What is keyword research? Keyword research is when data from search queries and user intent is compared to search volume and content relevancy. Keyword research is an on page SEO ranking factor. Effective keyword research is planned out well in advanced and executed accordingly. By organizing content inline with targeted keywords, users and searchbots alike are understanding contextual relevancy. Keyword research keeps a website on a consistent content direction that encourages authority and trust.

If you’ve ever seen a webpage, where the content vaguely represents the anchor text that lead you to the page, you often are skeptical the information is even correct. That’s how users feel if they ever came across such content on your website. A content flow is important, as users will naturally have more questions about a concept, the more it’s talked about. That’s an opportunity to internally link to deeper webpages, and provide further content relevancy to searchbots and users.

Longtail Keywords Are Valuable For Ranking On SERPs

When SEOs talk about ” longtail keywords ” and ” shorttail keywords ” they are talking about the number of words in a targeted search phrase.

Short Tail Keywords – Only have one word in their search phrase.

Long Tail Keywords – Often have 2 or more words in their search phrase.

Longtail keywords are an SEOs most focused on strategy, since it makes ranking a webpage for more than one keyword group much more easy to target and focus on. Using certain keywords based around user intent, an SEO can target the right kind of organic web traffic that will not only visit the website, but have a higher likely hood of converting. When long tail keywords are used properly in content, it provides a better relation to overall context and helps searchbots rank the webpage for the proper keywords. As well helps the user understand the content better, by adding a little more context. That’s where the importance of synonyms and keyword variations comes into effect.

Synonyms And Variations Provide Further Context

Imagine a website was selling shirts, but they focused on ranking the keyword ” shirts “. So much, that was the only word used, would look a little like this: ” Buy our shirts, we have many shirts to sell, at low prices, shirts for kids and adults, call now! “. Now that would be fine for an ad in a newspaper, but not for ranking keywords people actually search for. What kind of shirts does the website sell? Could use a plethora of keyword variations and synonyms for such, like ” polo shirts, women’s longsleeve shirts, boys dress shirts, etc “.

Based on the types of products or services offers, using variations that better describe, and rely intent can extremely benefit keyword ranking. Anything that can further explain to the user what the content is, in a more descriptive way will not only benefit keyword ranking, but further explain a website’s message, which can improve conversion rate optimization. How a website talks to it’s readers is one of the least focused marketing factors in my opinion. While many are focusing on the importance of ranking the website, it’s also important to remember the customer, and improving their vision of the brand.

All Keyword Research Data Is Not Correct

When researching keyword data, like search volume and other metrics. It’s important to understand that all data in SEO is not created equal, many websites give averages over time or not even current data. Other data websites have their own searchbots that crawl and index the interwebs like Google, but even they have their limits. Google is going to be for the time being, the best bet, with AHREFs closely behind. Moz is great, if you’re a fortune 500 company, but many times for smaller websites, it doesn’t gleam all of the content.

Google trends is an SEOs best friend, when you couple that with a 3rd parties data, you can begin to draw a more accurate opinion. That’s when the magic happens, and creative juices start flowing, when data meets relevancy. That’s when we get into using 3rd party data, and an SEO pitfall, ” 3rd party website metrics “. Just don’t think a website’s metrics are actually used in a search engine’s algorithm, and you’ll be ok, things like Moz’s ( Domain Authority ) and AHREFs ( Domain Rank ) are guides, rather than gauges. Both are used to factor in backlinks into the whole equation, but both also fail to index 100% of what Google does, so that’s mainly why trusting that information is a one way ticket on the fail train. Follow the data the search engines give you for free, and if you must, COMPARE it with 3rd party data, but NEVER RELY ON 3rd party data.

If your website is suffering from keyword ranking issues

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