Keyword Research: Building Digital Roads to Your Site

You might be wondering why customers would use different terminology than you’re accustomed to. The answer is that not every potential customer has defined the problem they’re trying to solve, and they may not yet possess the vocabulary to name and search for the solution (product or service) you provide. They may be in the earliest stages of discovery. These “stages” make up the sales journey that each customer takes.

Keyword research provides the insight you need to identify:

• The most common questions your customers are asking
• The words they’re using to describe their problems

This step in the research process reveals the goals or search intent of the customer, allowing you to create valuable content for every step of their journey.

2. Keyword Research Identifies Search Intent

Search intent is defined as the purpose of a customer's search; what questions they’re asking and why. Let’s consider the journey of a person trying to identify if a dark patch on their arm is the beginning of skin cancer or just a harmless mole they hadn’t noticed before.

What would their journey look like from a keyword perspective?

In this example, the user starts by submitting the question “what does skin cancer look like” to Google in an effort to discover the similarities between what they’re seeing on their own skin and what qualifies as skin cancer. They’re presented with an article that includes pictures and descriptions of various skin cancers.

They may then be interested in reading about the most common “skin cancer types” and the prognosis for each in an effort to further qualify what they’ve noticed.

If their discovery and awareness searches yielded some concerning results, they may feel the need to book an appointment at a cancer center, so they’ll use a search phrase similar or identical to “skin cancer screening near me” to find a provider near them.

Every search phrase used in this example illustrates a certain intent/goal:

A healthcare provider could use this research to focus their efforts on providing website content for the three phases illustrated above, thereby widening their acquisition net and improving their chances of securing a health screening appointment.

Search intent also reveals the expectations each user has at every stage. The page targeting the search phrase “skin cancer screening near me”, for example, should probably include information detailing the screening process and a button inviting the user to schedule their appointment.

3. Keyword Research Provides the Substance Needed for Other Strategies

We’ve shown how keyword research informs the content strategy of your site. What other areas benefit from these insights and how?

Local Visibility: The Benefits of Keyword Research for Small to Medium-Sized Businesses

A common objection we receive to the keyword research process is that organic search is too competitive to allow small- to medium-sized businesses the opportunity to rank highly on search engines. You’re not wrong.

When you optimize your site for organic search, you are competing with every business on the internet, even the largest ones with endless budgets. It is entirely possible that you never rank on a national level for your products or services. From this perspective, it’s easy to assume that any keyword effort is an investment with poor returns. But what if locally, your business and your services stood out the most in search results, more so than your competitors?

Consider how a healthcare provider might use this strategy. Say you’re the director of a local hospital looking to generate more visibility around the treatments and screenings you offer. As we learned earlier, search engines such as Google have evolved to understand the intent of a visitor. As a result, a search for “mammogram screening” may return a set of local results because Google assumes the user is looking for a local hospital that offers mammograms.

The businesses with the highest visibility are, without a doubt, featuring the keyword “mammogram” or some version of it on their sites. Without these signals, local hospitals would struggle to rank for general queries (searches) like the one used in this example.

In Summary

Keyword research is a crucial step in the overall strategy of your site. It cuts through assumptions about terminology and user behavior and delivers the data you need to position your site for maximum visibility and impact, no matter the size of your business.

Take advantage of this crucial step in the optimization process to ensure you’ve built the digital “roads” that give your business the visibility it deserves.