How to find the best keywords for your website without doing keyword Research

7 min read

Avatar Luke Tobin

9th November, 2017

Business advice

Keyword Research for SEO & Content Marketing

The foundation of any SEO or content marketing campaign should begin with good old fashioned keyword research. The foundation of SEO is keyword Research.

Well… maybe… In this post we are going to look at how to find the best keywords for your business or website with out doing keyword research but instead doing “Niche Topic Research”

Without knowing what your target keywords are there is no SEO campaign.

Solid keyword research is the compass to your digital marketing campaign. They are abel to give you direction and determine if you are making progress.

As well as this you can find out all about the thoughts, pain points and desires of your customers and target market.

Another way of looking at keyword research is that it is market research for the 21st Century.

After reading this Keyword Research Guide you will be able to preform keyword research in 60 minutes for you business!

How to find the best Keywords for SEO and How to Use them

By mastering the art of amazing keyword research you will benefit form more traffic from search engines and more importantly you will understand your customers better than any of your competitors.

it is common to see most people apply the following process when it comes to keyword research…

Step 1

Think of a couple of keywords that a potential customer may search for.

Step 2

Head over to keyword planner and type they couple of keywords in.

Step 3

Select a keyword to work on based on a “gut” feeling.

Today after reading our keyword research guide all of that changes!

You will be empowered with a detailed guide that shows you exactly what to do when it comes to finding the right keywords that your target market use each day when searching the web!

When you optimise your website around the correct keywords you will see your website rocket to the top of Google resulting in more traffic, leads and most importantly sales.

Before you log in to any kind of keyword research tool or begin improving the on site optimisation of your website you need to identify and carry out niche topic research for your industry.

Once you have carried out this niche topic research you will have a vast selection of keywords that your competitors don’t know exist.

Start Your Keyword Research with “Niche Topics”

The best place to start your keyword research as I just mentioned above is with your niche topics.

Most people don’t hold back and head straight over to Google Keyword tool and start bombarding the tool with some keywords and then take a shot in the dark.

Don’t get me wrong Google Keyword Tool, is a well a really good tool. However it is not great at coming up with keyword ideas.

Example:

If i was to say the word “football” to you what would you think of?

Even if you are not a huge fan or even follow football some words that may pop into your head could include;

  • English Premier League
  • Match
  • David Beckham
  • Ball
  • Goal
  • Sky sports

When you use a tool like Google Keyword Planner none of these keywords will be shown to you, only more top level generic keyword terms like;

  • football games
  • football shop
  • football rules
  • history of football

Google can only pick up keywords that are immediately related to the keyword you entered at the start.

You are rarely shown the best keywords and the ones that could drive the best traffic to your website and bring you profit.

With this in mind, most people are probably targeting the same keywords because they all follow the suggestions given to them by Google. It is time to not target the same keywords as everyone else!

Please note, I am not suggesting that these keywords should not be included in your campaign but other more relevant keyword terms may be out there.

No keyword tool should be solely relied upon for your keyword research.

To find out the true breadth of potential keywords for your SEO or content marketing campaign here is what to do, identify niche topics.

Identifying Niche Topics Quickly

You have probably thought to yourself… what the F is a niche topic?

Well, a niche topic is a topic that your potential customers are interested in, rather than focusing on a keyword we will look a the topic as a whole.

Later in this blog post, I will go into detail about how to take the best keywords from your niche topics.

Niche Topics Example

So to continue with our football-related theme above, let’s say you run a business that sells football goals.

As I explained earlier, Google keyword Planner is not very good at giving you anything but extremely close keywords related to the word you typed in.

It is true that some of the keywords you will be provided may well be relevant to your business and be really good to target through your product pages or blog posts.

However, there are so many keywords that you are not being shown that is potentially very lucrative and less competitive to appear for in organic search results.

When you start with “niche topics” is the easiest way to unearth the keywords that are super lucrative to your business.

Niche topics are list of niches that your customers are interested in, these can be related to your main topics you talk about already on your website.

A potential customer that is interested in buying a set of football goals may also search using the following keywords;

  • How to score more often
  • Best football goals ever
  • How to get scouted by football teams
  • Nutrition plan for a footballer
  • How to improve your vertical jump

Each of the keyword phrases are part of a unique but very closely related Niche Topic.

This blog post is based on our niche topics here at Digital Ethos, rather than our main keywords like “SEO Leicester“.

To take this a step further the keyword phrase “How to score more often” is part of the niche topic “shooting”.

Niche topics are small sub-niches that are not big enough to support their own site or product.

Your niche topics should result in 5 – 10 keyword ideas, that have enough search volume and commercial intent to justify you creating some content and pages around.

Niche topics are the very best way to find super relevant keywords for your industry. That will be much more beneficial to you than finding keywords through the more traditional way of doing keyword research.

Next, I will detail how exactly to do Niche Topic research, you are about to throw the old way you done keyword research out the window!

How to create your Niche Topic List

The main goal and end result we are looking for is to map out the different topics your target customer searches in Google while looking for information.

The first step is to open up an excel file or Google doc.

Here is an example niche topic list for our football goals site:

  • How to score a free kick
  • Dribbling skills
  • Nutrition for football players
  • Improve your passing
  • Football boots

In order to come up with ideas, I will now describe the best way to create your niche topics, that will result in the best ever keyword research you have ever done. Without doing keyword research.

Create Buyer Personas to find the best Keywords

A buyer persona is a super-simple way to identify Niche Topics that your
potential customers care about.

And once you identify these Niche Topics, you can easily find keywords that
potential customers use every day.

Your keyword research-focused buyer persona should include your target
audience’s:

• Gender
• Age
• Approximate income
• Hobbies and interests
• Things that they struggle with
• What they want to accomplish (personally and professionally)

Depending on your industry, you may have several different buyer personas.

Continuing with our example of an online store selling football goals. Two buyer personas you may have are for football players (kids) and their parents.

Remember it is often the parent that ultimately makes the purchase.

To create your buyer persona, there are a number of things to think about that I listed above.

Keyword Research will never be the same

Now that you have developed a number of niche topics, the next stage is to find some keywords. More like keyword research you are used too.

Keywords can be divided into 3 areas;

  • Head
  • Body
  • Tail

Head Keywords:

These are usually single-word keywords with insane amounts of search volume and competition (for example, “insurance” or “vitamins”).

Because searcher intent is all over the place (someone searching for “insurance” might be looking for a car insurance quote, a list of life insurance companies or a definition of the word), Head Terms usually don’t convert very well.

Body Keywords:

Body keywords are 2-3 word phrases that get decent search volume (at least 2,000 searches per month), but are more specific than Head Keywords. Keywords like “life insurance” or “order vitamins online” are examples of Body Keywords. These
almost always have lower competition than Head Terms, but can still be very competitive.

Long-Tail Keywords:

Long-tail keywords are long, 4+ word phrases that are usually very specific. Phrases like “affordable life insurance for over 50s” and “order vitamin D capsules online” are examples of long tail keywords.

Even though they don’t get a lot of search volume individually – when added together– long tails make up the majority of searches online.

Keyword Research, done… Well, Niche Topic Research, done!

The main focus should be in the body and tail keywords, these keywords you will have more chance getting to the first page of Google for!

Head keywords are super competitive and normally don’t convert very well.

You just finished Chapter 1. Congratulations!

Now it’s time to turn your Niche Topics into keywords. How? I’m going to show you how to use the most popular keyword research tool online: The Google Keyword Planner. Look out for our next post soon!

Thanks for reading,
Team Digital Ethos

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