If you break down your whole internet marketing strategy into just 2 core factors, I can bet that the “keyword” will be one of them (the other will be backlinks for me). If you think about it, everything revolves around keywords in search marketing; your content, your backlinks, your audience, even your bounce rate, and CTR.
But what are the keywords? The answer to this simple question can be a little complex.
Any potential word that lands a visitor on your web page can be your keyword, including topics that are hot on social media or trending on the web. Also, any words that people are using to find a particular product or service can be a keyword. However, you have to find and segment those words into actionable data. You have to sort out the words which can lead to action, like purchase or download, and the words that simply meant to find a particular piece of information. You have to prioritize these words by how frequently they are used and how hard it is to rank your website on these keywords in Google or any other search engine SERPs (Search Engine Results Page). You have to understand the keyword intent (or query intent) to perform a successful keyword strategy for any project. (Query intent means what a user wanted to do when he searched a word in a Search Engine)
To simplify the process, we segment keywords into 4 broad types based on query intent
1. Transactional
2. Informational
3. Commercial Research
4. Navigational
Transactional Keywords:
Any keyword which reflects user (searcher) willingness of doing something falls under Transactional keywords and is known as Transactional intent keywords. Keywords falling in this category are usually your primary keywords for a website. People searching these keywords are ready for a transaction i.e. they have decided to do something which can range from buying a service or product to subscribe to a newsletter. Following keywords are the example of Transactional keywords or Transactional intent query
Wholesale sports jerseys
android app development company
buy shoes online
fumigation services number Karachi
Informational Keywords:
These keywords are usually meant to find information about a particular topic. These keywords are a good source to drive traffic on your website and also helps you in content optimization like LSI, Stemming, etc. People using these words are not buyers and they are typically looking for information that can answer their question or even solve their problem without spending anything. Following keywords are an example of informational keywords or informational intent query
how to change WordPress theme fonts
symptoms of flu
pain in left shoulder
check engine light
Commercial Research (Hybrid) Keywords
These are keywords where a person is not looking to buy or spend anything yet because of a missing piece of information he requires in order to buy. This “piece of information” can be anything including but not limited to price; a particular feature, quality confirmation, etc. Following keywords are an example of Commercial Research (Hybrid)
iPhone 6 reviews
Qmobile camera quality
Best 1.5 ton AC
best internet packages Pakistan
Navigational Keywords:
These keywords are usually used for going to a pre-determined destination. This destination can be a website or a facebook page or even a mobile app. Following are some examples of the Navigational keywords
pakwheels
olx Karachi
foodpanda app
agha khan hospital location
High Intent Commercial Keywords:
Transactional & Commercial Research keywords are the queries with commercial intent i.e. either a person wants to buy a product or service or he has decided to buy but looking for some kind of approval before buying which can be anything like pricing, product quality, some specific feature, etc
Following are some of the High Intent Commercial Keywords groups with examples
1. Product or Brand Keywords
witribe internet packages, samsung galaxy 5, Hp Pavilion 8 gb ram
2. Buy Now Keywords
pizza deals, buy generators in Karachi, buy mobiles online, cheap leather bags
3. Discount/Coupon/deals keywords
namecheap coupons, pizzahut coupons, affordable dental services karachi
There can be several more groups of High Intent Commercial Keywords. These keywords might have low search volume or searches however they convert like crazy which is the main objective of any commercial website.
Building a Keyword List For Your Website:
For the clarity in Keyword research process, we assume that we are planning to open a local event planning service website. The following are the steps for Keyword research of our project.
Define Your Service or Product:
The first step to keyword research is to list down your services or products and all possible features of it.
Company = Event Management
Possible Features = Entertainment (Party Planing, Birthday planning, Wedding Planning). Corporate (Workshop Planning, Meetings, Awards, Product Launch, Corporate Parties
There can be more event categories but let’s stick to above for our keyword research.
Now create a list of words or phrases that, in your opinion, someone uses when they talks about your service or product. List them all in a file. Some of the words that people may use to find our event planning service are as follows
event management
event management company
wedding planning company
wedding planners
event planners pakistan
These words & your service features will be your starting point in your keyword research.
