Performing a keyword analysis as you develop your content can help you accurately target your intended customers and create material that resonates with their interests and needs. When performed correctly, a keyword analysis will help you identify topics that your targeted customers want to read, effectively weeding out those who have no interest in making a purchase. An estimated 67 percent of the buyer’s journey is now believed to take place online. Additionally, 94 percent of B2B buyers and 81 percent of customers say that they do research online before making a purchase. Effective keyword analysis will help you connect with this online audience, inviting them to get to know your brand and enter your sales funnel. As you prepare to perform your keyword research, you should understand what needs to be uncovered and how you can measure the results of your efforts moving forward. Here is how to perform an effective keyword analysis.

What do I want to learn from my keyword analysis?

There are a few main areas where you should focus on analyzing your keywords. By uncovering the answers to these central questions, you will gain a far better understanding of how well a particular keyword will work for you and your marketing goals.

Is this keyword valuable for the right audience?

The keywords that you use should address topics that your target audience finds valuable. Gaining traffic is not enough to have strong conversions. The topics that you cover should attract the people most likely to be interested in your products.

For example, if you are a plumber, writing articles that are highly technical about the right configurations of piping might end up attracting more competitors - who are interested in maximizing the efficiency of their services - than customers - who are not likely to configure their own pipes.

Understanding whether the keyword attracts the right audience is a multi-faceted process. It can be helpful to look at content you have developed around related keywords. Look for trends in the pieces that attract customers that convert. You can also look at the top-ranking websites for a given keyword and see the audience that they are geared towards. See if those particular sites are written for members of your target audience.

You can be confident that the top-ranking sites have proven themselves to be attractive to those entering the keyword into the search engine. Therefore, if they are written for your target audience, you know this keyword will be valuable. The BrightEdge platform makes it easy to analyze the top 10 ranking pages.

Do I have a reasonable expectation of my site ranking highly for this keyword?

Your keyword analysis should also explore whether or not your site can reasonably expect to achieve a high, first-page ranking for this keyword. Certain keywords might have a great value for your organization, but your site does not have the domain authority to achieve the ranking needed to attract the right attention. It is important to weigh this factor carefully. When you are first building a site, you will want to create content for important, central topics, even though you do not have the authority to rank highly for them. As you build your site, however, you would likely see these sites start to rise in the rankings. If a particular keyword is highly competitive and the other sites are well-optimized so that there are few opportunities for moving into top-ranking positions, you might want to consider variations of the keyword that might afford you more possibilities. For example, adding location keywords to attract local traffic or turning a basic keyword into a long-tail keyword may allow you to gain the rankings you need to attract traffic and conversions you desire.

Will I gain enough traffic for this keyword?

You want to focus the majority of your efforts on topics that will draw strong traffic to your website. As you create a content strategy, you will notice that most of the people arriving on your site are at the top of the sales funnel. This means that they are least interested in highly-branded material - instead, they want to find information that answers their questions. With this in mind, you want to select pieces intended for those at the top of the funnel that have high traffic rates. The more popular a keyword is, the more people indicate that the topic interests them, which will help you engage your audience. It will also help ensure that you bring enough people to your site that you can start attracting loyal readers, backlinks, and other metrics that show Google that readers find your site to be useful. As you move down the funnel and your keywords become more specific, you will notice drops in the targeted keyword traffic. Pay attention, however, to the most popular formulations of different branded keywords, such as the competitors people are most interested in comparing to you. This will let you know where to focus your efforts through the funnel.

 

How do I test a keyword’s value for my site?

Once you have decided on the keywords that you want to focus on for your website, the next step is to test your theories and see how your brand is performing.  Tracking this value will make it easy to see if your keyword analysis has been accurate. Here are a few ways to uncover this valuable information.

Use Google AdWords

You can use Google AdWords to set up a campaign for your new keyword. This will let you see directly how many people click on your site and then explore your domain further. The people who click and convert will provide insight into how well you are aligning with consumer expectations and how relevant this keyword is to your target audience. This keyword analysis is important because you can gauge your success without having to wait for your page to rank highly enough to see results.

Track the behavior of people on your site

Watch what people do when they arrive on your site. See how often they visit pages with a particular keyword. Pay close attention to the behavior of people who arrive on the site through the page you have optimized. See if they bounce off, click on to other content, and even convert. This will provide you with insight about how well your content meets their needs.

Use the BrightEdge platform to better judge the success of individual pages

On the BrightEdge platform, you have access to Keyword Reporting and Page Reporting features that make it easy to see how well your targeted keywords impact your broader content strategy. You can track individual keywords to see your rank and how much traffic your pages or keywords are attracting. You can use the StoryBuilder tool to set up charts that will let you easily uncover the pages that are contributing the most towards revenue. This will make it simple to understand your progress and the types of keywords that are the most popular for your audience.

Keyword analysis is an important step in the development of an effective content marketing strategy. It will help you better pinpoint the topics your targeted audience wants to read about while also gaining a superior understanding of the vocabulary they use. Understanding the value of performing a keyword analysis will help make your process more effective and productive.

