Use keyword research to develop content for your audience

So you’ve decided to plunge head first into building your own website and you’ve gone live. After such a huge relief to get everything perfect, you’re twiddling your thumbs. You thought that the launch would bring in all these new customers. But things are still the same. There’s no influx of emails in your inbox and your phone isn’t ringing non-stop.

Websites don’t automatically generate traffic

Getting traffic to your site won’t happen automatically, but it will happen if you put the work in. This involves a mix of technical SEO, social media marketing, and using content marketing to bring traffic and customers to your site.

The key to content marketing is to develop a list of questions your potential customers have about your business. Undertake keyword research, write content then optimise it for search engines.

How to come up with content marketing ideas

To create content that’s relevant to your audience you need to think like them. The trick to getting found, not only by a search engine, but by a potential customer is to put yourself in your customer’s shoes, or fingertips.

If you were to try and find your services online, how would you search?

Click To Tweet Say you’re a furniture removal business, how would you define your search query? Would you use one or two words, write a sentence or ask Siri?

These search terms are what you need to think about when creating new content. If you haven’t already optimised your site for keywords then this relates to you too.

Here’s some examples of what I’d type in:
Removalist, removals, furniture movers, Furniture removals Melbourne, removalist Melbourne, reputable removalist, how to find a removalist, cheap removals, professional packers and removals, interstate removals company, affordable removals, removalists that don’t break items, safe removals, local removalists.

But everyone is different and you need to use different combinations of phrases.
Remember also that people start big and then refine their search. They may start with a search for just removalists, then they search again to narrow the choices and improve the relevancy of the returned results.

So that’s your potential customer who knows they need your services.

Now you need to change your thinking and pretend you’re looking for a DIY solution

This is for the person who isn’t your customer yet and doesn’t yet know that they need your services. This is how you get on their radar. This person, for whatever reason, does not want to pay someone to do a job, they want to do it themselves.
If they stuff things up, it gets too hard, or they don’t get around to the task, they’ll remember you. If you do the right thing then they will become a customer. With this in mind you need to put yourself in their shoes.

Here’s what I’d type in:

How to pack boxes? Where to buy removal boxes? When should I start packing to move? Does my house insurance cover moving? Where can I store household furniture while I’m living overseas? When do I need to redirect? How to work out the cubic metres of my furniture, how many boxes does a typical household need for moving?

Once you’ve thought about the types of queries your potential customers are typing in, then it’s time to do a bit of keyword research. But first, here’s a tip to keep in mind.

Your services pages typically focus on short keyword phrases or short-tail keywords. Then blog content targets longer keyword phrases, not just a singular keyword such as ‘removalist’. It’s the longer phrases, known as long-tail keywords which target a more defined audience.

This audience is searching for something more specific. An answer to a problem they have. These long-tail keywords are easier to rank for than short-tail ones.

Targeting the right keywords

Here’s the essential step, working out what chance you have of ranking for a keyword from the two lists of keyword phrases you brainstormed in the process above.

Now there’s lots of tools out there that analyse the difficulty of a keyword, how competitive it is, what the commercial value is, number of people searching for a term per month, and give suggestions for other similar keywords. SEMRush and Moz are just two of the more well known. Another key factor in choosing your keywords and ranking is domain authority.

Domain authority

Domain authority is a measure developed by Moz which gives you an insight into your chance of ranking on page 1 for a particular phrase.

While searching for similar keyword phrases on Google, it’s important to assess the domain authority of the sites that are ranking on the first page. These are the sites that you are going to be up against.
Sites with higher domain authority typically rank higher. Other factors such as ads, the local map pack and rich data snippets affect whether you’ll make the first page and also somewhat due to how much space there is available to show your result.
A website typically starts off with a domain authority of 1 with 100 being the highest. It’s based on a logarithmic scale from 1 to 100. This means it’s far easier to move from a domain authority of 1 to 20, than move from 30-50.
Regardless, it gives you an indication of what your chances are.

If your domain authority is 15 and all the sites that returned on page one had a domain authority of 80 then at this stage, using that keyword is most likely to be a waste of time.

So with all that information your armed with, it’s time to develop a content marketing strategy and calendar.

Develop a content marketing calendar

A part of ranking on search engines is to produce regular and relevant content that’s also SEO-friendly.

Produce regular and relevant content that's also SEO-friendly #ContentMarketing #SEO #Blogging Click To Tweet

You need to develop a content plan to build your domain authority and get customers and links to your site.

Content planning should focus on who your customers are, at what stage of the buying process they’re in and develop content that fits their needs. With this is mind you need to use the keyword phrases you’ve determined that are relevant and that you have a hope of ranking for.
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