Why keyword research is important in SEO
For those of you who have faced search engine optimisation, you may have wondered why keyword research is important in SEO - we thought we’d cover that for you.
As with all journeys to a destination. The sooner that a mistake is made, the further from your destination you can end up; with all travel time equal.
The way we see search engine optimisation (SEO) is the following:
SEO = Keyword research & on-page optimisations & off-page optimisations
≈ Keyword research & keyword placement & technical optimisations & high quality backlinks
The tough part of this equation is that you can work for years on digital content creation across technical optimisations and link building and have your keyword positioning down to a tee; but if your keyword research isn’t right from the beginning, you very possibly may not see one lead through a search engine.
I can imagine you may see a few through the link building process however, but that’s for another time.
So, what are keywords for SEO?
So, what are keywords for SEO? It’s a fair question. When we look to research keywords for a website, we begin by thinking of the audiences we want to reach and what their search intent may look like.
For businesses, we ideally want to reach both commercial audiences and wider audiences looking for information on our subject matter. The commercial audiences we want to reach in order to keep the lights on today, but make no mistake, it is reaching those informational audiences and donating your efforts to teaching them which may contribute to the lights being on in years to come.
So for example a website design company wanting to reach trade audiences should seek to target keywords such as ‘website design services’ on core services pages, and prepositions or questions such as ‘how to design a website?’ in their blog post pages.
Beyond search intent, how do I choose keywords for SEO?
How do I choose keywords for SEO? Beyond search intent it’s best to focus on competitiveness of the keyword (keyword difficulty) and the search volume
I prefer to go competitiveness, first, and filter by search volume, second, otherwise I risk getting carried away and being attached to nicer sounding keywords rather than keywords that are lower hanging fruits for a new entrant to SEO.
What is keyword difficulty?
When we (the pomegranate founders) first started out learning SEO, we did think to ourselves: What is keyword difficulty? And why is it important?
Keyword difficulty is an amalgamation of number of competitors who are targeting that particular keyword, how precise their targeting is through keyword placement and beyond that, how comprehensive and relevant are their referring domains and backlinks.
The shorter tailed keywords tend to have highest keyword difficulty because most brands target them even if indirectly through the use of longer tailed keywords.
For example - ‘web design services’, ‘web design agency’, ‘web design consultant’ and ‘web design consultancy’ all target the keyword ‘web design’ indirectly. So you could have all of those websites also playing a part in the ranking competition for the keyword ‘web design’.
However if you were to target ‘Web design services in London’, that longer tailed keyword will have a much lower search volume, sure, but it should also have a much lower level of competition.
Which keywords are most popular?
Unfortunately the answer to: Which keywords are most popular? Are the ones that are most difficult to rank for, for a few reasons.
The reasons that immediately come to mind are that 1) they are easier to think of without the use of much further thought or research, 2) without basic understanding of search engines and SEO it is unlikely that someone will give much thought to searcher intent and 3) shorter phrases look prettier.
How to do a keyword search within a website
To check if keywords are in ideal places it can help to do a keyword search within a website - the list of places they should be in is finite and small.
Title, URL (or URL slug), headings and succeeding body of text for the top priority keyword for the page.
Headings and succeeding bodies of text for the lower priority keywords.
To find them in the title and URL you’ll have to take a manual look. In headings and bodies of text a ctrl+F search should suffice. If it’s difficult to see whether something is actually a header press F12 and get looking for h1 to h6 header tags within the HTML code.
And finally, how do I check my keyword ranking?
This one, embarrassingly, took me a while to work out - how do I check my keyword ranking?
We settled on spreadsheets and Google search console.
Keep track of all of your keywords used in spreadsheets and be sure not to use them on other pages in key positions such as titles, URL slugs and headings.
When you have finally indexed your page in Google search console, you should be able to see your performance and average keyword ranking per keyword on the ‘performance’ page.
There are also apps such as semrush which track keyword rankings, however we appreciate that not all SEO students can afford these expensive agency tools.
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FAQs:
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Using keywords in research helps you align content with what people are actively searching for. It improves your visibility and guides your audience to your business, driving organic growth.
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Yes, keyword research remains vital for understanding search behavior, finding high-potential keywords, and adapting to changes, which together foster consistent growth.
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Keyword research identifies valuable search terms and supports a well-optimized content strategy by connecting initial keywords to relevant related terms, maximizing visibility.
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Researching trends helps you adjust content to evolving interests and remain competitive. Understanding trends ensures your strategy is adaptable and sustainable.
