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
-
Is KEI metric still commonly used by SEOs
I'd like to ask about the KEI, is it used by now? and is it really matters ? I guess # of results by Google is not a good metric to decide if the keyword is good or not? I'd really appreciate your inputs
Keyword Research | | Yaddly0 -
Google Adwords Keyword Planner Question
Is the keyword volume data shown the number of google adword clicks people made after searching with the used keyword, or is it the exact match search volume??
Keyword Research | | jennie.evans0 -
Few questions about panda and penguin
I seem to be a little confused about how SEO has changed recently and what things should be avoided even though I am still seeing these things impacted on my site. The recent panda and penguin updates have scared many of us SEO'ers into thinking that keyword optimization is now a no-no as apposed to how it used to be necessary. Let me explain Concerning keyword optimization in the past in SEO we would practice placing keywords into our pages to make sure we are properly optimizing for such keywords. For instance bolding keywords, placing them in content, titles and descriptions. With panda Google seems to be negativly impacting the use of over optimization with keywods and it is what is preached about on most SEO blogs now, but I have been experimenting with such things with my sites and have noticed a few things. Before the panda update I used to rank with my main site on a particular keyword in second place. While the panda update effected me negatively with ranking it was not so much the ranking that hurt me as apposed to the adsense revenue. I used to place consistently second place with my keyword, since panda I have dropped on average to 4th - 7th place, almost changing daily. The ranking was not so much a drop but the adsense revenue difference a month is about 2,000 which did impact me. Since then I have been going over panda rules and making the appropriate changes like getting rid of low quality content, to many keywords, ad placement. I am one who likes to experiment all the time so there are a few things that I have discovered with my diligence. I have noticed that when I cross a threshhold of about 5 repeated keywords on a page I am safe, when I begin to add more than 5 I start to notice a drop in ranking. If I go back to 5 and under I tend to rank back up. As well with that I have noticed that the placement of the keywords also impacts my ranking. When I place keywords more spread out over my page I see better rankings, if I tend to optimize my keyword more on the top portion of my page I see a drop in ranking. My question is even though keyword optimization is considered a no-no I still see that it will impact my rankings greatly. Since everything I read kind of goes against this I am wanting to hear your opinions about this. Another issue is relative content and the amount of pages/articles. It seems that to many pages or articles will flag you as a spam site. Now the idea of less is more is the practice we see. If this is the case then what I am questioning is how is it that google can determine a sites quality based on less. With less to use, google would have to have some serious and definitive triggers to determine the quality of the site. Can one simple page really change your ranking that much? How in the world does google determine the quality with just a few pages as apposed to many? My site freescrabbledictionary.com (and no I am not back linking right now :)) I am a scrabble based site that helps users find words and definitions for scrabble games and other word games. On some of my pages I have articles/pages which give users important info like 2 letter words, high scoring words and other stuff. When I show these words I place a link on every word to my dictionary portion so users can easily click the link and look up the word and its definition. Some of these pages show over a thousand words, so yes I have a thousand links on that page to other pages on my site. I want to keep this feature so users don't have to type in the word to look it up, but I am torn as to if this is hurting me as apposed to helping. I would love some info on this please.
Keyword Research | | cbielich0 -
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 -
What is the relationship/difference between categories and keywords in terms of google local seo?
I know that they are very similar as search signals, but I would like to understand the exact relationship. My company is in the process of adding local seo services to our seo offerings, and we are trying to hammer out a process for determining optimal categories for businesses based on keywords we are already using for optimizing their sites. Any insights or suggestions on how best to do this would be much appreciated.
Keyword Research | | CustomCreatives0 -
Title tag punctuation question?
I know that exact matches in the title tag are more powerful but how much will using an ellipse the title affect my results? For example I would like to use "What is… Actinide?" instead of "What is Actinide?"
Keyword Research | | joehaddock0 -
Rough Simple Math formula for sales/SEO...am I out of touch?
Please let me know if I have this all wrong ... 500 people search for "ham" My client is #1 SERP w/clean SEO I have provided. out of the 500, half click on the SERP the rest got to ads, or to the bathroom, etc. 250 click to website, half go through.... the rest bail (50% bounce, I know this is bad, but just for demo purposes) Leaving 125 as potential Ham buyers. I have a feeling this final # should be much smaller...thoughts, insights? Thanks Mozzers!
Keyword Research | | Giggy0