- Oh, good.
(bells chime) We found each other.
But it's not a coincidence.
Inbound marketers like HubSpot want to organically attract
and engage potential customers.
Target audiences as information seekers
want useful and relevant content
(bubble pops) to answer
commonly asked questions.
It's our responsibility (beeping)
as the publishers
to do our keyword research
so you can find us (digital chiming)
on search engine result pages
and lead you to our products and services.
So if you intend to leverage a content strategy
as part of your own business goals,
you need to have a plan in place so your target audience
can find you. (bell rings)
I'm Tory, a marketing manager here at HubSpot,
and in this video I'm gonna show you
how to conduct keyword research,
why it's important,
and what you need to do to rank high on the results pages.
We also have a free SEO Starter Pack
in the description below
that'll help you execute your keyword research
and give you everything you need
to increase your website traffic within 30 days.
Did you know that 68% of online experiences
begin with a search and that organic search
generates 53% of all website visitors?
That means that identifying and incorporating keywords
into your content strategy can prove to be more important
and useful than any form- - Wow.
- of advertising.
Keywords are the foundation of SEO.
Pick the best ones,
the higher you'll rank and search engine results
and the more traffic you'll attract to your website.
Pick the wrong ones
and you'll risk wasting a lot of your time
and a lot of your resources. (cash register chimes)
The good news here is there are several easy steps
that you can follow to discover the right keywords
for your business, starting with keyword research.
Terms you'll need to know
before beginning your keyword research are seed keywords,
head-terms, and long-tail keywords.
Seed keywords are the core words and phrases
your customers might use to search
for what you have to offer.
Like seeds, these words will grow into a much longer list.
Head-term keywords are shorter and more generic keywords
that have a high volume (keyboard clicks)
of monthly searches,
and long-tail keywords are longer and more specific phrases
that visitors are more likely to use
when they're closer to a point of purchase.
A good keyword strategy should start
by putting yourself in the shoes of your target audience
to determine your seed keywords.
You'll then take these seed keywords
and combine with a few more high search volume head-terms,
as well as some specific long-tail keywords
in order to create and optimize content
targeting these queries.
For example, let's say your business
is personalized management coaching for first time managers,
and one of the ways you make money
is through online training courses.
Your seed keywords might be "first time manager",
"new manager training", "new manager help",
"online management course", "management coaching",
"management mentoring", "coaching for new managers",
"professional management training for new managers",
et cetera.
Using a free keyword research tool
like Ahrefs Keyword Generator, you can come up
with additional keyword ideas
simply by typing suggestions into the search box.
Just enter your topic, choose your target country
and click find keywords.
You'll then see an entire list
of relevant keyword suggestions
on top of the ones you came up with,
as well as a list of the 50 most popular questions
people are searching for.
Keep in mind that seed keywords by themselves
are just the broad ideas related to your website's content.
You need to understand which ones
should be best targeted with informational blog articles
and which should be product or category pages.
So, how do you choose keywords
that are actually worth targeting?
You'll wanna factor in the following variables.
Are these keywords informational,
navigational, commercial, or transactional?
Informational keywords are used
when someone wants to learn something
related to your business or niche.
These types of users do not have buying intent,
but you may have an opportunity
to slip some things into your content
to point back to offerings in case they need them.
For example, what is the difference
between managers and leaders?
Are they navigational?
When someone types a brand or company name
into a search engine, this is when users
already know what they want from your site
and are trying to find a specific product or page.
For example, "management mentor leadership articles".
Are they commercial?
These are key words that reveal a searcher's interest
around specific products or services.
These searches are done by users looking to buy
or to educate themselves in order to buy.
For example, "free leadership resources".
Or are they transactional keywords?
This is when users are ready to buy.
These keywords should reflect that
and can be targeted with highly optimized purchase pages
or pages where users can take immediate action on a site.
For example, "buy books for first time managers".
Analyzing keywords by intent is undoubtedly
the most important concept when it comes to keyword research
as it helps you craft
the right content (keyboard clicks)
to satisfy the goal behind a searcher's query
and deliver the most relevant results.
If you can't match intent,
then you probably won't rank for your target keywords.