This is part 3 in the micro-moments series. The previous post focused on the "I want to go" micro-moment. "I want to buy" is the next moment in the series. It is highly relevant to all digital marketers because it is the moment that represents a chance to make a sale to the user. Good content in other moments may also drive a sale. However, none of them will convert as well as "I want to buy".

The "I Want To Buy" Micro-Moment

As mentioned above, digital marketers should value this micro-moment because it has the most direct path to value. Users who make it to "I want to buy" are at the end of their buyer's journey. They have most likely engaged in several other micro-moments prior to reaching this step. The user already understands what they are looking for. They have already decided what they want in general terms. They have probably also done research on your product as well as your competitor's offerings. Now they want to make a final decision and execute on their purchase. "I want to buy" is relevant for more than just traditional e-commerce businesses. Services, hospitality, events, and business-to-business are all affected by this micro-moment as well. The types of keywords that users search may differ, but the intention to purchase is there.

SERP Features

From an organic search perspective, "I want to buy" is not as straightforward as the other micro-moments in the series. It is still possible to detect based on SERP features, but they are not organic features. This means that the appropriate content marketers should build does not align directly with how the SERP is structured. After looking at the SERP identifiers for "I want to buy", we will look at what content to build for these terms.

Top Ads 4-Pack

Heavy commercialization can be helpful in identifying the buying micro-moment. The 4-pack of top ads is the best way to recognize this in the modern SERP. Here's what a 4-pack might look like in the SERP: Ad presence for any keyword can vary depending on seasonality and other factors. Despite that, finding a consistently heavy presence means that the keyword has significant value for businesses. This isn't guarantee of "I want to buy" but it is a good indicator.

Shopping Listings

Shopping listings also indicate purchase intent. They show up most when Google believes that the user is ready to make a purchase of one of the items. This is another case of Google's behavior helping to identify a micro-moment. If users were not ready to buy, it would be a bad experience to have product listings shown. Here's what a typical Shopping result looks like:

Shopping results are the strongest indicator of the buying micro-moment because they connect directly to the sale of a product. They even include pricing, so a user who clicks into a particular one is prequalifying themselves on price. However, the e-commerce nature of shopping results limits their application. The other business models will not take advantage of shopping results as they are not present in those industries.

Appropriate Content

Building appropriate SEO content for "I want to buy" is a little bit different from the other micro-moments. This is because paid result types are the strongest indicators of this micro-moment. Placing these ads yourself or working with your paid counterparts to do so is a great place to start. Despite the ads, some of the traffic will work its way down to the organic listings. Capturing this traffic is still valuable since it has such high conversion potential. Bottom of funnel, action-oriented pages are appropriate for "I want to buy". Each business should identify those pages for themselves since ideal content type will vary by industry. Good SEO content will help consumers compare and evaluate in ways that put your product or service in a positive light with a clear call to action: add to cart, contact us, get a demo, or chat live with us. Ranking well in SEO for the buying micro-moment means you have understood the users' needs, what problem they are trying to solve or satisfy, and created content that is relevant, original, authoritative, crawlable, and delivers a fast page load time.

Conclusion

The "I want to buy" micro-moment is a huge part of any site driving value and purchases. Users in this micro-moment are ready to make a decision, and it is up to marketers to provide options for them.

SEO 2016 has been eventful thus far for marketing professionals. SEOs need to keep up not only with the changing expectations of the users, but they also need to adapt to the algorithm and SERP adjustments made by the search engines themselves.

Brands need to pay attention to these changes. An estimated 93 percent of online experiences begin with a search engine, so understanding how to maximize the visibility of your site on the SERPs can result in a tremendous boost in traffic, engagement, and conversions.

At the beginning of the year, I explored some growing trends that we anticipated for SEO 2016. Now that we are half way through the year, I thought it would be a great opportunity to see how these predictions have been panning out.  

1) The growth of schema in SEO 2016

Schema has long been a recommended optimization strategy for website owners. The markups make it easier for the major search engines Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Yandex to interpret the different elements of your site so that your material can be appropriately displayed in the SERPs.

Developing changes, however, have made these markups even more significant. We noted in our predictions at the beginning of the year that schema would become more significant as artificial intelligence grows in importance, and in light of the ongoing major knowledge graph and SERP changes  the value of the markup has remained consistent with our expectations. Google schema provides structured data analysis for web sites.  

2) Quick Answers in SEO 2016

The Google Quick Answer-- a snippet answer that is offered at the top of the SERP in response to certain queries-- has been increasing in usage. According to studies conducted by Stone Temple Consulting, their usage grew from 22.6 percent of queries in December 2014 to over 40 percent by the beginning of 2016. For SEO 2016, brands should be optimizing their content to gain the attention needed for a Quick Answer box. Gaining this recognition can provide your site with a boost in click-throughs and qualified organic traffic.

Using schema is an important step in optimizing for the Google Quick Answer since it helps the search engine quickly scan your content and find the snippets that you are qualified to provide. Download our expert's guide How to Get into Quick Answers.  

