3 Keyword Research Metrics for Analyzing Your Website

Many businesses struggle with keyword research. Most marketers recognize the importance of targeting high-volume keywords, whether for organic search rankings or paid campaigns, but are unsure of how to implement cost-effective and data-driven processes. This can easily lead to wasted time and resources, and often, marketers will cease or jettison marketing activities because they don’t believe they can achieve a positive return on investment.

In the vast majority of cases, this is a mistake. By leveraging a handful of key principles, most companies can profit significantly from keyword research. That’s why in this post, we’re going to outline how anybody can develop proven, revenue-driven keyword research practices for their company, irrespective of experience. 

What Is Keyword Research? 

In a nutshell, “keyword research” is simply the practice of identifying high-volume keywords with low organic or paid competition. Marketers use a variety of tools to brainstorm, evaluate, and leverage these keywords to drive traffic to their websites. 

Let’s look at a practical example. Supposing a business sells golf equipment, it might identify terms like “best golf clubs” and “golf jokes” with relatively low competition, meaning that few sites currently rank for these terms or only a few advertisers are bidding for them. It will then publish content on its site that is focused on these keywords with the hope of ranking on Google. Alternatively, marketers may create targeted ads that lead potential customers to a dedicated landing page. 

The process of keyword research has several distinct phases, including brainstorming, and evaluation, which involves ranking keywords based on a number of volume and competition metrics, and the creation of keyword-optimized ads or content. 

While there are many tools that can be used to complete these stages, we recommend all-in-one solutions like Ubersuggest, which enable marketers to carry out an array of tasks without having to rely on multiple apps. 

How Can Keyword Research Help Your Business?

Keyword research helps companies find new customers in a myriad of ways. Here are some of the most common examples: 

●      Identify opportunities to rank in search engines - By identifying high-volume keywords with low competition, businesses can create content that is likely to rank for these terms, thus driving organic traffic to their website. This is one of the most widespread forms of “inbound marketing”, where businesses seek to capture the attention of individuals by providing solutions to problems they are actively seeking to remedy. Products and services are then advertised alongside this content. 

●      Implement cost-effective paid ad campaigns that drive a positive return-on-investment - Paid advertising is growing increasingly competitive. Using services like Google Adwords, advertisers bid on keywords. The highest bidders then have their ads shown alongside organic results for keywords or natively in relevant content on third-party websites. The ability to find low-cost but high-volume keywords is crucial because it enables marketers to drive a return on their ad spend over the long-term. 

●      Find popular topics for your content marketing campaigns - Keyword research is an effective tool for pinpointing subjects for your site’s blog, social media, and content marketing campaigns that are likely to resonate and engage potential and existing customers. Keyword phrases are strong indicators of interest in a particular area. 

●      Avoid low-volume keywords and topics - Keyword research is one of the most effective bulwarks against wasted time and resources. By evaluating keywords correctly, you can avoid focusing your attention and energy on those unlikely to provide a good return on investment.

Key Metrics for Keyword Research 

Once you have put together a list of possible target keywords, either for organic or paid campaigns, you have to evaluate them. This is where a lot of companies falter. They blindly target keywords without thoroughly considering profitability. 

While every individual campaign is different, we’ll go over some of the metrics that usually need to be taken into account. We’ll be demonstrating how to find these metrics in Ubersuggest, while looking at some real data for the keyword “business analyst”. 

1.   Search volume

Search volume is a central metric and should sit at the center of your keyword processes. The term “search volume” refers to the number of monthly searches that a particular keyword or phrase receives.

The answer to the question, “What is a good volume for a keyword?” will vary from business to business. Low-volume keywords related to high-cost products and services will be worth pursuing, for example. For other markets, volumes will need to be higher. Ultimately, you should consider the cost of ranking for a term, either organically or through paid ads, in the context of lead value and customer lifetime value. 

2.   Cost per click

The average cost per click of a keyword refers to the amount you will have to pay to bring a visitor to your website. It’s essential for advertisers to quantify the value of new traffic by taking metrics like landing page conversion rate and customer lifetime value into account. 

3.   Paid difficulty and SEO difficulty 

Paid and SEO difficulty refer to the level of competition of a particular keyword. Keywords with high competition will be more challenging to rank for and will have a higher cost per click. Difficulty is a useful metric because it enables you to calculate the resources required to rank a term and determine if you can drive a worthwhile ROI. Many marketers focus exclusively on low-difficulty keywords to minimize costs. 

Conclusion

Keyword research should form the bedrock of your organic traffic and paid advertising strategies. Take a little time to find the right tools, and test and implement effective processes. Doing so will generate significant dividends far into the future and give you a definite edge over your competitors.