Mistakes to Avoid in Keyword Research

Absolutely! It's essential for SEO, SEM, and even when creating a content calendar or defining information architecture.

 

It's much more than just a list of terms that are more or less relevant to a business, with their corresponding estimated monthly search volumes. It's deeper than that because it represents the way customers know and search for your products or your business itself.

 

When our keywords for ad campaigns and the words we use to attract organic traffic in search engines are in sync, we avoid errors that could damage our visibility and effectiveness.

Core keywords, or head tail, are the basic terms of any business, usually short (phrases of 2 or 3 words) and very direct.

 
For example: if you have an online shoe store, the core keywords could be; "online shoes" or "internet shoe store".

 

What happens if our keyword research only includes this type of search?

 

It's exactly the opposite of what we just discussed. As you can imagine, long tail keywords are terms with a more complex structure (with more words) and refer to more specific concepts.

 

Following the previous example of the shoe store, it could be: "buy orange sandals with heels" or "satin shoes for weddings".

 

If we focus excessively on these keywords:

Keywords can be divided into several groups, depending on their purpose.

 

We usually talk about:

What do I mean by not adapting the content to search intention?

 

Let's go back to shoes as an example: the goal would be to position the home page with our brand's keywords, "women's shoes" towards a category, "women's stiletto shoes" in a subcategory, "the best shoes for a cocktail" in a blog post, "store email [brand]" on our contact page... and so on.

If we don't take this into account when making our traffic acquisition strategy, effectiveness will plummet because we are not offering a relevant result to user.

 

Keyword research should be a document that everyone involved in the online project knows by heart (or at least, keeps very present).

 

It's crucial that they consult and use it when writing any text.

 

Yes: it's true that later you can edit a product listing or a blog post, but once indexed by Google, it forces us to edit and then push to the search engine. It will always be less effective.

Not all projects need to have hundreds of thousands of visits a month.

 

It is highly recommended to balance those keywords that are really going to benefit the business, even if they are not the most searched each month, with others that give us visibility.

 

In any case: business dictates SEO, and that is also important to be engraved in one's mind.