Keyword research is one of the most important SEO activities, and it has a big impact on your long-term success. It is believed to be the blueprint of any successful SEO campaign.
Few important mistakes while keyword research fails to achieve the expected goals. The website isn’t showing up in the search results, which means they aren’t increasing traffic or conversion rate either.
Do you know most of the keywords have only 10 monthly searches or fewer? This means that competition is tough and you need to have a thorough keyword research boost your performance. Well, the old tried and true strategies don’t work anymore, so you need to come up with fresh strategies to avoid holding back your digital marketing campaigns and costing you time and money.
Here are some common keyword research mistakes that even professionals make:
Mistake 1: Irrelevant keyword search
Keyword research looks like a pretty easy job. Most professionals fire up their keyword research tool, and find the keywords with the highest search volumes that relate to the industry. If you want to see real results, that’s not the way to do it. Keyword research is about being realistic, choosing keywords relevant to your site, and making it easy for people to find you.
If you want more targeted keywords, consider the site’s age, current authority, and any future optimization that will take place.
Not as many people are searching for less competitive keywords, but you can rank for these terms much more quickly and get more traffic than you can for highly competitive terms.
What we suggest: A balanced approach for targeting highly competitive and less competitive keywords in all your contents. This will give you the benefits of both worlds.
Ignoring long-tail keywords and building SEO strategies on unrealistic keywords is one of the biggest mistakes you can make hampering your search results rankings.
Mistake 2: Ignoring Long-Tailed Keywords
Let’s say, if you run a small online candy store, you probably won’t show up in the top 10 search results for general keywords like candies or chocolates. These keywords are way too competitive, so most likely popular worldwide brands such as Amazon, Cadbury, Nestle will rank higher in the search results.
What’s the solution? Using long-tailed keywords can help you reflect in top 10. These will also draw in a specific audience to your website. Avoid using longer keywords with low search volume, choose keywords with 3-5 words.
The best way to do this is to focus on what makes your offer different. Think about the features of each of your products, and choose some good long-tail keywords. For example, if you sell the customized flavored candies, try searching the volumes for the best customized candies in Chicago.’
Targeting one-word keywords can be unrealistic, but can also be unprofitable. Someone searching for ‘Best Hotels near the international report in Chicago’ is actually in the process of booking, rather than searching for ‘hotels’.
Mistake 3: Broad matching research instead of exact matching
Keyword research is important. But, people often look at broad search volumes rather than exact match figures when using the various keyword research tools. This is the most common mistake professionals commit while researching keywords. If you target broad match keywords, it will hurt traffic and ROI projections.
Let’s take an example:
The issue is that when you target a keyword like shoes that has a broad match search volume of 1,00,000, but an exact match search volume may be a half of it.
If you’re basing your research on inaccurate data, you might think you’re targeting a reasonably well-trafficked keyword, when you could be looking at a very low search volume keyword indeed.
The general consensus is that most free keyword research tools, like Google’s Keyword Tool, aren’t 100% accurate in search volumes. However, using exact match gives you the most accurate data available when assessing the importance of the targeting keyword.
Mistake 4: Targeting Plural form of keywords
Most people search for the singular version of a keyword, not the plural version.
On eCommerce sites, while optimizing category pages as they sell more than one product, they focus on plural keywords, for example, “shirts” which actually gets less searches than “shirt.”
Focusing on the singular targeted keyword can highlight your website in the SERPs. It could mean your site ranks lower than marginally better targeted pages affecting your sales.
Mistake 5: Out of context keywords
This is more reason to humanize keyword research, since most keyword tools don’t understand words the way people do.
For example, a searcher looking for ‘immigration’ could be looking for different immigration programs in a country, or immigration service provider or immigration lawyer or immigration application procedure, or for immigration consultants. If you’re not sure what keywords to target, don’t worry. Make sure you target highly-relevant keywords that are laser-focused on what your business offers.
Here’s a layman’s way to search for the keywords in Google and see what kinds of results come up. You’ll probably tell if the keyword is relevant to what you’re trying to sell.
Mistake 6: Not focusing on conversions
Most clients want to rank using high trafficked keywords when they’d get more business by targeting a different keyword or set of keywords. A keyword that brings in traffic but doesn’t convert is wasted. This makes keyword research a vital part of conversion and language analysis.
For example, if a keyword has ‘buy’ in the beginning, it might be a good indicator that its traffic will convert. The real challenge is that keyword conversion audit is more complicated, since each situation and market is different
Track your goals in Google Analytics, and figure out your highest converting keywords, see patterns, and then apply that knowledge to other areas of keyword research.
Mistake 7: Missing the Keyword review
If a marketplace is shifting over time, you’d expect customer search behavior to develop and evolve, too – so it’s important to check keywords regularly. But rarely are target keywords audited and reviewed as part of an ongoing SEO process.
Annual reviews of keywords are fine for most markets, because shorter reviews don’t provide enough data to analyze the effectiveness of the old keywords. Then we risk chaotic targeting with new keywords. Although, in some competitive and fast-moving markets, a more regular keyword review may be required.
What’s the purpose of a keyword review?
- Removing poor performing keywords
- Finding out better performing keywords
- Looking for opportunities and areas for improvement
- Building your future SEO strategy
Need an effective keyword research strategy to minimize these silly mistakes?
We recommend sorting your keywords into four categories to build an effective keyword search strategy as follows:
Category 1 –
These keywords are bringing in traffic, but they aren’t converting that well. Certainly, they’re likely to take up the growth, but are stagnant at the moment. You should think about how you can improve performance on these kinds of keywords.
Category 2 –
These are high-performing keywords and have a wide array for growth. You need to find ways to take advantage of this growth. A smarter strategy would be to focus on getting results in these areas, to get the best ROI quickly.
Category 3 –
These are the poor-performing keywords that aren’t likely to grow. Change these keywords to something else and focus on other areas instead.
Category 4 –
These are the high-performing keywords that show little room for growth. Work on ways to improve performance, with these keywords, and then apply that knowledge to other areas.
These are just the few mistakes from the tip of the iceberg. Implementing the new keyword strategy will help you get through your silly mistakes and improve your website’s traffic and sales. It’s true that the online world is becoming more competitive, so it’s important to make the most of every penny you invest. For this, focusing on your keyword research has proven effective for many. Sure, there are keyword-filtering programs, but you can’t beat the experience and SEO knowledge.
That’s exactly where CTS, the digital marketing and SEO agency, comes into the picture. At CTS, we offer holistic, authentic, relevant & effective keywords research, high-quality content building, website building and SEO, link building, digital & social media marketing services & solutions to clients across the world. When you connect with our CTS team, we not only focus on getting more traffic, but also work substantially on boosting your sales.
Know more about SEO, Keyword Research, Website Analysis, and strategies to improve your website performance and ranking by contacting our CTS team today.
