How Smart Keyword Research Helps You Create Targeted Content

We are advocates of both content marketing and SEO. Content, however, can only work its magic in conjunction with smart SEO.

Content often misses its mark due to a number of reasons, including poor keyword choices, not paying attention to SEO or creating low-quality content that’s not useful for your audience.

If you are confused about how to create content that speaks to its intended audience, this post will give you some food for thought as well as actionable advice.

Conduct detailed market research

Since most business ideas germinate with a certain kind of customer base in mind, it’s not wrong to think that we do indeed know our market. And we might, too – at least to some extent – or we wouldn’t be in business in the first place!

However, relevant content creation requires you to go far beyond this basic understanding of a market. It calls for and is enriched by insights into and details about your target audience, which is only made possible by research-backed data.

In the world of keyword research, often what we think the case might be, isn’t really so.

For content creation, it’s not enough to know that your product is targeted at 30- to 50-year-old women. You need to dig out details about this demographic to produce content that appeals to them so much they cannot resist reading it.

You have to understand their needs, desires, ambitions, regrets, pet peeves, even fantasies! The more you learn about the market, the greater your insight into it, which will ultimately inform the keywords you choose to rank for and the content you create.

Don’t assume you know the right keywords

Knowing your business niche and target audience inside out will help you come up with a number of topic ideas. In fact, you may have noticed that when we are knowledgeable and passionate about something, we cannot stop talking about it!

For someone who wants to launch a yoga-related product, for instance, certain topics come to mind immediately:

• Weight loss
• Fat loss
• Flat abs
• Relaxation
• Meditation
• Managing stress
• Managing anxiety
• Healthy body
• Glowing skin
• Fit core
• Stretching exercises
• Flexibility
• Strength and stamina

However, finding topics to create content around and choosing keywords are two different things.

Regardless of how knowledgeable you are about your niche, never second guess the kind of keywords your target audience would enter in search to find the type of content you plan to create to cater to them. Making assumption would be a big mistake.

Find a reliable keyword research and Analytics tool

Filter your keywords through a tool to see if they are widely searched. They might be, but you would like to make sure just in case. A useful keyword tool should also tell you how many websites are ranked for your desired keywords.

For example, if you want to rank for ‘yoga weight loss’, you would want to first look at the raw data regarding the number of web pages a search of those keywords turns up. If that number goes into millions, you might not want to rank for those keywords at all. Reason being it would be very difficult for you to rise to the top given the intense page competition there. As a new entrant into a very competitive market space, you’d be better off focusing on keywords that have relatively low page competition and which return a moderately high number of search queries.

You will also gain data about how your competition is faring and which keywords are bringing them the most traffic.

Finding the right keywords can be tricky, but a reliable tool can make it a lot easier. Keyword Planner, Soovle, and Ubersuggest are some free keyword generation tools, but for detailed analyses, you might want to consider a paid program such as WordTracker.

Alternate keywords may give you even more topic ideas

Once you have zeroed in on the keywords, topic ideas should start flowing. Don’t stop just at the keywords, though. Information about alternate keywords can also be gleaned from keyword tools. Never get so caught up in the main keywords that you lose sight of other lesser-ranked but still highly searched keywords. Check out the suggestions provided by the tool you use. In most cases you will find even more ideas for content creation there.

Alternate keywords would be the ones that you did not think about, or may not particularly want to rank for, but which are still relevant to your business or can be used in a way that brings relevant traffic to your website.

As long as you create original content and link to authoritative sites, your website will show up in Google search.

Worth the effort

I have spent hours and hours finding and refining lists of keywords, both for this website as well as for those of our clients. It’s a lengthy process, but not something you need to do every month. If done right, it sets you on the right path for a long time to come. It is also crucial for the success of your content marketing efforts. When you are clear about the keywords, content creation becomes a lot more focused and rewarding activity.

Have you struggled with finding keywords? How has that influenced the content you create? If you have any suggestions or experience that you’d like to share, please do so in the comments below!