Updated on: 09-02-21
The emergence of effective digital marketing tools makes the business landscape today a very exciting arena for businesses as they’re competing with each other in selling their products and services online.
A more effective and smarter digital marketing strategy can mean several things to businesses.
When we're speaking about "audiences reaching businesses online", at the top of the list of tools that can drive the most traffic we find "Organic Search”.
When people need information about anything, from reading the news to making a purchase online, they will typically type in their query in Google and visit the sites that are ranked higher, which shows how much people rely on search engine results pages.
So, as a business owner, building your presence online, you must aim to get your site to rank as high as possible on Google in order for you to receive more traffic and have more opportunities to sell your products and services.
Keyword research is the process of researching and analysing popular search terms, words, and phrases that people type into search engines like Google, and including them strategically in your content with the ultimate goal of making that particular piece of content appear higher on the search engine results pages (SERP).
Important with keyword research is that the keywords you choose have enough search volume, are relevant to your content, and don't have too much competition.
The very first thing you need to do is to find the right sets of keywords to focus on, also known as target keywords for your particular marketing campaign or piece of content.
Keyword research is one of the most important aspects of a Search Engine Optimization campaign and is a crucial step that business owners who want to be successful in the online market should never neglect. In this blog, we will explain to you why.
If you don’t know which “word” or “search term” you want your specific pages to rank for, then you probably won’t be able to optimize pages, images, and strategies to drive more traffic to your site.
If you’ve chosen keywords that are not related or relevant to your website and you have included those keywords into your blog post, then there is less chance your page will rank higher in the search results pages that are related to the content on your page.
If you would like some help with choosing the right keywords for your site you can contact our experts.
Short-tail keywords:
Short-tail keywords, also known as “head terms” are search phrases that contain only a single word. Due to the length of the keywords, it makes them less specific than searches with multiple words. People typically use this type of broad keyword to search on Google when they are deciding what to do (shopping, swimming) or what to eat (Chinese food, pizza).
As an example; “Marketing” (1 word) is an example of a short-tail keyword, whereas “Digital marketing agency Bangkok” (4 words) is an example of a long-tail keyword.
When you are trying to drive a lot of traffic to your site, you should be using short- tail keywords as it helps you reach a wider range of audiences. This traffic, however, might not be ready-to-buy or willing to take action on your site.
To drive traffic with more "intent" we recommend targeting long-tail keywords. Additionally, targeting long-tail keywords over short tail keywords can be a good thing as there is often less competition for longer tail keywords.
As mentioned before, there are a couple of things we should be keeping in mind when choosing short tail keywords we want to rank for:
Let’s assume that you own a marketing agency and you want to rank for “marketing” as a short-tail keyword...
As you can see, there are a lot of sites showing up for the search term “marketing”. This means the competition is very high and it is will be very difficult for your company to rank high for this keyword.
Long-tail keywords:
A long-tail keyword, on the other hand, are phrases containing more than 3 words. They are definitely a lot more targeted and not as broad as a short-tail keyword. You won’t be able to bring in as much search traffic from this type of keyword, but the traffic you do bring in is more relevant and the kind of traffic you should be looking for.
While driving a lot of traffic to your site with short-tail keywords sounds good, if it's not the right traffic it might not be bringing you any value. It's better to rank high for long-tail keywords that drive website visitors who are actively looking to take action on your site and drive value to the bottom line of your business.
Of course, it is. Your keyword research is very important to your business and, to get the results you want, you have to do it properly.
With the tips and ideas from this article, you should be able to start working on keyword research for your business. However, if you have any questions about keyword research or digital marketing in general, feel free to contact us.
