travel tickets. However, the process of keyword research does not stop here.

Other factors influence how long it will take to see the right results and how much effort you or your marketing expert needs to put into this campaign.

3. Do the keywords have significant search volume?

Is this a phrase or keyword that people enter Google? It is substantial to consider while identifying the keywords you want to target in your SEO campaign.

When you have your search queries or topics identified, a keyword research tool, for example, SEMrush, will help you identify the number of people searching for this specific phrase monthly.

If you can finally rank on the 1st page of Google for a keyword that is searched by your target audience 10,000 times as compared to 10 times, you will get a better chance to drive organic traffic to your website through that specific keyword.

4. Does the user intent of this search query match your brand?

User intent refers to what a user may have meant while entering a keyword in a search engine. Including intent-based keywords like “shop” or “buy” in your keyword strategy will help you drive the visitors to your page who are planning to take the desired action, you expect from them.

Imagine you own a Ferrari dealership. You don’t want visitors to visit your website just by looking at the latest picture of Ferrari as they are fans of the car or brand.

On the contrary, you should look for people searching through “buy the latest Ferrari” or “buy Ferraris” as those users show their intent while searching.

5. Keyword competition

Who is outranking for the phrase or keyword that you are targeting? How to find that? The best method to find out who is ranking for those keywords you are targeting is by doing a Google search for them by switching off personalization and seeing the result.

Is it the most helpful way of doing things? Not really, but it gives you a whole idea about your online competitor. Tools like Spyfu also do a great job by helping you do a competitive analysis, and nearly all of them have a free version that will help you attain top results.

The keyword difficulty tools by SEOMoz can also help greatly, but you must never rely on the Google Keywords Tool’s competitive metric as it is based on the AdWords data.

6. Keyword ROI

Is the keyword which you are targeting valuable? Will traffic through it get you conversion on the page you are trying to optimize?

Traffic from long tail keywords converts at a significantly higher rate than traffic coming from the short tale keywords. Therefore, you must consider these things while deciding which pages you want to optimize for which keywords.

Following these tips into practice

Next time whenever you are building a keyword list, follow these tips. With each keyword, your team finds out as a potential option, ask yourself if it is relevant, if it is something that people are looking for, and has the user intent you want visitors to have when they visit your site. If a keyword can fulfill all these criteria, the specific search term will gain results.