Keyword Research: The Importance of Formulating Goals
Above all, keyword research is one of the vital tasks an aspiring SEO should know to keep a site growing. Although SEO practice keeps changing over time, it remains one of the essential strategies you should know. It is also the first thing an SEO professional should do if you have a site you want to improve in search ranking.
Learning the process of good keyword research and analysis makes the perfect skill combination that will bring you to success.
What Is the Process of Keyword Research?
Keyword research entails a process that needs thorough study and preparation. It is not a single process; instead, it is an orderly and continuous procedure wherein revisiting and analysing is needed. The set of steps include:
- Looking through keywords.
- Setting specific goals.
- Creating your keyword list.
- Assessing the on-going competition.
- Expanding your keyword’s scope.
- Seeking new opportunities.
Although all of these steps are essential in keyword research, SEO professionals seemed to overlook one step: the setting of goals.
How to Set Your Goals?
Before you start the keyword research, it is essential to have well-defined goals to save your time and effort. Goals can mean the various brands or businesses you prefer to target, and this is important because you need a specific direction for your keyword research. In setting your goals, you might want to ask the following questions.
- Who Is Your Target Audience?
Before you put your effort, you should have the specific audience you want to target to stop wasting your time reaching for the unknown. In this case, audience research is necessary. You might want to set standards to filter your target audience. For example, not all business owners can be your audience; instead, the ones that match your criteria qualify as your target audience. Criteria can be based upon annual revenue, the percentage of annual budget allotted for digital marketing, etc.
Indeed, you can help almost all businesses, but you need to set a level of criteria to filter your target audience.
- What Products or Services do you Promote?
This question improves and expands your brand awareness to the industry and can improve your research too. Start including specific terms that you can associate with your products or services, and ignore the ones that are too general or push you far from what you want to promote. Note that you might find many terms that you can have, but do not forget to narrow it down depending on your need.
- What are the Needs of Your Future Customers?
One way to be successful in keyword research is the initiative and anticipation of your audience’s needs. Analyze their questions, problems, and needs, and use it to target the keywords that fit and matter to them. You can do it by creating a buyer persona. You might want to outline or include the interests, characteristics, goals, influences, challenges, and purchasing habits of an ideal client. Craft a template using those considerations, which you can use to filter terms in the future.
Why Is Setting Goals Essential Before Starting?
A goal-oriented individual always has the advantage over those who impulsively take the road without a map. As an aspiring SEO, you should know that keyword research is a challenging task to take, and you might not want to waste your time and effort working for something unsure. It would be best to put the end in your mind and set your goals before you start working. All successful SEO professionals started keyword research with goals, and you might want to follow the same direction.
