Everything learned I was from DIY efforts so I\u2019m confident that you can learn in a similar way if you don\u2019t mind a little experimenting. If you\u2019ve been reading my blog for a while, you know it\u2019s my method of choice. *wink*<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve also found success through my own DIY efforts. In a relatively short time (about a year or so), I ranked #1 for four of my desired keywords. While this result may not be plausible in all industries (like for attornies and insurance agencies – uffda, sorry!), it\u2019s still incredible to see how a few minor tweaks can help you grow your online presence long term.<\/p>\n
I want to help you become best friends with Google because of your SEO.<\/h1>\n
So let\u2019s dig into a fairly simple four-step approach to keyword research that will help you discover what keywords are worth focusing your attention on.<\/p>\n
(Have you read my post on the basics of SEO<\/a>? If you haven’t, definitely read that first and then come back to this one to put what you’ve learned into action!)\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Let\u2019s use the example of a wedding photographer that is based in Minneapolis. Since I\u2019m from Minnesota, you\u2019ll see a lot of examples based on my location because, well, it just makes sense. You can still use the same advice no matter where you are located or even if you have a primarily online business as I do.<\/p>\n Anyway, back to our wedding photographer. Let\u2019s call her Becky. If Becky is looking to improve her website\u2019s SEO, her energy is best spent trying to figure out what her ideal brides are already searching for.<\/p>\n The first thing she needs to have nailed down is who her ideal client is<\/a><\/em>. This is a good first step for any small business owner. Becky has found that she really loves capturing Millennial couples who are interested in a rustic or farmhouse wedding theme. Traditional chapel weddings aren\u2019t really her thing, so she wants to focus on clients who want outdoor weddings.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll come back to these specific details in a bit but all of this information will be really helpful. For now, we know who her target audience is. From there, she can move on to creating a list of words that are associated with her industry. \u201cWedding photographer\u201d naturally comes to mind first, but she can keep going with her list.<\/p>\n Becky will probably come up with a list that looks something like this:<\/p>\n This is a great place to start! As you create your own list, we can move on to the next step.<\/p>\n Now that you have a list of words and phrases that are specific to your industry, location, and audience, we can start doing some preliminary research. Let\u2019s start with Google\u2019s built-in search function since it is a user-friendly place to start.<\/p>\n If Becky is looking to do some basic research on what brides are searching for in her area, she can go to Google and start typing in key phrases to see what auto populates. It will show her some pretty fascinating results.<\/p>\n She first starts with \u201cwedding photographer\u201d and here is what comes up:<\/p>\n After taking a look at this, she can see that \u201cwedding photographers mn\u201d is a strong keyword since it is near the top. She also has it on her original list of ideas so it\u2019s a match.<\/p>\n Now she tries another key phrase from her list. This time, she finds even more interesting results:<\/p>\n Wow! It looks like when people are about to search for \u201cmn wedding photographer\u201d, they are looking for photographers who are affordable and have services under $1000. Becky didn\u2019t have these on her initial list so she\u2019s glad she checked.<\/p>\n If Becky\u2019s pricing is around $1000 or less, she would want to include more of these popular keywords because it\u2019s a great and relevant fit.<\/p>\n However, like many of my own wedding photographer copywriting clients, Becky\u2019s pricing is higher than $1000 because of the value she provides her clients well beyond their wedding day. She won\u2019t want to use these popular keywords with the words \u201caffordable\u201d and \u201cunder $1000\u201d because she would attract the wrong brides.<\/p>\n (Side note: Are you starting to see how this all comes together? We haven\u2019t even gotten to the good stuff yet and we already know a lot. Okay, let\u2019s keep going.)<\/p>\n Look back at Becky\u2019s initial list of key phrases in Step One. You may be thinking \u201cWow, they all seem pretty basic.\u201d You\u2019d be right. While these popular phrases are searched for frequently, we\u2019ll want to focus more attention on how to make Becky\u2019s website stand out to her ideal brides.<\/p>\n We can do this by taking her original list of keywords and getting even more specific. This is where the fun part comes in!<\/p>\n Remember how Becky liked shooting weddings that have a rustic or farmhouse look? Many of those types of weddings take place in barn wedding venues. Keeping this in mind, she starts searching for a few different combinations of keywords.<\/p>\n She types in \u201cmn barn wedding photo\u201d but only one option comes up: \u201cbarn wedding photography mn\u201d. This tells Becky that she should choose \u201cbarn wedding photography mn\u201d over \u201cmn barn wedding photography\u201d.