To achieve maximum results for your business, effective content marketing requires the proper balance between quality and quantity. You want to maintain a steady flow of blog posts, social media updates and videos, and you need to ensure that your content is being seen, read and consumed by your target audience. After conducting client research and creating client personas, knowing the right keywords and topics to include is your company’s golden ticket to getting the most out of your content. If you know what prospective clients are searching for on search engines such as Google or Bing, and what they’re asking in AI-driven search results and industry spaces, you’ll be better equipped to produce content that meets those needs.
How to Research Keyword Ideas
Before you embark on the quest for keywords, you must first determine a list of important topics for your business. Think of the questions you hear from clients or prospective clients during meetings and business discussions. Search for questions about your industry on forums like Quora or Reddit. As you compile the most frequently asked questions, these topics will become the basis for establishing relevant keywords to use in your content marketing efforts. Examples of potential topics include email marketing, brand awareness, social media campaigns, lead nurturing and customer retention.
From there, it’s time to start plugging in keywords that belong in each different topic. After all, you’re the expert, so you’ll have a few that you can add from your own understanding of the field. For email marketing, potential keywords might include solutions, conversions or leads. For brand awareness, you might add SEO, thought leadership or target audiences. Add as many different keywords as possible for each topic as you’ll want a wide range to include in your research before determining the most effective to use. If you find yourself struggling with keywords, do a Google search of your topic and scan autocomplete suggestions, “People also ask” questions and the related searches at the bottom of the results page.
Tools to Maximize Keywords
Now that your business has a well-researched list of keywords, it’s time to determine which warrant inclusion in your content. This requires a good balance of head keywords, or general terms that are frequently used, and the more specific long-tail keywords. Having a mix of both is essential, but so is matching intent. Choose keywords that reflect where someone is in the decision process, then build content that answers the real question behind the search.
The best part about maximizing keywords is you don’t have to do it alone. There are a number of tools available that will provide your business with up-to-date statistics on how often keywords are being used on search engines, such as Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, Moz Keyword Explorer and Keywords Everywhere. As you see each keyword’s ranking, you’ll be able to accurately pinpoint the most popular words and phrases to include in your company’s blogs, social media posts and other published content. Revisit this process at least quarterly, and more often for priority services or seasonal campaigns, to assess results and ensure your content stays aligned with what your audience is actually searching for.
Once you have defined your list of keywords, the next step is integrating those terms naturally in a way that supports clarity, structure and real answers to generate better search engine optimization (SEO) for your website. Before you get carried away saturating every sentence, remember the goal is to write for your audience first and search engines second. When keyword and topic research is done well, it helps your content reach the right people at the right time and strengthens your SEO over the long term. Want help putting that into practice? Reach out to our team at Ghidotti, and let’s talk about how content marketing and SEO can work together to support your goals.