Keyword Research for Developing Your Blog Topic Calendar

Your inbound marketing strategy should have blogging as its central focus. Your blogs will be the first piece of content prospects see on your website. Your blog should contain helpful content that will help prospects answer their questions. Your blogs should also be easily found online. You need to develop a keyword strategy that includes keyword research. These are some tips that will help you find keywords to help build your blog content calendar.

• What Prospects Are Looking for Online: This first step will allow you to define your search engine optimization strategy to have your website and content appear online when people search for information about your business. SEO is an essential part of the content and blogging strategy. Organic traffic, i.e., people who search for your website using Google, is the best source of website traffic. Increased organic traffic leads to more visitors, better conversion rates, and higher rankings in search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. This traffic is free of paid advertising, and it continues to drive website visitors for many years.
• Start your Keyword Research Process by Analyzing Your Website Data:
• Google Analytics or an integrated marketing tool like HubSpot should show you the top organic keywords driving traffic to your website. This will allow you to determine which keywords are ranking well online and which keywords aren’t.
• Create Your Target Keywords List:
• Finally, you should create a list with keywords that your target audience might use to search for products or services similar to yours. Next, you’ll research the monthly search volume for these terms. This will ensure a high search volume, so people can find your content online by searching for a specific keyword. You should also ensure that your keyword is not too broad to gain traction.
• If you target the keyword “leadership”, you will compete with thousands of other websites that also target this broad keyword. However, if you choose “leadership consultant”, you will reach a more specific audience. For example, “leadership” is ranked at 673,000 searches per month, while “leadership consulting” ranks at 1,600 searches per day. Because there is less competition, ranking on “leadership consulting” is more likely. It is also more relevant to your target audience. Google’s Keyword Planner can be used to generate a list with target keywords. This will help you determine the most popular keywords based on search volume, competition, and other factors.

Think “Long-Tail”

Long-tail keywords (typically 4-5 words) are both descriptive and are likely used by prospects to search. You know your company’s products and services better than anyone, so brainstorming long-tail keywords is easy.

• Here’s an example. Your company manufacturers medical carts, so long-tail keyword phrases such as “custom medical cart manufacturers” and “custom medical cart solutions” are more likely to match the search queries of your ideal buyers than the broad keyword “medical carts,” which might yield a high search volume but is extremely difficult to rank for and unlikely to reflect the search queries of potential buyers.

Keyword research is an important part of your blogging strategy. It will help you identify the most relevant topics for your audience. This should be a key guiding principle in your content strategy and blogging. It will help you identify the best blogs and content for your buyer personas.