Keyword research and competitive analysis are two things you should tackle first when building a website or improving your web presence. After working with hundreds of businesses over the years, both in the B2B and B2C space, we’ve learned that search engine optimization (SEO), specifically keyword research, is the one thing business owners are most likely to screw up (or get screwed on, if they hire the wrong agency). If your keyword game isn’t on point, you’re missing out — on site traffic, on leads, and on money.
This blog post will walk you through the keyword research process, including an overview of the tools you’ll need, how to find keywords for SEO, how to prioritize the keywords and how to implement them into an effective blogging strategy. And, in case you’re a total newbie to this, there are screenshots that will help break down the process.
These tactics will work well, whether you’re looking to overhaul your SEO keyword strategy or are just looking for some choice keywords to weave into a blog post you’re working on. In fact, the method outlined in this post is the same one we’ve used for our site, and TCF currently ranks #1 for a variety of highly competitive, very lucrative keywords. If you follow the guide, there’s no reason why you can’t achieve the same results for your site.
First, let’s review the tools that you’ll use while finding keywords — and what they do: