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
-
Recommended basic credible SEO on youtube
Hello, I'm teaching a friend SEO and she wants very basic SEO videos on Youtube. I looked for some but there was a lot of incorrect information that some people were giving out. Does any experienced SEOs know of credible, basic SEO videos that the SEOs that make them don't give out backward information. Good quality videos. I will keep looking, but please, if anyone has some gems send them my way. Thanks. Bob
Keyword Research | | BobGW1 -
What is 'SEO copywriting' in 2015?
Howdy forum-fans! I've been toying with the idea for a while now, that 'SEO copywriting' and 'writing for Google' is no longer something that SEO's should be focusing on, but rather writing great, relevant, unique content for customers. The theory is that Google is smart enough to pick up on this and, via it's algorithms, know that it's content worth ranking as it'll be useful to people searching for queries related to the content. Additionally a well written peice of content should naturally contain keywords, phrases and links, taking away some of the overthinking that I've sometimes experienced (first hand) when writing content. What does everyone think? Is 'Writing for Google' dead in 2015 and, if so, has 'Writing for customers' replaced it? Or is there still a place for SEO copywriting; Eg. Well formed titles, URLs, meta-data (does this count as copywriting?)
Keyword Research | | JAR8972 -
Small Business website help please. All help is appreciated and thank you in advance.
Hello I am working on my families website, it is a Colorado barn construction site. I am new here, so any and all help is appreciated. I have already gotten some excellent tips for general seo, but now trying to pinpoint in on a target. I am reading as much as I can everyday. My questions are: Keywords... Ok so when I type in keywords and the results come up, even with an exact match, I am 12 pages back. So what influences the keyword rankings? Is it best to add in like say a service into a paragraph? Like I have been using Ubersuggest or however its spelled, and so would you take keyword phrases and then try to naturally add them to paragraphs? Is this how rankings are created? Thus your site being found? I have major competition that does not even have the keywords I type in, found on there site, and they still rank #1. So I feel that it must lead into my next question DA. Domain Authority: I assume domain authority comes into play. The leading company in my world has a 50 and I have a 15. I am trying to raise this, and using the Moz tools I see my competitor has like 400 edu links. So in some ways it seems like wow get as many edu links as possible. But now it seems like this is not good? Like everyone is afraid to get links that may be considered spam in nature. That being said, would you still go after edu links? Media: So kind of an odd question, but does adding a video to a home page help bounce rates? Like maybe if they sit and watch a two minute video that is interesting, then they may check out the rest of the site? Or for the sake of load times, do you keep the homepage as fast as possible? Thank you for any tips. Also if you view my site, please give me any negative feedback as you can to help me improve. Thank you Chris
Keyword Research | | asbchris0 -
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 -
Question about ranking for long tail keywords
So I am looking at some long tail keywords for my web design company, for example: "website development and design company" The top results are websites that are not optimized for that specific keyword but about "web design & development" in general. The top ranking sites also have quite high PA with lots of links. If I were to create a page specifically about that term would it be fairly easy to rank for since the top ranking pages are not optimized for that keyword?
Keyword Research | | WebAdvancedUK0 -
When my website shown
Hi All, I wanted to know if you are familiar with a tool or any other way to see for weach searches my website will be shown in search results I use Google analytic, but i wanted to know if the is a dedicated tool for this Thank you Very SEOWiseUs
Keyword Research | | iivgi0 -
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 -
Is there a pro tool or google service that I can use to see which sites rank for certain terms? Without having to first identify the url's?
For example I want to see the top 20 sites in order of ranking for top keywords in my industry. Without having to know in advance the url's.
Keyword Research | | CURT-208170