To identify search intent, all you have to do
is start with a Google search using one of the seed keywords
you want to rank for to see which keywords
are sending traffic to your competitors,
then analyze the top ranking results.
You'll see here that none of the top ranking websites
for this seed keyword resemble online training courses
where you're trying to take your potential customers.
We're close with advice, tips, and how-to guides,
but now let's search for something slightly more specific.
Here, we're getting more relevant results.
Notice now that the dominant pages for the query,
"first time management training", are online courses.
However, and this is interesting to note,
you'll also see in the second spot a landing page
for a downloadable Leadership Guide for First-Time Managers,
and in the third spot, a blog post on How to Create
First-Time Manager Training for your Business.
This tells us that it may be worth creating both pages
on your website to potentially get two different spots
in the top search results
that can lead to your online training courses,
but more on that in just a bit.
Now that you've found a competitor website
that ranks number one for your keywords,
the best way to check which pages bring it the most traffic
and what keywords these pages are targeting
are by plugging them into free
or paid competitive analysis tools.
At first glance, you'll see a range of metrics
for the URL you entered, such as organic search traffic
and backlink profiles, as well as an overview
of the paid search presence of your site.
So how much of this organic search traffic
is based on keywords?
Down here in the organic search tab,
we see the number of organic keywords that Ahrefs has found
for this page within the top 100 organic search results.
This total number of keywords can be further broken down
into three different categories
so you can see where these keywords rank.
If you look here, this page is in the top three spot
for different keywords.
We can now determine what those keywords are
by going down to organic positions.
Here, you'll see the top five keywords
that are sending traffic to this page
and their positions in organic search results.
And if you want more,
let's venture over to organic keywords in the sidebar.
Here, you can see a full list of the top five positions
that are all bringing traffic to this page.
Pick another keyword and do a Google search for it
to get a new list of results,
and once again, a list of multiple pages we can analyze.
This is a straightforward and strategic way
to discover other keywords
that are relevant to search intent
and how much traffic these pages are receiving.
The data doesn't lie, so instead of guessing at keywords,
or worse, not using them at all, you can quickly and easily
find the actual keywords your target audience is using
that are ranking high in the search,
along with any other ones you can target.
With these insights, you may wanna mix in
variations of these keywords in a single blog post,
a landing page, or separate pages
that explain different aspects of your products or services.
Whatever it is, that's part of your SEO content strategy.
However, having multiple pages about the same thing
can lead to unexpected or undesirable rankings.
When these pages compete against each other
to hurt your site's overall organic performance,
you've got a keyword cannibalization problem on your hands.
Given that pages tend to rank for many keywords,
as we've just seen,
you only have a real cannibalization issue
when multiple pages target the same keywords
and the search intent is the same.
A quick way to detect keyword cannibalization
is with a simple search of your most relevant keywords.
If you see multiple pages from your site
listed close to one another in search for the same keyword,
you have a cannibalization problem.
Most competitive analysis tools
also provide an easy and automated way
to find and fix instances of keyword cannibalization
on your site, saving you huge amounts of time.
If you're absolutely sure
that you have a cannibalization issue, though,
you can often improve organic performance
just by consolidating the pages.
That may mean redirecting an older page
to something more relevant that you already have,
or combining multiple pages into something new.
Remember, it's always best practice to swap out
any internal links after implementing redirects.
Because the content you write on your website
is directly linked to the keywords
you want your website to rank for,
having access to specialized keyword research tools
will only make your SEO content strategy stronger.
Further, you'll be able to take away key insights
from competitive analysis tools
and make them a part of your pages in the future
to drive more traffic, shares, and conversions.
Is our keyword research working?
I'm curious to know how you found us.
We'd very much appreciate it
if you'd let us know down in the comments.
While you're down there,
don't forget to download our free SEO Starter tools
and subscribe for more marketing insights.
Until next time, bye-bye.
(upbeat music)
- I can't find this client info.
- Have you heard of HubSpot?
HubSpot is a CRM platform,
so it shares its data across every application.
Every team can stay aligned.
No out sync spreadsheets or dueling databases.
- [Narrator] HubSpot. Grow better.
(upbeat music fades)