The Art of SEO, 4th Edition

CHAPTER SIX

Keyword Research

Keyword research is the process of finding the words and phrases that connect your customers or clients to your business. This is the most important aspect of search engine marketing, but it also has a great deal of business value beyond the web. Keyword research enables you to predict shifts in demand; respond to changing market conditions; and provide new products, services, and content that web searchers are actively seeking. In the history of marketing, there has never been a more efficient and effective method of understanding the motivations of consumers in virtually every niche.

The Words and Phrases That Define Your Business

In this chapter, we’ll walk you through the entire keyword research process, beginning with building your domain expertise and analyzing the language associated with your company and its products. Next, we’ll give you some tips for developing a list of topics, and how to use it to develop an initial keyword list. We’ll show you how to set up a spreadsheet to track and calculate your keyword plan, and how to use data from an SEO platform to calculate the best opportunities. Lastly, we’ll provide some guidance on how and when to update your keyword plan.

By the end of this chapter, you will have a spreadsheet with search terms and phrases that are of value to your business, categorized by topic and ordered by their level of opportunity. This is the basis for every subsequent chapter in this book. Without going through the ...