Finding Keywords:
1. Using the Keywords Tool
Keyword tools tell you the average number of times people have searched for a specific keyword. For example, if a keyword tool shows you 1200 searches, this means that people searched that keyword 1200 times per month (some keywords tools show you data for 3 months or 6 months). Since Google Keyword Planner is the best free tool out there, therefore we use it to explain how to build your keyword list.
a. Google Keyword Planner
https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/Home
Google Keyword Planner provides you the average number of times people have searched for a keyword on Google. Go to the Google Keyword planner (you may have to SignUp (FREE) for Google Adwords first)
Follow the following steps get a list of keywords related to your service.
1. Click “Search for new keyword and ad group ideas” Add your base keyword (the words you think people may use to search for your service) in the search box. For our example, we will use “event management” as our base keyword.
2. Select “Pakistan” in Targeting Country & click Get Ideas. (since we are going local, we will select the country where we are providing services)
3. You will get the following page with a list of keywords & details in 6 columns. (Make sure you have selected “Keyword Ideas” tab to see the list of keywords). The following 4 columns are important for your keyword research.
- Keyword
- Avg. Monthly Searches = number of searches for that word per month.
- Competition = This is PPC competition and not organic (higher competition may mean more profitable keyword)
- Suggested Bid = This is google paid results per click price. (higher price may mean more profitable keyword)
Click Download to download & save the keyword file for our next step. You may repeat the process by entering more “base keywords” and downloading keyword file for each. You can then merge all the data from all sheets into one FINAL Keyword List. We will call this Main Keyword File.
There are lots of other features in Google Keyword Planner which you may use in your keyword research. You can read more about them here to understand how they work.
https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2999770
Other Keyword Tools:
http://www.wordstream.com/keywords
http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/search-engine-optimization/12-free-keyword-tools-replace-googles-keyword-tool/
You can save keywords from other tools. Their free version usually gives you limited data. You can save all the keywords and then use Google Keyword planner to get their monthly search count.
2. Using Google Suggestion & other keyword suggestion tools
Example tool: http://keywordtool.io/
Enter your base keyword and select google.com.pk in the second column. Hit enter and you will be provided with a list of keywords. Use the “Copy All” function and put them in the Google Keyword planner’s “Get Search Volume Data & Trends” box to get their search count. Don’t Forget to select Pakistan in the Target Country box
Download the list and add these keywords in your main keyword file.
Other Suggestion Tools:
http://ubersuggest.org/
3. Using Competitors Data
Search the main keywords in Google.com.pk and list down the top 10 websites. Filter the companies which are providing the same service like yours and browse them to see what keywords they are using in their Content, Headings, Title Tags, etc
List them down and get their search count as well.
You can repeat these steps by changing the base keyword to other services like wedding planning etc.
Assuming, you followed all the above steps with all your base keywords, you should have a pretty big list of keywords now. Now we need to finalize our keywords from this list.
How to Finalize Keywords:
1. Remove all the duplicates keywords from the list.
2. Sort your keywords by search count and delete all the zero or no search keywords. You can also set a limit like at least 400+ searches per month for a keyword to be used for your search marketing (since local searches are still low therefore you will lose lots of keywords if you use such limit).
3. Remove irrelevant keywords like “event management degree” or “event management (other country or city)” or event management jobs etc
4. Categorize the remaining keywords into primary and secondary keywords. Your primary keywords should be Transactional and Commercial Intent whereas informational keywords will be your secondary keywords.
You can now use these keywords to create your marketing strategy. Whether it’s PPC, link building or your web content, you are going to need these words as they are the words people are using to search for your service or product. When they come on your site, they are going to look for content related to these keywords on your website. Considering the fact that a website has max 8-10 seconds to grab the attention of a visitor, you need to use headings that are related to these keywords. Your content, both text, and images should establish a relationship between your website and those keywords. When you realize that most of the SEO factors revolve around “keywords”, its wise to spend a good amount of your time & efforts in proper keywords research. After-all nothing is as frustrating as finding out that the keyword, you or your SEO agency trying to rank, has 0 searches.
