Keyword Research

If you want potential clients to find your website when they search online for the types of services you offer, you’ll need to consider the words and phrases they’ll use in their search.

Once you know these ‘keywords’ you can include them within your content to make it relevant for your audience. Using relevant keywords lets search engines know that what you offer is consistent with what is being searched for.

What is a keyword?

A keyword is a specific word or phrase that a user types into a search engine to find information, products or services online. Keywords are the foundation of search engine optimization (SEO), as they help search engines understand the intent of a user’s search query so it can be matched to relevant information on the web.

Research to find keywords relevant to your business

Ideally, you’ll want a seperate page, optimised with relevant keywords for each service you offer.

  • You could begin by brainstorming a list of potential keywords relevant to your website, products or services. Consider the terms that prospective clients might use when searching for what you offer.
  • Use keyword research tools – Using the keywords from your brainstorming session, the research tools will generate a list of additional and related keywords, phases or questions.
  • Look at your competitors’ websites, what words and phrases are used in the pages they are ranking well for? These can give you ideas for your own website.
  • If your business serves a specific area, use local modifiers, these are words or phrases that indicate a specific location such as counties, towns or postcodes. Include these modifiers in your keyword research to help you target local customers.
  • Once you have all your keywords and phrases, decide how to use them where they fit naturally within your writing. Your content should be relevant and engaging for your users as well as optimised for search engines.

Free keyword research tools

  • Google Keyword Planner: You can access Keyword Planner by creating a Google Ads account and navigating to the “Keyword Planner” section. This is designed to help with keywords for ads but is a great resource to find related keywords for your content.

  • Google Autocomplete: Use Google’s autocomplete feature, start to type a search query into Google and it will suggest relevant search terms based on popular searches. Also look at the ‘related searches’ shown below for additional ideas.

  • Answer the Public: This free tool generates a list of questions and phrases related to a specific keyword, helping you identify keyword phrases to give you content ideas. This can help with inspiration for blog post subjects, blog post that provide information or answer questions related to your services.

  • Ubersuggest: Ubersuggest provides insights into search volumes, competition, and related keywords for specific keywords.

  • Keyword Sheeter: This tool generates a list of potential keywords based on a seed keyword, which you can then filter and refine based on relevance

Social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram can be a good source of keyword ideas, as you can see the hashtags and topics that are popular related to your busniess or among your target audience.