3 Tips on How to Find the Right Keywords for SEO Success

A long time ago, back when SEO consultants roamed and ruled the earth, businesses that boldly dared to explore the keyword research landscape quickly discovered that it wasn’t remotely user-friendly. Reliable advice was hard to come by, and tools were costly and complex. Fortunately, that’s no longer the case. Well, sorta.

We’ll start with the good news: there are plenty of excellent keyword research tools out there that businesses can access, without first having to secure the services of a pricey SEO consultant to interpret “techie into English” for them. And while the more advanced tools aren’t free, they’re still much easier to use now than they used to be.

Now for the bad news: while there’s some good information out there on how to find the right keywords, there’s also some really bad advice, too. And businesses that follow these “insider secrets” end up wasting their time and money, while they lose ground to the competition.

At Leap Clixx, we’re all about delivering good, reliable advice – and that’s why we publish information on our blog for everyone to access: customers and non-customers alike. In fact, we have it on good authority that many of our competitors regularly read our blog for *cough* “inspiration”. (Hey, we’re flattered.)

And so, with our educational mission in mind, here are 3 tips on how to find the right keywords for SEO success:

Focus on Relevant Topics

As noted by MOZ, these days search engines pay much more attention – and therefore place a greater importance on – keyword topics vs. specific keywords. This basically means that winning the SEO game won’t happen unless the content that searchers (and ultimately, customers) come across is something that they’ll find relevant, timely and important. Yes, specific keywords still matter. But keyword topics matter more.

Talk to Customers

Customers can be a surprisingly valuable source of keyword ideas and suggestions. Of course, customers don’t think of things in terms of keywords, and they may not even remember what they plugged into Google, Yahoo or Bing to find something. However, they can certainly shed light on their pain points, objectives, goals, and other aspects that inspire plenty of practical keyword ideas – including some that translate very nicely into blog posts and ebooks. Remember: search engines try to decipher searcher intent. What better way to figure that out than to ask customers directly what they want and why?

Use Credible Tools to Find Long-Tail Keywords

Finding short-tail keywords is usually simple and can be done by looking at competitors, and using Google’s keyword planner tool (which is integrated with AdWords) as well.

However, what businesses really want to dig up are long-tail keywords. These are keywords (or keyword phrases) that have a relatively lower search volume, but are searched for by a higher proportion of quality leads.

For example, a new company that sells project management software may write a series of blogs optimizing the long-tail keyword phrase “project management for engineering”. Relatively fewer people are searching for this compared to “project management”. But a greater proportion of them are likely going to be looking for a software solution, where many folks searching for “project management” could be looking for courses, books, or other aspects of project management.

At Leap Clixx, we use a few enterprise-grade tools for our customers. We pick and choose from them to fit each customer’s specific keyword needs and profile.

Learn More

To learn more about how to find the right keywords for SEO success, contact us today. We’ll clearly educate you on the ins and outs, do’s and don’ts, pros and cons. Your consultation with us is free. If you haven’t already, learn why Google AdWords Should Be Part of Your Inbound Marketing Stategy by downloading our FREE eBook: