If you are the owner of a website or do anything related to SEO, then surely you too must be doing these 6 common keyword research mistakes.
Marketing on the internet is mostly dependent on the content of a site. When you’re optimizing the website to attract organic traffic, or managing SEM or paid social campaigns Content is the primary focus.
While a variety of things depends on content but the content itself depends on keywords and the subject you select. Keyword research doesn’t just help your content to rank higher on results pages of search engines with the correct keywords but is also a major factor in the format of your content.
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Common Keyword Research Mistakes
1. Not focusing on long-tail keywords
Another common error that novice SEOs and content marketers do is not pay enough attention to long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are phrases that typically comprise 3 or more terms.
In comparison to broad keywords, long-tail keywords are characterized by a low volume of searches, but they also have fewer competition terms that are easier to be ranked for. When conducting your keyword research, be sure you take the time to research thoroughly pertinent long-tail keywords.
2. Concentrating only on Long-Tail keywords
On the other hand, a spectrum where you only rely on long-tail keywords, and totally disregard broad keywords is risky. When conducting research on keywords it is crucial to strike a balance between both strategies. It is generally recommended to include both broad and long-tail keywords in your research plan.
In the current SEO world, everyone is using long-tail keywords. Thus the use of broad keywords has become something of a taboo but this shouldn’t be the situation. Google intends to help promote websites that demonstrate thought leadership and authority within the whole field.
This is only feasible by targeting broad keywords, however, there must be a strategy to achieve it. The best strategy is to use the pillar-and-cluster strategy to cover as wide of a space as possible.
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3. You’re looking up the terms, not the Topics
In order to be number one in terms of competitiveness it is necessary to be an expert in the subject that you are working on.
Do not expect to be ranked just a couple of paragraphs, when other people have written 1,500-word essays on the topic (that are easy to follow and highly cited). Take a look at the world from the perspective of your future client, customer, and reader (everyone).
4. You’re misusing HTML headings, hindering the success of any research
There are certain HTML structure rules that you shouldn’t violate. Every page should have only one tag, it isn’t wise to move up or down the hierarchy of headings, and the same goes for keyword stuff. to say goodbye to your rankings. What about the non-obvious things?
- Mix up headings using words that are synonyms (e.g., “top” instead of “best”, “low-cost” instead of “cheap”)
- Find more relevant searches by using catchy modifications (e.g., “free”, “how”, “for families”)
- Don’t use heading tags for aesthetic emphasis; use bold or underline styling instead
- Don’t only bold for emphasis; break up content with <h2>s where appropriate
- Be aware of the intention that is driving the search. Don’t search for keywords in untrue contexts
The general rule is that headings reflect the importance of any copy that is following. Your H1 tag is the most important, and H6 tags are considered to be the least significant sections.
Therefore, it is natural that you should include keywords in your headings to improve search engine results and to keep your headings as close to the level of H1 and H2 as you can to get the most SEO-friendly outcomes.
It’s a slippery slope towards sending a message spam but, if you do, take care. One good rule of thumb is to concentrate on the user experience when creating the skeleton of your website’s content.
5. You’re putting all your eggs in one basket
If your high school English teacher told you that you should not rely solely on Wikipedia as your sole source of data, Google Keyword Planner, Moz Open Site Explorer, or any other SEO or analytics platform shouldn’t be your sole source of data when you plan the content of your website. Take information from multiple sources and make informed decisions
- Utilize Google WebMaster Tools to determine the current position of your website on specific search queries.
- Make use of SEMrush to find your competitors’ popularity using your desired keywords
- Utilize Moz’s Keyword Difficulty Tester to discover terms easy to rank that aren’t on your radar.
- Utilize Google Autocomplete to find content ideas
- Make use of the Keyword Planner to create successful ads
In essence, make use of the power to make use of the power of Google, SEMrush, and Moz in combination. If you’re still not doing this, you should consider using an SEO-friendly platform to handle the content on your website.
6. Doing nothing to improve the SERPs
While tools for keyword research are essential components of the equation, it’s equally important not to overlook the actual results of search engine pages (SERPs).
If you examine these SERPs in their actual form, it is possible to learn more about the following aspects:
- You are able to comprehend the motives of the searcher.
- It is possible to determine exactly what the computer believes about a term and what kind of results it gives the user.
- You can determine the kind of information that the search engine prefer when a certain keyword phrase is searched for, e.g., a blog article, a page for a product such as a PDF, or a product page.
- Also, you can see that the top competitors are creating meta titles and meta descriptions to enable them to stay on the first page of SERPs.
