Whether you’re a business owner leading their own marketing efforts or a mid-level marketer, understanding keyword research is vital to your digital marketing success. Keyword research is the foundation of effective search engine optimization (SEO). In other words, it helps you understand how your potential customers find you, so you can strategically create more of those opportunities, effectively growing your audience and sales. Which is, of course, the whole point.
But keyword research is much more than just plugging buzz words into your content as often as possible. To get it right, you have to first understand your audience. What are they looking for, or what is their “search intent”? Where can you (and should you) create more content around these topics? And how can you ensure this content performs well in both traditional search engines and AI tools like Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT?
In this blog, we cover what keyword research actually is and how you can use it to craft attractive, high-performing content that converts window shoppers into customers.
What Is Keyword Research?
In a nutshell, keyword research is the process of identifying the terms and phrases your audience most often uses to find the products or services you sell, so you can create strategic content that leads to more sales. It provides valuable insights such as:
- What people are searching for
- Why they’re searching
- What information they expect to find
- Where they are in the buying journey
For example, if you own a wellness spa, you may discover your audience often searches for “massage therapy near me.” Sure, that makes sense. But here’s where it gets really interesting and fun: Through keyword research, you may discover 80% of your audience is finding you through the phrase, “lymphatic drainage massage near me,” which is a specialized service your spa offers.
With this information, your next marketing strategy would be to create more content around lymphatic drainage. In doing so, you would set your spa apart from other spas in your area that may offer the same service. You now appear to be the most knowledgeable, experienced professionals in the very service your potential customers are looking for.
By using the right keywords, with the right intent in your content, you can increase your business’ search engine rankings and attract more organic traffic to your website.
Search Intent Is More Important Than Search Volume
Search intent tells you why a user is searching for you, or what type of answers they’re looking for. Are they looking to make a purchase today? Research and compare local companies? Or learn more about a subject? Understanding your user’s end goal helps you create content that satisfies that goal. The more your content naturally fits what your audience is looking for, the longer they interact (scroll/click through pages/make a purchase) with your website. The longer they interact, the more valuable your site appears to Google, which results in higher search rankings.
There are four types of search intent:
- Informational – users want to learn something or find an answer – think “how to…”
- Commercial – users are researching products or services before making a decision – think “best HVAC company near me”.
- Navigational – users want to find a specific website or page – think “Amazon login”
- Transactional – users are ready to take an action – think phrases that start with “buy”
Understanding the intent behind a keyword helps you create the right type of content for the people you’re trying to reach. Ranking #1 for the wrong keyword has little value if the content doesn’t satisfy what the searcher is looking for.
Keyword Research Supports More Than Rankings
Keyword research is an integral part of SEO, and its value goes beyond higher rankings. You should use it to inform how your website is structured, how to position content within your pages to make the biggest impact, and how to create content that shows up in any search engine, including AI summaries. The ultimate goal is to kind of work backwards, or use the keywords and search intent to guide your content strategy. Keyword research supports:
- Website architecture – In web development, keyword research helps organize a website in a logical way, making it easier for visitors to find information while helping search engines understand how pages relate to one another.
- Service pages – Service pages perform best when they’re built around keywords with strong commercial intent. Understanding how potential customers search helps businesses create pages that answer questions, build trust, and encourage conversions.
- Blog strategy – Some highly competitive or informational keywords don’t naturally belong on a service page. A blog provides the perfect opportunity to target those topics while strengthening the authority of related service pages through strategic internal linking.
- FAQs – Keyword research often uncovers the exact questions customers are asking before choosing a company or service. Incorporating those questions into an FAQ section can improve user experience, increase visibility in search results, and create content that’s more likely to appear in features such as People Also Ask and AI-generated answers.
- Internal linking – Strategic internal linking helps search engines better understand how your pages relate to each other while guiding visitors to additional helpful information.
- Featured snippets – Structuring content to answer questions clearly and concisely increases the likelihood of earning featured snippets, helping businesses stand out in search results and attract highly qualified traffic.
