With the way in which technology continues to rapidly advance, the internet has become the largest and most important channel to target audiences. According to Our World In Data, there are 7.7 billion people in the world, and 3.5 billion of us online. That means that nearly half of the population uses the internet. It’s no wonder that keyword research and SEO optimization has become such an important marketing technique.
Keyword research sets the groundwork for various digital marketing practices such as content marketing, big data, marketing automatic, social media marketing, and more. Keywords not only help construct a description of what a business is known for but also assist in helping marketers understand what content should be marketed and where organic search traffic derives from. The websites that receive plenty of organic searches do so thanks to the keywords used. Keywords are essentially words or phrases that people type into search engines to find what they are looking for. For example, if you type “cat” into a search engine like Bing or Google, many broad results related to cats which the search engine believes are relevant to your search will appear. The results are then organized depending on what the search engine believes most closely matches what you intended to search for. Using long tail keywords increases the chance of being ranked highly due to the specificity of the terms used and the lack of competition. Any keywords used should target the type of traffic that flows through your website and that will convert browsing customers into paying ones. By using the wrong types of keywords, you may still bring in traffic but likely not any useful traffic.
This is why it’s so important to research the correct keywords for a campaign. Some of the benefits of using keyword research include finding relevant markets, ranking highly on search engines which in turn drives traffic to a website, and promoting products and services by strengthening marketing goals. When marketers use due diligence to find out what phrases people are typing into search engines, they can meet their goals to assist them in finding what they’re searching for. By putting themselves into the customer’s frame of mind, a marketer can use intuition to narrow down the keywords that will likely be used during a search. There are also a variety of keyword research tools such as Google Keyword Planner, that can aid in coming up with just the right mix of keywords to determine what will yield the best results.
By truly researching the best keywords and phrases to use for a campaign, marketers can improve a company’s ROI and increase awareness or the brand. With content that really attempts to target customers, businesses and audiences will be better connected. This marketing strategy is a win-win that keeps everyone happy and contributes immensely to a business’s growth
Sources
Roser, Max. “Future Population Growth.” Our World in Data, 9 May 2013, https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth.