Three Key Keyword Research Trends You Must Accept

Ask SEO experts to list the most changing SEO tactics of the last few years, and they could confidently say “link building.” Some point out “technical issues,” while few think about “keyword research.”

The truth is, while most SEO tasks look completely different these days, few SEO experts have done keyword research and changed the basic way of optimizing the content of those keywords.

Yes, it seems that the keyword density was left in the end (excluding Google) Power But basically nothing has changed. Run the Keyword Tool to find the relevant keyword string and use it as much as possible throughout the dedicated page.

In the meantime, Google’s understanding and treatment of keywords has changed completely.

1. Exact match keywords are obsolete

Google has a long history of trying to understand search queries, as well as collating word strings in search queries with documents in search indexes.

And they succeeded.

It started many years ago, when Hummingbird was first quietly introduced and officially announced in August 2013.

Still, few SEOs actually understood the update, or how much change was made to everything it knew.

Google is working to better understand the search process using Hummingbird and has made it clear that it will eventually solve all problems. They know exactly what the searcher wants and learn to give it, so fake signals and algorithmic manipulations do not affect search quality.

Hummingbird was the first to announce that Google wanted to understand “things” rather than matching “word strings.” In other words, using Hummingbird began to reduce the usefulness of exact match keyword strings.

And after the hummingbirds came BERT This helped Google better understand how people search.

Image source: Google

Short but quite enlightening video About the struggles and solutions of Google engineers trying to teach machines to understand what is obvious: What do people mean when entering a search query?

The video fully explains the evolution of SEO:

• The important thing is the context
• Google struggles, but slowly succeeds in understanding “context, tone, intent.”
• Search queries are becoming harder to predict as more and more people talk to search engines as they think.
• Stopwords are often important when actually adding meaning and changing it.

The point here: Keyword research tools are still useful.. They help you understand the pattern: how people tend to express questions when looking for answers and solutions in your niche.

However, keywords with search volume are not necessarily what people use to study your target topic. According to Google, people search in a variety of, often unpredictable ways.according to GoogleEvery day, 15% of searches are something Google has never seen.

Google encounters 15% every day All new search query.. This is the variety of search behaviors.

Apart from keyword matching, Google strives to give Complete and practical answer For queries. And that’s what your SEO strategy should aim to do as well.

Anything is fine Keyword research process What you are using may still be valid. This helps you understand the demands of a particular query, prioritize content assets, and structure your site.

that is optimisation A completely different step these days.It’s no longer enough to just use that word in Page title, description When Heading..

Therefore, if you want to create an optimization strategy for all the keywords you want to identify:

• Try to understand what you are happy with Search intent Behind the query: What are the searchers really looking for? list? video? Product to buy? A guide to follow? Slight changes to the searchable keyword string (eg) Plural and singular) You can indicate the search intent that you need to be aware of.
• Search Google for that query and look up the search snippet. Google is so good at identifying what searchers need, so it produces search snippets that can give you a lot of clues.

Note that the top document does not contain the exact search query.

Image source: Screenshot created by the author

2. Branded keywords are your priority

More and more people are using search to navigate to websites, and there are several reasons for that:

• You can search from the address bar using some of the most powerful browsers (including Safari on both desktop and mobile, and obviously Google Chrome).
• People are getting used to voice search, so they just speak the brand name to perform the search.

Image source: Screenshot created by the author

In other words, customers who are likely to know your brand and may be ready to buy – hard-earned customers are forced to search for your brand name or brand query. increase.

And what do they see?

It’s amazing how many companies don’t know what happens in brand search, and the number of customers lost due to poorly managed (or often non-existent) reputation management within SERPs.

There are three important things to know about brand-driven search.

• These are primarily intentional queries: These searchers are entering your brand name you are trying to buy from
• These are existing repeaters who often tend to buy more than their first-time customers.
• Due to both of the above factors, these are the brand’s top priorities.

Still, you have no control over what people see when searching for a brand. In fact, monitoring and optimizing these brand-driven queries is not a one-time task. As long as your brand exists, it’s there.

• Treat your brand name as a keyword: expand it and optimize for it, Monitor your site’s ranking
• Identify deeper levels of issues behind your brand-driven search patterns. What can be improved to solve the problem behind these queries?

Image source: Screenshot created by the author

Branded search queries need to be part of the sales funnel. About the page To Product page When Lead magnet You should seize those brand-led opportunities.

In many cases, if you see a lot of brand-driven keywords, you may need a higher level approach, such as: Stand-alone knowledge base.

3. Entity is important

Entities are Google’s way of understanding this world.

All entities are proper names: location, person, brand, etc.

Google has a map of entities called the knowledge graph, which constitutes an understanding of Google’s world.

Entities help Google understand context and search intent.

Image search: A beginner’s guide to semantic search

Being a Google entity means that you appear in a search that is implied but never mentioned:

Image source: Screenshot created by the author

Through the association of entities, Google is aware of what you are searching for.

The entity needs to be at the core of the keyword search process. Known entities are niches and how do you associate your brand with those entities?

Conclusion

Search engine optimization is evolving rapidly and requires an agile strategy for brands to catch up. If you’re doing keyword research in an old, perfectly matched way, your business is about 10 years behind!

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Ann Smarty is the founder of Viral Content Bee and the brand and community manager of Internet Marketing Ninjas.She can be found on twitter @seosmarty..

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