Newbie Question about the first steps of website SEO
-
Hello. I'm new to Moz and know very little about SEO. I just finished going through the Beginner's Guide to SEO and I'm ready to take action. I plan on doing the SEO work myself.
The guide says before doing keyword research, I should first answer certain questions about my business, such as: What types of my product are people searching for? Who is searching for these terms? When are people searching for these terms? How are people searching for my product? There are several more.
How do I go about finding the answers to these questions? Thank you in advance.
-
You're so welcome, Kathy. We're glad to have you here and please keep your good questions coming as you move along in the learning process.
-
Miriam, thank you so much for clearing all that up for me. It is exactly what I was looking for, and I appreciate your taking the time and effort to lay it all out. Thanks again!!!
-
Thank you for your response, Alex. Great advice, and I appreciate your time and info!
-
That's a very good question, Kathy!
I believe the section of the guide you're referring to is here: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/keyword-research
And what that section is saying is that, if you're an SEO and you have this client who sells ice cream coming to you, here are some questions you can ask them to start learning about their business. This framing assumes that the client knows their own business from selling their products, serving the public and hearing their FAQs, and, possibly having something like Google Analytics hooked up to their website so that they have some demographic/seasonal information in place to share with the SEO.
For you, if you're doing your own marketing for your own business, this is going to come down to you knowing your own business, its customers' FAQs, etc. If you don't yet have any anayltics set up to track traffic coming into your website, now would be a good time to start gathering such data via Google Analytics which is free.
I would also recommend that you:
-
Start formally logging your customers spoken/written FAQs. This would include in-person/phone/form questions you frequently receive that help you understand what customers are looking for and how they word their questions in relationship to your company's goods/services. For example, if you sell clothing, do your customers ask questions about "plus size blouses" or "plus size tops"?
-
Do searches directly in Google for your products/services. Then, look on the results page for the section titled "Searches Related to (X)" There, Google is showing you a bunch of terms related to the search you've performed.
-
You can also try a similar technique by going to Google and typing in a search phrase slowly, letter by letter, to see what other phrases come up in the search box dropdown as you type. For example, when I type "women's blouses" in slowly, Google also shows me "women's blouses for work", "women's blouses on sale", etc. This lets me know customers are looking for these things.
-
Go to AnwerThePublic.com and do searches surrounding your products/services to see how people ask search engines questions about these things.
-
Go to Google Trends and type in your products/services to see if there are hot topics surrounding these things. For example, Google is telling me that "women's lace tops" are currently trending in NY.
A combination of efforts like these will help you pull together a lot of keyword phrases of possible value to your business and its clientele. Once you have these, you can then further investigate the value by using more sophisticated tools like Moz Keyword Explorer, so that you can prioritize and organize your research and create a strategy from it.
Hope this helps!
-
-
I can give you a couple of articles that you can read but that would be silly. You've gone with keyword research first which is correct in terms of SEO. If you have any competitors. See what they're doing. Try to find the best longtail keywords that will suit your business and beat their current ones. Incorporate them in your content without sounding like a robot. SEO is about being creative. Find the things that make you stand out. Don't just follow guides.
On another note. Check your website. And check it thoroughly even if you have to use paid help. Speed, mobile friendliness, URL's, the whole lot. On-site is crucial nowadays and no content or keywords will help you if there are problems with on-site.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How much keyword difficulty score i accept when website is new?
I have a new affiliate website which doesn't have good da pa. which keyword difficulty score did I take?
Keyword Research | | triknew120 -
Number of keywords for single page website
Hello, i have a question about keywords in Single page website. For how many keywords should i focus in single page website? For example: In my industry are important 2 different keywords - cabinet making and **made to measure furniture. **Should i focus on both keywords or its better to pick better keyword and focus only for that one (of course including different forms of that word and so on). Thank you for help.
Keyword Research | | Reyzer1 -
How to Choose the Best Keywords for a Website
I am working with an insurance agency that wants to target the below types of insurance in Dalton GA, Ringold GA, Chattanooga TN and and/or Georgia. Home Insurance
Keyword Research | | lagunaitech
Auto Insurance
Health Insurance
Life Insurance
Restaurant Insurance
Contractor Insurance They are a new agency that doesn't have a website yet and only a small online marketing budget. Right now, I'm starting to work with them on their new site and want to make sure the on-site SEO works with the insurance/locations they want to target. What I'm having trouble with is the volume of monthly searches and trying to find keywords that they could realistically get some traffic and leads from. Most of the keywords I check with the Adwords tool are less than 50 exact match searches or just show a dash. The only keywords with a decent amount of exact searches are the main insurance types like "restaurant insurance" or "home insurance Georgia". How can I get an idea of the number of leads and amount of traffic this site might get when most of the keywords searched for only a handful of times per month? I can build the site to easily target all the above types of insurance in Dalton, GA, which has a population of about 33,000, but I don't know what kind of results this agency might expect if they were to rank in the top 3 spots. Thanks in advance for any ideas or advice!0 -
Will words added to the end of my title make the page in question less relevant in Google's eyes?
Hey guys, I've always wondered about this. Say I'm targeting the keyword "how to sell your house" but I find it a bit bland or generic and my client actually offers a service more in line with "how to sell your house quickly" - say that's their USP for example. I still want to rank for the broader version however, because far fewer people are searching for the "quickly" version - and it stands to reason that if searchers can solve the same problem quickly, they'll want that version of the solution anyway. So will adding the word "quickly" to the end of the keyword I'm targeting (and using that in my Title, H1, URL, description tags etc) make Google see my client's page/site as less relevant to a broader search term like the more generic "how to sell your house", that I'm trying to rank for? Thanks 🙂
Keyword Research | | makeshiftyy0 -
Newbie question about keyword difficulty tool
Hi guys, It's my first day here ate seomoz and I got intrigued about the results from the keyword difficulty tool. Even though I do understand the results, I noticed the ranking analysis table has some highlighted cells and some of them have a dark checkmark sign inside. What exactly do they mean? I couldn't find it anywhere. Cheers from Brazil. i0tzl.png
Keyword Research | | lenineto0 -
To Meta Keyword or Not To Meta Keyword, That Is The Question
I can't seem to get a reliable answer on this one. It seems to be split down the middle as far as who agrees and who doesn't, of course some of that content is outdated. So, for today, should I be using the meta keywords tag or not? Thanks, Steven
Keyword Research | | sfmatthews0 -
SEO research via Google Adwords
I've read several times of this technique for determining if a particular keyword phrase is worth the effort of optimizing for in organic search. In Adwords create an Ad Group with a single exact match keyword phrase and let it run in Adwords until you have enough clicks to measure valid results (I've often heard 200-300 clicks). If you are unable to convert the search term via paid search, the theory goes, it's probably not worth the effort to rank top 3 for that phrase and you should put your efforts elsewhere. Do any of you use this strategy? If so, have you found the results to be pretty consistently accurate? Thanks, Mark
Keyword Research | | DenverKelly1 -
SEO for compound word derivatives
Our company offers services for nonprofit organizations and we are finding that "non profit" and "nonprofit" are both used very frequently in search queries. I suspect Google will treat the two variations similarly but am looking for something more concrete than my anecdotal experience. How does Google treat compound words that are commonly searched for as multiple words? Any suggestions on resources or tests to find a concrete answer for "nonprofit"?
Keyword Research | | Jon_KS0