<\/p>\n Even though both options have the same combination of words, the placement of the words is SUPER important. It\u2019s smart to choose the auto-completion keyword because that is what brides are already searching for.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n (Pro tip:<\/strong> It would also be smart for Becky to create relationships with barn wedding venues and other wedding vendors who help brides create a shabby chic look. This will help Becky stay in front of brides who already match her style as wedding vendors refer her work and vice versa. You can borrow the same approach for your website.)<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Take a moment to create your own list of specific keywords. You can start with the key phrases you wrote originally and break them down into words that describe your process, experience, style, or any other factor that helps you sell what you do.<\/p>\n If you are a designer, you can start playing with keywords that describe your unique style (minimal vs. romantic), a color palette of your choice (neutral vs. neon), or client type (startup vs. agency).<\/p>\n If you are an online course creator in marketing, you can experiment with keywords that describe your teaching style (video course vs. email course) or topic of choice (Instagram photo styling vs. Instagram caption writing).<\/p>\n Spend some time in this phase! You may just stumble upon a list of keywords that connect you with your ideal client sooner than you think.<\/p>\n We can learn a lot by looking at Google, but our work isn\u2019t done yet. Let\u2019s get back to Becky. Since she wants to start implementing keywords like \u201cmn wedding photographer\u201d and \u201cbarn wedding photography mn\u201d into her website as soon as possible, she decides to look into a more robust keyword research tool.<\/p>\n You can do your own keyword research through the Google Keyword Planner<\/a><\/em> (which is only available for people who run Google ads), Moz Keyword Explorer<\/a><\/em> (10 keywords available each month with a free account – highly recommend!) or even Answer The Public<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n There are so many options to choose from so let\u2019s just look at one. I really love the Moz Keyword Explorer so we\u2019ll use that for our example.<\/p>\n As Becky types in \u201cmn wedding photographer\u201d and hits search, she is greeted by numbers and graphs she doesn\u2019t quite understand. If you feel the same way looking at these results, don\u2019t worry! You\u2019re not alone.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s talk about what each piece of jargon actually means in a language we can all understand.<\/p>\n After looking at the results from the Moz Keyword Explorer, Becky feels confident in using \u201cmn wedding photographer\u201d. Although the monthly volume numbers didn\u2019t show up because of her location, the difficulty score is around the range she is shooting for and she loves the 100% organic CTR likelihood.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today I\u2019m showing you how to do basic SEO keyword research for your website and blog. I\u2019ll take you step-by-step through an in-depth exercise!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[77,42,11],"class_list":["post-478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-copywriting","category-websites","tag-seo","tag-websites","tag-weekend-retreat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1106,"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions\/1106"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/static1.squarespace.com\/static\/554d4b0ee4b0fb928cd2603e\/5560d50fe4b0b06cd8047b20\/5b0ecc08aa4a99acd2696e36\/1527696444369\/seo-keyword-research-entrepreneurs-website-copywriting.pngseo-keyword-research-entrepreneurs-website-copywriting?format=original\")
Step One: Brainstorming relevant words and phrases<\/h3>\n
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Step Two: Preliminary SEO keyword research on Google<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/static1.squarespace.com\/static\/554d4b0ee4b0fb928cd2603e\/5560d50fe4b0b06cd8047b20\/5aff2ba4562fa7af0f2e10ed\/1526672311919\/Google+Search+Wedding+Photographer+Minnesota.pngGoogle+Search+Wedding+Photographer+Minnesota?format=original\")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/static1.squarespace.com\/static\/554d4b0ee4b0fb928cd2603e\/5560d50fe4b0b06cd8047b20\/5aff2bc570a6adbece4e1f58\/1526672347589\/Google+Search+Engine+Optimization+SEO+MN+Wedding+Photographers.pngGoogle+Search+Engine+Optimization+SEO+MN+Wedding+Photographers?format=original\")
Step Three: Getting more specific with your SEO keywords<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/static1.squarespace.com\/static\/554d4b0ee4b0fb928cd2603e\/5560d50fe4b0b06cd8047b20\/5aff2bf00e2e721acc0cbe01\/1526672394311\/Google+Search+Wedding+Photography+MN.pngGoogle+Search+Wedding+Photography+MN?format=original\")
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\nStep Four: More advanced SEO keyword research<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/static1.squarespace.com\/static\/554d4b0ee4b0fb928cd2603e\/5560d50fe4b0b06cd8047b20\/5aff2c3688251b97ab714b3a\/1526672470649\/Moz+SEO+Keyword+Research+Planner+Wedding+Photography+Minneapolis.pngMoz+SEO+Keyword+Research+Planner+Wedding+Photography+Minneapolis?format=original\")
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Now it is your turn to try a few of your SEO keywords!<\/h2>\n