A Little SEO Keyword Research Increased Reach by 170%

I’m curious how many of you can honestly say that you do any keyword research before writing a lengthy blog post? If the answer is no, you might be wasting a lot of time. You could be putting in a lot of effort and seeing no returns. Keyword research can be very quick and is essential to dominating both your SEO and content marketing goals.

Keyword Research in Title Example

As we all know the title matters a lot when it comes to SERPs and is part of what Google considers a ranking factor. Meta descriptions are not used as part of the ranking algorithm but rather they are a way to increase your CTR. Neil Patel wrote a great article on this: How To Write A Meta Description That Gets Click-Throughs

Here is a personal example. I recently published a post on my blog about a great new agency tool I have been using: https://brianjackson.io/adwords-reporting-tool-agency-missing/

I was originally going to title it: “The Ultimate PPC Reporting Tool Your Agency is Missing” because that really describes well what the tool is and who I am targeting. However after running search volume queries and looking at the data this is what I discovered.

I would be targeting the following keywords with the title above:

• PPC Reporting 110 global searches
• PPC Reporting Tool 30 global searches (long-tail keyword)

So as you can see, those both don’t have very many searches globally (and low KEI) and it would probably would have been a waste of time if I am wanting to get organic traffic.

Changing up my Keywords After Analyzing Data

So instead, after analyzing the data I decided to change up the keywords I was targeting in the title. After a minute or two of jotting down some alternate keywords I decided to change the title to: “The AdWords Reporting Tool That Your Agency Is Missing”

Now even though it is more than just an adwords tool, you can see below that there are many more searches for these keywords below. Don’t just assume people are searching for things!

• adwords reporting 210 global searches
• adwords reporting tool 170 global searches (long-tail keyword)

I can easily explain in my post that is an all around PPC tool, not just an adwords tools.

The volume is higher and the competition is still fairly low. I am technically also targeting “reporting tool” but the volume on that is pretty high, the term is very broad, and the competition is pretty steep, so I left that out of results in my test.

And guess what? The post generated 2 leads within the first couple days. So I highly urge you to do a little research before you put a whole lot of work into a post. It can be as little as 5 minutes of work and it can make a world of difference. As I always say, “Work Smarter, Not Harder!” And that is only on one post. If you do a little research on every post you publish it will add up over time and greatly affect your organic traffic and reach.

Great SEO Keyword Research Tools

Free Tools:

• Google Trends
• Google Keyword Planner (this requires an adwords account, but you can acquire one for free)
• WordStream Free Keyword Tool

Premium Tools:

I personally use all three of these tools below on a regular basis and highly recommend them.

• Web CEO (if you are curious what keyword research tool I was using above in the screenshots, this is the one. With Web CEO you can also do local keyword research which is crucial for me and my local clients.)
• KWFinder
• SEMRush
• Long Tail Pro

Keyword Research Tutorials

If you are looking for some great tutorials on keyword research I highly recommend the two following ones:

• Keyword Research: The Definitive Guide by Brian Dean
• How To Do Keyword Research For SEO by SEO Nick

As always I would love to hear what you think below!