Why You Need Keyword Research to Improve Organic Search Traffic

A subpar keyword research strategy can cost you your entire SEO campaign.

Where do you go when you’re searching for information?

The internet, of course.

The days of searching through yellow pages books have declined drastically throughout the years.

In fact, 70% of Americans don’t even open their books when they arrive each year.

This is why it’s crucial to have a strong SEO campaign, which focuses largely on optimizing the correct keywords for your website and content.

When you choose keywords for your business, you want to choose keywords or phrases that your target audience would be searching for in search engines. This is what leads them to you organically.

Otherwise, getting organic search traffic to your website can be challenging.

One of the best ways to increase your organic search engine traffic is through keyword research.

But why should you bother with keyword research in the first place?

Read on to find out why you need keyword research to improve your organic search traffic.

What is Keyword Research?

First things first. A keyword is a word or phrase someone types into a search engine, like Google or Bing.

Keyword research is the method of researching and finding popular words or phrases that you, as a website, want to rank for.

Sometimes it’s information your target audience is searching for, or it can be a product or service they’re looking to purchase.

Your starting point should be focusing on establishing your seed keywords. You will use these seed keywords to properly optimize your website and site content.

The definition of seed keywords: these are the words you use to start a keyword research project. They are short general terms that may have a high search volume, but the traffic will be largely untargeted. These words will be hard to rank for, and the traffic they bring in will be hard to convert.

1) Your Efforts Will Be Wasted If You Don’t Perform Proper Keyword Research to Improve Organic Search Traffic

If you don’t do the proper research to determine your keywords, there’s an excellent chance your target audience won’t find your website. Which could cost you loads of website traffic, leads, and customers.

You must know what keywords you’re targeting and be quite specific.

This is because your target audience will be searching for specific phrases, and if you’re not showing up in the search results, they’ll find another website or business that is.

This is mainly because 75% of people don’t scroll past the first page of search results. That is a staggering amount of people.

How do you do proper keyword research?

• Start with your seed keywords. These will be the backbone of your entire website.
• Think of terms or phrases that your target audience would be searching for. This will require extensive brainstorming and, you guessed it: research. Make lists of terms that are relevant to your website or business. Then look for synonyms for your main (seed) keywords.
• Research your competitors in your niche (spy if you have to!) and check out the terms that they’re using and what keywords they are ranking high for. Just keep in mind it’s not a competition; you generally don’t want to go after the same keywords that your competitors are using. Those will be challenging to rank for.
• Use a keyword research tool. There are many keyword research tools on the web. You can find both free and paid tools to help you with this. They’ll become invaluable to your organic search traffic strategy.
• Get as specific as possible. Don’t use generic, one-word keywords that you likely won’t rank for anyway. Always refine your keywords as many times as possible.
• Use long-tail keywords. The more specific, the less competitive – the greater chance for you to rank for that keyword.
  Read more: How to choose the best keywords for your website

You’re always better off avoiding keywords that are too broad, vague, or have a high amount of competitors. The larger websites will already be ranking for those generic keywords.

An example of how to get specific and use long-tail keywords:

If you’re a digital marketing agency located in Dallas, Texas – you would want to avoid generic keywords like ‘digital marketing firms”, or ‘digital marketing agency.’

Instead, get specific with your location, so your customers can find you. You could try something like ”Dallas digital marketing firms”. Since this is a long-tail keyword that you have a hope of ranking for.

Customers looking for location-specific businesses would be typing in a long-tail keyword to get the exact results they’re looking for.

Using long-tail, ultra-specific keywords will give you a much better chance of increasing your organic traffic.

2) Keyword Research Will Drive Free Traffic To Your Website

As a business owner or even a blogger, you’re constantly having to fork over cash for a whole slew of business-related expenses. Getting website traffic doesn’t have to be one of them.

When you do keyword research correctly, it’ll improve your organic search traffic for free, without paying for a thing.

Unless you choose to.

You may decide to pay for keyword research tools at some point. But that doesn’t mean you must in order to rank high in Google or other popular search engines.

Not only will this lead to free traffic, but it can also lead to better conversions and sales.

This brings us to our next benefit of keyword research for increasing free search engine traffic.

3) It Will Increase Conversions, Leads, and Sales

Yes, keyword research can make you money.

Helping people and profit is the whole point of starting a business or becoming a serious full-time blogger, right?

So this is a major benefit of using keyword research to improve organic search traffic.

When you’re conducting keyword research, you have the ability to bring customers to your website instead of your competitors. This is because even the little guys have an equal opportunity with SEO.

Small businesses used to have little chance of visibility over their larger competitors. But all of that has changed as more businesses have turned to inbound marketing and content marketing as well.

And once a business is using these two tactics, SEO is the next logical step.

If your website and content are optimized for SEO, you have the ability to attract new leads and customers every day.

Whether you are a large corporation, a small business owner, or a blogger.

Search Engine People suggests putting your location in your keywords to better attract your ideal customers.

4) You’ll Receive Targeted Traffic

What’s the point of having plenty of page views on your website if most of them aren’t your target customer?

Don’t aim to target everyone.

It’s vital for your traffic to be targeted, and keyword research will do that for you.

An easy way to get more targeted traffic is to create excellent content on your website.

This will easily attract the right people. Of course, placing specific keywords you’ve found through keyword research is key for SEO content creation.

Remember, it’s all about quality over quantity! Targeted customers and readers are more likely to engage with your website in the following ways:

• Quality commenting that inspires valuable conversations
• Social media shares
• Email subscriptions
• Monthly package and product purchases
• Blog mentions
• Backlinking

5) It Allows You To Understand Your Target Audience Better

You’ve heard it a million times – so you already know why it’s essential to know your audience.

The beauty of keyword research is it allows you to get inside your target audience’s head.

Keyword research shouldn’t stop at finding the best keywords for your website. You should analyze your organic search traffic to see what you’re doing right and what you need to improve on to reel in your ideal customer or reader.

When you’re able to see what terms and phrases they’re searching for, this will allow you to see what they want on a deeper level. It’s an inside look into their biggest struggles and desires.

And once you’ve done your research and analyzed it, you have to ability to cater your content to entice your ideal audience back to your website – time and time again.

6) The Internet Will Always Be Here

With over 4.57 billion internet users in 2020 worldwide using the internet and growing, it’s safe to say the internet isn’t going anywhere.

It’s more imperative than ever to stay on top of your SEO efforts. And with keywords being the foundation and the most important part of SEO – you have to be proactive and pay attention to the latest trends.

Final Thoughts

Your keyword research efforts will make or break your website. Traffic is everything; if you’re not getting any, it’s time to focus on improving your organic search traffic.

So if your business isn’t taking advantage of SEO, you’re not going to see much organic search traffic, if any.

And with keywords being the foundation of SEO, it’s more important than ever to have a strong keyword research strategy.

To recap the major benefits of keyword research and why it improves your organic search traffic:

• You will waste time and energy if you don’t employ a proper keyword research strategy right away.
• It gives you free traffic to your website.
• It’ll increase leads, sales, and conversions.
• You’ll receive targeted traffic. The kind of traffic that leads to those leads, sales, and conversions.
• Keyword research will save you money.

Why do you think that keyword research improves organic traffic? Let us know in the comments!

Now it’s time to get to work, find the right keywords, and start ranking!