Are you a small business owner trying to leave a good online impression? If you are, then you need to take SEO (search engine optimization) and keyword research seriously. Keywords will help you build a solid SEO strategy for website growth and increase your reach to your targeted population. In this blog, we will explain what keywords are and how you can research them as a small business owner. So let's go.

What is keyword research?

Keyword research involves finding the main search engine terms that relate to your business, or the offering of your products or services. You can sort your keywords and prioritize those with a larger search volume.

Why is keyword research important?

Keywords are essential to understanding the intent of the search engine behind a particular search term. In addition, they help you improve the ranking of your content in search engine results.
Once you understand the intention of the visitor behind the search term, you will be able to improve his experience and offer him what he is looking for. The visitor will find your website useful and will stay on it longer, and more likely to perform the action you want (inquiry, purchase, newsletter subscription, etc.). This further enhances your SEO optimization.

Best way to keyword research for small businesses?

Keyword research is much more than using powerful SEO tools. It involves collecting multiple variations of keywords that might be relevant to your business. Based on these primary keywords, you can run a survey and discover the best keywords to include in your content. Let’s look at all the ways you can research keywords.

  1. Brainstorming
    The first step is to create a few primary keywords that you will use to run the research. Involve as many people on your team as possible in this step to have as many different keywords as possible and to look at things from multiple perspectives.
  2. Online question services and forums
    On forums or online services like Quora, look for questions that might be related to your business. These are likely to be questions that your audience will use in search engines. This can help you identify what your audience is looking for online.
  3. Suggestions for Google search
    One of the best places to conduct keyword research for small businesses is Google. When you enter your keyword in a search engine, Google will display a list of suggested keywords. Also, at the bottom of the page after organic search results, Google will suggest related keywords. This is a very cost effective and useful method.
  4. Google Search Console
    The Google Search Console and Google Analytics give you access to the search queries your audience used to get to your website. These are keywords that you are already ranked on Google and by finding them you can put even more effort into ranking even better in search engines. You will use this if your website is already generating some traffic from search engines.
  5. PPC
    Another way to find keywords is through PPC (cost-per-click) advertising. If you run your ads through Google AdS, then you can view keywords that accrue a high clickthrough rate (CTR) for your site. You can use tools like Google Analytics to spot these keywords and analyze their performance. There, you'll get a list of all the search queries that drive traffic from Google ads. From this list, you can choose those keywords that drive high quality traffic to your web.
  6. Google's keyword planning tool
    Google Keyword Planner will show you a list of keywords that are relevant to your primary keyword. In addition to keywords, you'll also see average monthly searches, competition, and the range of ad bids. In addition, you'll get a few related keywords that you can use to expand your search.
  7. SEO tools
    One of the best ways to research keywords for small businesses is to use SEO tools (MOZ, Ahrefs, SEMrush…). These tools are designed to help you easily conduct keyword research and a host of other things related to SEO.

Conclusion

Keyword research is an integral part of SEO for all businesses. If you don't understand the intent of your search, optimize your content for irrelevant keywords, or don't optimize it at all, your audience will never find you. Those who do find it may not want to see your content, and this can weaken your SEO.

So, you should make an effort to find the right keywords for your small business. While keyword research is extremely important, it is also crucial to ensure that your keywords are used in a natural way, without compromising the meaningfulness and readability of the content.


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