How To Choose Keywords For SEO

Embarking on SEO requires an investment in time and resources to have a measurable impact that returns a profit to you. And choosing the best keywords is an essential starting point. Because not choosing correctly is the difference between making money or wasting your time. And the process does not have to be arduous, but the benefits of planning in advance help set you in the right direction with momentum.

So, let's get started on this tutorial and training. 

Prefer watching a short video instead?
Click below. And scrub (mouse over) the timeline to see the video chapters. 

(And if you are in personal injury, we have a related post on personal injury SEO.)

People Also Ask

These appear near the top of the SERPs. These questions are an excellent source for keywords you should consider choosing for writing content. Below are additional questions people ask in the restaurant marketing niche (related post here on restaurant SEO).

Related Searches

Scroll to the bottom of any Google SERP, and you will likely see Related Searches. This is another excellent source for keyword ideas - Google is telling you exactly what else people are searching for. Below are the related search phrases around "tattoo removal services" (related post here on medical spa SEO)

Rich Snippets

These appear in position zero and at the top of some Google searches. Often these appear as answers to questions people ask Google. Pay attention to the answers for additional keyword and content ideas to help choose keywords. Rich Snippets are also a type of zero-click searches. 

Add the keywords you think are relevant to your spreadsheet. Don’t worry about organizing and sorting your keywords yet, we’ll get to that shortly. And relevant keywords, I mean, is it on-topic and about or closely related to your industry?

There are free and paid tools. The tools below are all free.

Google Trends (GT) - a free tool that helps uncover keyword trends and additional search terms. Its big data, and low-volume keywords may not have enough data with this tool to provide insights. But if your business is seasonal, GT will uncover annual highs and lows in search traffic that you can see going back ten or more years. (a related post here on using Google Trends to improve your marketing)

Pay attention to its “related queries” and “top” queries for your keyword ideas.

Google Search Console (GSC) - if you have set up your GSC account for your website, you can mine it for all the terms your site is showing for keywords. GSC is a goldmine of information about organic keywords. Many of the keywords your site ranks for were unintended, and you can write content around these topics to improve your SEO. Below is an example from a cooking site that shows impressions and clicks. 

However, it’s not as comprehensive as our research before this point. It is biased a bit, and it’s not a comprehensive organic SEO tool but does offer great value as a research tool. 

I wrote a post on SEO funnels that goes into more detail on this, but organize your keywords based on how close or far away the intent indicates the searcher is to converting. Marketers refer to this as a funnel. Typically, the higher up you are in the funnel, the less competitive the search phrases are. And as you move down the funnel, the keywords become more competitive as intent indicates the searcher is closer to buying now. (this is a helpful post on using SEO silos and internal linking which is very much aligned with this topic)

Or another way to think about a funnel is in terms of the customer journey:
Is the customer just beginning the search process for information? If so, they are further away from converting. Or are they well-versed in the subject and ready to buy what you offer now? 

The most commonly known marketing funnel framework for this is AIDA. AIDA stands for, Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Action. 

But in our case for SEO, we’re going to rename our keyword categories so they align with the SEO process more efficiently. 

So, in our situation, we’ll name the funnel levels as the following:

Informational search phrases are the furthest away from converting. Searches here are typically higher volume and less competitive because the people are just starting their search for information.

Here's an example using a med spa search term, "best ways to remove a tattoo." The intent of this search is that they are gathering information about how to get their tattoos removed. What are the best options for them? 

Navigational search phrases are people looking for a specific website or page. For example, "Groupon Tattoo Removal."

Commercial intent words indicate the searcher wants to learn more about brands or services. For example, "Tattoo removal service" or "Best tattoo removal laser.

And finally, Transactional intent search words are bottom-of-the-funnel and closest to converting. For example, "tattoo removal near me," or "tattoo removal near me cost."

Organizing your keywords in this manner helps you stay organized and balanced. You don’t want all your keywords at just one funnel level.

Now, Choose the right keywords

So now that you have compiled your list of keywords and organized them into an SEO funnel, you can prioritize which search terms are most important for your unique situation. Balance your selection with volume, competitiveness, and the resources you have available to produce content around those phrases. 

Ideally, you will choose keywords at each level of the funnel, so you have content that nurtures your prospects from the start of their organic search to the end. And if you're doing any kind of lead nurturing with marketing automation, you now have content around those keywords you can drip out to prospects with email depending on where they are in the customer journey. 

So to wrap this up, if you aren’t following a process for choosing your keywords, I encourage you to try it and let me know how it goes.

And if you’d rather have us implement SEO for you, I'd be happy to chat about your SEO project in detail.

All you need to do is reach out to me and schedule a 15-minute call. 

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