Choose keyword analysis over gut feeling

You can't do targeted marketing if you don't know who you're talking to.

For this reason, you should of course research who your potential customers really are.

The good news is - there are plenty of ways to get a better insight into your target audience.

Among other things, you can:

Dive into data from your website and social media

In Google Analytics, you can gain much greater insight into what content your visitors are interacting with on your site and which pages are driving the most traffic.

If you run Facebook ads, you can also use Facebook Insights to find out what content your audience is responding to - and your audience demographics.

Talk to your current and potential customers
To really understand your target audience in depth - you can interview both your sales department and your existing customers.

You can also resort to questionnaires - and reach more people in less time.

The most important thing is to try to understand what your customers' challenges, needs, and questions are - how they interact with your business - and what content they respond positively to.

To visualise your potential customers' needs, challenges and questions even better, you can create personas.

Hubspot is brilliant for that - so take my recommendation and geek out with this.

As a start, you can log into Google Keyword Planner and let Google "brainstorm". It's very simple.

You just plot a few words related to your business and you get a long list of keyword ideas, its average number of monthly searches and the competition.

Download the list of suggestions - and now turn your attention to your competitors ↓

It's always a good idea to look over your competitors' shoulders for inspiration. In Ahrefs you can check out what your main competitors are being found on that you are not.

These aren't necessarily keywords that make sense for your business - but they're a great way to learn what people are actually Googling - and uncover any gaps in your own online presence.

Use Ahrefs' "content gap" feature, by typing the domains of three competitors and your own ↓

Drop the words you think have potential into your keyword list, and now build on your list by... 

All optimisation work must of course be based on the current status. Therefore, you need to check what your website is currently ranking at. Look at both what it ranks well on - and what it ranks embarrassingly badly on.

For example, you can use site explorer in Ahrefs or Google Search Console.

So far so good. You now have a long list of keywords, which most likely contain both good and bad. But the list can get better and more targeted.

It's time to zoom in on what questions and challenges your personas may have throughout their buying process, also known as the customer journey.

Why is that a good idea, you ask?
Because most people don't just wake up one morning and think "I need to buy a ventilation system" and then google "buy ventilation system", without having noticed a problem in their everyday life before this urge to buy and not knowing the solution.

The customer journey is the key to understanding the thought processes your target audience goes through, from just starting to feel their pain point and not knowing the solution yet, to knowing what they want to buy, where and why.

At each stage of the customer journey, the seeker has different intentions and needs.

The words they plot in Google are therefore also different.

And if you want to optimise your website so that you're not just found when your potential customers need you and your knowledge - but you're also converting your visitors - then you need to deliver content that's built around the stages of the customer journey.

In short: A keyword analysis based on your target audience's customer journey is the way to deliver the right content to the right people at the right time.

Are you a little too busy? Get a free SEO-analysis from me or a colleague.

What challenges does your company solve?
What is the best outcome of your business?
And what words does your target audience usually use about their problems and the desired outcome?

Unfortunately, many forget the last stage. The Delight stage can be overlooked because your customer has now actually become a customer.

But don't you also want a happy customer who feels seen and heard?

This is exactly what your content and therefore your keywords should focus on at the final stage.

Think about what questions your customers often have after buying your product. Do you have any advice on how to get the best out of the product? Or avoid encountering problems?

Now, with your long list of keywords, you can usefully sort them all by customer journey stages.

Throw them into a Google Sheet. And then you'll have them ready to clean out when you get to the next (and last, don't worry) step in your analysis - analyzing the potential of each keyword ↓

Before deciding which keywords to go for, assess the potential of the words with three important questions:

Is the keyword really the right match for what you offer?

The most important thing to avoid is choosing keywords only based on the possibility of traffic.

It is equally important to choose keywords based on the possibility of converting the traffic that comes in. So that you get - relevant - traffic in.

So the question is - does the search match what you offer?

For example, when the searcher enters "plumbing", it is important for you as a plumber to find out whether the intention behind the search is to order a plumber to provide a service (such as having a blocked drain cleaned), or whether it is to find a webshop with plumbing items (such as a bath fitting or a new water pipe).

A good way to understand the intent of a keyword is to look at the page 1 results that are coming up right now for that keyword.

Do they match what you offer?

If they do, it's an indicator that the world's largest search engine has judged that the intent behind the search is to find what you offer = your chosen keyword has potential.

The next important question is - how many search for the word per month?

In my view, there is no number of monthly searches that is as such too low or too high to go for if you have infinite time in your calendar.

But most of us don't. So it pays to weigh up the monthly number of searches with what one converting customer on the chosen keyword is worth in dollars and cents.

The search query "What does renovation of bathroom cost" has (right now) 30 monthly searches in Denmark.

That's not many, by and large - but if 1 of those searches turns into a customer buying a renovation of their mansion of a bathroom - that one customer can quickly earn back all the SEO work for the keyword.

So don't be blind to search volume, but instead assess what it will give you to be number 1 for that keyword, given how much manpower it will take to get there.

... And then we come to the less fun (or really fun?) part. Of course, you have to look at the competition for the keyword.

Here's the question - how easy is it to dominate your keyword?

Search volume can often give you an overall idea. The more monthly searches, the more competition there often is.

But if you want a more specific answer - you can look at the Moz or Ahrefs difficulty score, which is based on your domain's link profile.

Remember, too, that you have to judge for yourself whether you can do as good a job SEO as those who are currently ranked highest - because that's who you have to beat.

As the cherry on top, you can look at the potential organic click through rate for the keyword - SEO guru Rand Fishkin has written a great article on this.

Okay, okay. Of course I understand.

But the work pays off! And like money - saving time costs time in the end. A half-baked analysis will only produce half-baked results.

You can let us give you a free SEO report - to help you along.

If you don't have the resources to put together a well thought-out SEO strategy, you're always welcome to drop me a line at seo@webamp.dk or get in touch with one of my colleagues at info@webamp.dk.

THANK YOU for reading! 

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