3) RankBrain in SEO 2016

We started talking about RankBrain at the end of 2015 when Google announced that they were including this as a new factor in their algorithm. RankBrain was designed to use machine learning so that the algorithm would better understand what people wanted to see when they entered unique queries.

Schema is also a valuable part of optimizing for this artificial intelligence. Since RankBrain relies on machine learning, these types of markups make it easier for the algorithm to interpret and understand what is on the page. This helps it better match the material with users and provide a superior experience for the person searching.

 

4) The Introduction of Rich Cards in SEO 2016

In the summer of 2015, Google introduced a new carousel display for certain queries on mobile. For example, if you were looking for decorating ideas for your living room, you could now scroll through a series of pictures along the top of your screen.

In May 2016 Google took this even further and began using rich cards for certain queries within these carousels. Currently, these rich cards apply to recipes and movies, but there is a possibility of the change applying to other types of queries in the future. These rich cards help to make your site look more appealing while also supplying users with helpful information right on the SERP.

For your site to appear in an applicable rich card format, however, the page must be marked up. Using schema can help ensure that the algorithm properly interprets your site and that you are able to take advantage of any rich display options that become available.  

5) The Importance of Speed in SEO 2016

Most site owners already know that speed is an important part of creating a successful site. Site visitors quickly click off of pages that take too long to load-- just a 3 second delay will cause 40 percent to click off and a 1 second delay can cause a 7 percent drop in conversions. In SEO 2016, however, we have seen the importance of speed expand even further.

In late 2015, Google introduced the concept of AMP pages-- pages that are designed to load particularly fast on mobile devices, improving the user experience and boosting the brand's reputation. This format strips sites of nearly everything extra, creating a page that contains only the bare necessities and can load between 15 and 85 percent faster than it did before the optimization process.

While the AMP system was originally largely used by news sites, it has recently begun to expand beyond these initial parameters. Ebay officially announced that it had optimized as many as 8 million pages for AMP in an effort to provide people with a better buying experience. 

Brands that do not center around news articles or e commerce, however, should still be paying attention to the growing need for speed. As AMP continues to spread and its impact on consumers is measured, it is very likely that this new system will be employed by an increasing number of brands.

Even outside of AMP, these changes will be impacting the expectations of consumers. People will now have less tolerance for slow-loading sites as a growing number of brands cater to their expressed desire for speed. For brands to remain competitive with SEO 2016, they cannot overlook the importance of a fast load time.

These quick ideas will help improve your loading speed:

• Do not use any unnecessary cookies
• Simplify images as much as possible and do not use oversized shots-- scale the images before you upload them
• Enable browser caching so that your site can store some data on your visitor’s computer, which then helps your site load faster the next time someone visits
• Consider compressing your website

At the beginning of the year, we touched upon the growing importance of micro-moments and how brands can remain relevant to these customers. AMP, and maintaining quick loading speeds, will be an important part of serving these desires of on-the-go consumers.

Specifically, currently those with the I-want-to-know moments can load news sites faster and those in the I-want-to-buy moments will experience benefits from the optimization of pages for e commerce. As AMP spreads and brands begin to pay attention to the importance of speed, sites will be able to better meet the needs of their visitors and take advantage of the micro-moment, bringing more customers into their funnels.

6) SERP Layout Changes in SEO 2016

So far for SEO 2016 we have also seen several changes in the layouts of the SERPs that impact how site owners can optimize their domain to maximize their appearance on the results page.

In February we saw a change in how Google displayed ads. Specifically, they eliminated the ads that once populated the space along the side of the results and increased the number of ad results along the top of the page. Some queries can see as many as four ad results before the organic results begin. This reduces the available real estate for organic results above the fold.

We have also seen Google experiment with increasing the space available for titles and meta descriptions. Although the increases have not been universal, many sites see more characters available in these spaces now, providing them with the opportunity to offer more detail about the value they have for visitors.

 

What these SEO 2016 layout changes mean for brands

Given that there are fewer spaces available above the fold for organic search results, brands must place an even stronger emphasis on earning the top organic spots offered. This means paying attention to optimization details such as:

• Writing content that is centered around a topic that matters to the target audience
• Creating material that offers obvious value for users
• Including your keywords in the title, a heading, and naturally in the body of the text
• Using images to make your content look appealing
• Creating a strong distribution system to attract attention to your content

Brands should also open themselves up to experimenting more with their titles and meta descriptions. Since these changes have not been universal and we have no way of knowing if they are permanent, you do not want to write your sections with the assumption that the extra space will always be there. Instead, you should use your target keyword in the beginning of your title and description and use the additional characters to elaborate on the value you offer the audience.

As any site owner knows, optimization best practices change at lightning speed as the search engines continue to adjust their algorithms to better account for user expectations and the pace of technology. SEO 2016 has proven to be no different as the first half of the year has already seen tremendous changes that impact how you should develop your site. Keep these changes in mind as you move forward and we will work to ensure that you have the latest information as the Google algorithm and customers evolve.