5 common SEO Keyword Research Mistakes to Stay Away
A healthy SEO strategy means prioritizing and focusing on ideal keywords that will help you to rank your website higher and faster on the SERP. But choosing the right keywords is a bit of task and needs proper research and some key factors to consider. To set up a proper keyword research strategy to strengthen your website SEO, here are some of the common mistakes you should stay away.
Ignoring Search Intent
Search intent can be roughly divided into three kinds including informational intent where people are looking for some information only; navigational intent when users are searching for a specific website and transactional intent when users are more likely in the buyer’s state. As a content creator, it is important for you to have a clear idea of what kind of search intent you want to target while choosing the keywords. As search engines are trying to focus more on relevant content day by day, fulfilling the user intent is crucial for your overall SEO strategy.
Not Researching Properly
Keyword researching can be a time-consuming task and can take a lot of effort to conduct properly. But skipping this process or not conducting proper research means you are probably creating content without having any idea what your target audience might be searching for. Research what your audience might be searching for, or what exact keywords are they typing to look for a solution and make a list out of it. Using those keywords in relevant content will ensure that you are delivering exactly what users might be looking for.
Targeting Unrealistic Keywords
While choosing the keywords for your website make sure you are considering the relevant niche, proper search volume and the competition regarding those keywords. Just focusing on the keywords that have high search volume might not be an ideal strategy if your website is quite new. Chances are those keywords are highly competitive and will be much harder to rank. Rather it is recommended to focus on low volume long-tail keywords which are much easier to rank and has a higher possibility to convert.
Focusing On One Keyword Per Post
After you chose the primary keyword for your content, keep in mind to include the related terms associated with the key phrase as well. Let’s assume you are targeting for the keyword ‘SEO strategy’ in your post, then make sure it is also included with similar searched phrases like ‘SEO strategy 2020’ or ‘SEO content strategy’ to fulfil the user intent more precisely.
Focusing On Irrelevant Keywords
Partly related to fulfilling user intent, this factor also requires proper consideration. If you use irrelevant keywords that users are not using to search a query, chances are even if you wrote a valuable relevant content, users simply won’t visit your site as the keywords are different than the ones they are searching. Another mistake you want to look out for is avoiding keywords that are too long tail.
Conducting proper keyword research requires an ample amount of time and effort but following certain strategies while avoiding these mistakes can make your SEO game even stronger and help you to rank your site in the first page sooner.