- AI-generated search results – Well-structured content that answers common questions is more likely to appear in Google AI Overviews and other AI-powered search experiences, helping improve visibility and build brand awareness.
Choosing the Right Keywords
Keywords with the highest search volume (the number of searches a term or phrase gets) are not necessarily the best keywords to choose for your content. The more used or saturated a keyword is, the harder it is to compete for the spotlight under that term. You should strike a balance between higher and lower volume terms.
For example, instead of targeting a broad keyword like “home builder,” a Michigan builder may have more success targeting “custom home builder in Grand Rapids.” While the search volume may be lower, the audience is more qualified and much closer to making a purchasing decision. This means you’re more likely to get higher conversions by targeting this keyword.
When choosing which keywords to target, consider the following:
- Competition – Competitor research helps identify valuable keyword opportunities, uncover content gaps, and reveal where your business can differentiate itself in search results.
- Search intent – When content doesn’t satisfy search intent, visitors often leave quickly to find a better answer. Over time, poor engagement tells Google your page isn’t as valuable as others, lowering its rankings.
- Relevance – Similar to search intent, relevance ensures your content matches what users are actually searching for and what your business offers. This just makes sense, and it’s the right thing to do for your customers. Stuffing irrelevant keywords into your content just because they rank well wastes everyone’s time by attracting the wrong type of audience. Treat your users with respect. They will quickly realize they’re in the wrong place and bounce without converting.
- Conversion potential – This goes hand-in-hand with keyword research. Attracting traffic is important, but capturing buyers ready to act is the sweet spot. The most profitable keywords target high-intent searches. Think about implementing specific buying modifiers, such as “price,” “compare,” “demo,” or “near me.”
Keyword Research Tools Professionals Use
Keyword research is based on data, not guesswork. To get real, verified data, it’s important to invest your time and/or funds into the right tools. The most successful marketing professionals typically use one or more of the following:
- Google Search Console (free)
- Google Keyword Planner (free)
- SEMrush (paid)
- Ahrefs (paid)
How Often Should You Review Your Keyword Research
Like everything in marketing, you need to keep a pulse on your keyword research data. Search behavior changes as industries evolve, competitors publish new content, and search engines introduce new features. Regularly conducting your keyword research helps you uncover new opportunities, identify declining trends, and keep your content aligned with what your customers want now. To keep up with the changes:
- Review Google Search Console data monthly to reveal how your target keywords are performing, as well as unexpected search queries that may present new optimization opportunities.
- Conduct a more comprehensive keyword and competitor analysis quarterly to identify emerging trends, evaluate competitor rankings, and uncover opportunities for new or improved content.
Keyword Research in the Age of AI Search
Keyword research is no longer just about ranking in Google’s traditional search results. Modern SEO also considers how people ask questions in conversational search experiences such as Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. What does this mean for your content? For starters, it’s more important than ever to ensure your use of keywords feels and sounds natural.
Understanding the way people search today and creating content easy for AI to use in its answers is key. Rather than typing short phrases into the Google search bar (hurriedly and with half the words misspelled) like we’ve done for so many years, searchers today ask questions using natural language that sounds just like they’re chatting with a friend.
What was once, “digital marketing benefits” is now “is digital marketing worth it for my medium-sized business in Grand Rapids, MI?” The good news is we’re capturing way more information about our audience. The complicated news? Your content needs to work twice as hard to answer both styles of search queries so it can show up wherever your customers are. Putting in the additional effort improves visibility across both search engines and AI-powered search experiences.
Ready to Turn Keyword Research into Business Growth?
If you want to grow your business today, having an online presence is bare minimum, like hanging a sign on a brick and mortar in the ‘80s. If you want to stand out from the crowd of your competitors and continue to grow year over year, you need a digital marketing strategy.
Whether you’re launching a new website, refreshing existing content, or looking to improve your visibility in search and AI-powered search experiences, GreenCup Digital can help you manage it all without falling behind in the ever-evolving world of digital marketing.
Reach out today to build a marketing plan that works for you.
