Whether you’re hoping to help your clients rank more highly on Google or drive more traffic to their landing page, keywords play a vital role. To achieve this, you’ll need to perform keyword research, which involves discovering and analysing the language users are searching to find the information they’re looking for.

But why is this process so vital for an effective digital marketing strategy? In this article, we’ll explain the benefits of keyword research, and explore the best ways for copywriters to conduct it.

Why is Keyword Research Important for Digital Marketing?

Keyword research is an important tool for copywriters, as it can help you better understand a client’s target audience and their pain points. This allows you to create valuable content that will be appreciated by both the client and their consumers. 

Here are some of the key benefits that keyword research contributes to digital marketing: 

Provides a Good Understanding of User Intent

One of the main advantages of keyword research is that it can help you learn about the target audience you’re writing for, including their intent when searching for particular products and services.

For instance, if you’re writing for a disability care company looking to attract new clients, you may find that competitors are using keywords like trustworthy, compassionate, or caring. This is because a key customer pain point in this industry is finding services that prioritise the client’s unique needs, and these terms demonstrate this sentiment.

Using the relevant keywords, you can then craft your content to demonstrate how the company overcomes these pain points. When using a key search term such as “trustworthy disability care services in my area”, your client’s content may therefore be more findable for potential customers among the thousands of other pages out there.

Encourages Better Search Engine Ranking

Finding and using specific keywords also allows you to create content that is as relevant as possible to the target audience. This is particularly important when it comes to Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and the ranking position of your client’s website.

Search engines like Google prioritise websites that use relevant keywords, as they can see exactly what the content is about and how it may be useful to searchers. Researching and using significant terms can therefore push your content higher up SERPs.

Being on at least the first page of results increases the visibility of your content, driving organic traffic to the site. In fact, studies show that the first organic search result in Google has an average click-through rate of 28.5%. This is important for staying relevant in saturated markets, helping companies to compete, and encouraging conversions. 

Allows Web Pages to Demonstrate Authority

Researching industry-specific terminology and then using these terms in your content shows users specifically what a brand can do to help them, including their areas of expertise. 

This helps to highlight a brand’s unique selling points and show how they are different from their competitors, which may push users to invest in your client’s product or service.

Keyword research also allows you to optimise your content, ensuring that it fits in with Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines. This is a component of their Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, which rate the quality of websites in terms of whether they are providing helpful, relevant information. 

Keyword research is particularly useful for the “A” part of this acronym, as using the right terms can help your client’s website work towards being an authoritative source. It can also be beneficial for “E”, showing that the website author has relevant expertise and skills in the field. 

Conducting thorough keyword research therefore helps to ensure that users trust the website that you’re writing for.

How to Find Suitable Keywords

To start your keyword research process, you’ll first need to come up with a seed keyword. This is a broad term that describes the industry your client is operating in. 

For instance, if you’re writing for a disability care company, the keyword could be “disability” “disability support” or “disability care”

Once you’ve got some wider ideas related to the topic of the site, you can then use these to find more specific keywords. Whilst you could browse competitors' websites and look at the terms they rank for, the most efficient method is to plug your seed keyword into a tool.

Keywords Everywhere collates data from a range of various SEO tools, including Google Analytics, Search Console, and Google Trends to simplify the process of finding the best keywords. Answer The Public is another great option, which takes suggested autocomplete searches and creates a visual search cloud of questions around your keyword.

These tools will provide you with suggestions for both short-tail and long-tail keywords.  Short-tail keywords cover broad topics, such as “copywriting tools.” Generic terms such as these attract huge amounts of traffic, so user conversion rates tend to be low.

Long-tail refers to more specific phrases that target a particular market, like “best copywriting tools to increase productivity.” Although you may receive fewer website visits per keyword, these terms tend to answer user intent more effectively and will therefore attract more of the target audience.

Tools such as Ahrefs are handy for striking a balance between short and long-tail terms. Ahrefs awards keywords a score between 0 and 100, based on how likely a website is likely to rank for them. You’ll need to use a balance of these terms to drive a high volume of traffic to your client’s page, whilst also encouraging high conversion rates.

Final Thoughts

Conducting thorough keyword research ensures that you produce helpful, trustworthy, and creative content that targets audience pain points and shows how a product or service can overcome them. 

It also helps to produce excellent search engine ranking results for your client, and highlights your skills as a great copywriter. For more tips on taking your career to the next level, visit The Author’s Pad, where copywriters live, learn, and work.

FAQs

What Are the Benefits of Keyword Research in Digital Marketing?

Performing thorough keyword research ensures that you understand the niche in which your client operates. This enables you to create relevant content that will rank highly on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), meet user intent, and address consumer pain points. 

What is the Main Purpose of Using Keywords?

As an integral part of any great Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy, keywords used on a blog post, landing page, or sales page help attract consumers who have an interest in a brand’s products or services. They do this by allowing the website to demonstrate authority, pushing it higher up Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), and driving organic traffic.

Are Keywords Still Important for SEO?

Although search engine algorithms are continually changing, and tools such as voice search and zero-click searches have come into play, keywords still play an important role in SEO strategies. They help search engines index web pages, which can push them higher up the results page and drive organic traffic toward your client’s website.