How To Do Keyword Research for Beginners: A Quick Guide To Reaching The Right Audience

By: Justin Carlo Estor, Senior Digital Associate

Even if you just started out doing digital marketing, one of the most undeniable skills for reaching the right audience is keyword research.

Keyword research is all about finding the terms people use in search engines to help in crafting the content strategy. To simplify it even further, the more you know about what people search for, the easier it is for you to create content based on their behavior.

As an example, if you see a good number of people searching for “gift ideas”, it would be in your best interest to create content such as “Best Gift Ideas You Can Give This 2020 (and beyond),” for your gift-giving or retail website.

For search engine optimization, keyword research is often seen as a grueling process. There have been instances wherein digital marketers would spend hours looking at a massive pool of keywords and trying to pick and choose the best ones – that doesn’t always have to be the case.

Here are ways you can shorten the process and conduct easy keyword research to reach the right audience:

1. Look at relevant topics

What do you think would be related topics for your website? Let’s say we’re working on a website focused on flower deliveries in Metro Manila. Try to come up with at least four topics that you see are essential for the business. In this case:

• Flower bouquets (14.8k)
• Flower types (3.6k)
• Gift ideas (6.6k)
• Personalized gifts (1k)

Be as general as possible with these keywords and take note of their search volumes. This is a good indicator of how valuable these topics are to your target audience. Good practice would be to get general keywords with search volumes no less than 1,000.

2. Create keyword buckets

Once you’ve established your topics, you treat them as “parent topics” for your intended keywords. Afterward, create a keyword bucket for each topic. Your keyword bucket should include keywords that fall under the same circle as your topics.

For example, under “gift ideas” here are some quality keywords that are relevant to your market:

• Gift ideas for women
• Gift ideas for girlfriend
• Anniversary gift ideas
• Birthday gift ideas
• Graduation gift ideas

The purpose of this is to narrow down your keyword research. Instead of looking through a “pool” of keywords, now, you have a bucket full of keywords that are focused on the interests of your target audience.

3. Uncover questions & related keywords

Most digital marketers in the Philippines find this to be the most creative step in choosing keywords. A great way to gain a deeper understanding of how people search is by relying on Google’s search terms.

You search using your target keyword and then look at the list of keywords provided by Google. In this case, we used “gift ideas” for women:

You can choose to include all of these keywords or select what you think is valuable for your website after you factor in search volume and intent.

4. Find out who’s ranking

Once you’re settled with your keyword buckets, the next step is to find out who’s ranking. You can do a simple search on Google and keep track of the websites that are ranking on the first page, and the content they have written. The best practice is to “skyscrape” their content – create content with a similar theme but make it 10x better.

If they have 500 words, you push for 800. If they have 10 recommendations, you give 20 (if you can). Lastly, reach out to websites that share or are linked to similar content in hopes of having them share yours as well. Why? Because let’s face it, content marketing is surprisingly competitive. It’s no longer about being original, but more about being able to provide more valuable content.

5. Be the answer to the right questions

Now that you have a solid list of keywords at your disposal, the last logical step is to write, write, write! Focus on writing content that answers the questions and interests of your target audience based on your buckets. For the keyword we used, “gift ideas for women”, you can write article titles such as:

• 8 Gift Ideas That Will Always Make Women Happy
• The Best Gift Ideas for Women In 2020 (And Beyond)

Just remember – it’s good to be interesting, but it’s always better to be clear and direct with your titles. You want users to choose your articles amongst hundreds that appear on Google.

In conclusion, keyword research doesn’t have to be guessing if you’ve chosen the right keywords from an excruciatingly long list. With this method, you can be more confident with the content you’re putting out, regardless of whether you spend an hour or more of research.

At TeamAsia, we have a team of experts that live and breathe next-level digital strategies. Amplify your reach and rise above the online noise through our strategic marketing approach that executes holistic marketing campaigns. Let’s collaborate!