Keyword Research for your Digital Marketing Strategy

In recent times during the Fall of 2022, companies have had to work harder to drive conversions to their online stores. But what's more difficult is getting traffic from your SEO efforts in a borderline economy, and disrupted supply chains. Content strategy has to serve several purposes in communications, Google Search, Marketing, and Sales. Your keyword strategy has to perform in all these areas and when the content creation is executed, the result will be high-quality impactful words for your audience as well as assisting google to help find your audience.

Digital Marketing and your Value Proposition

Communicating effectively requires various tools such as video, imagery, words, animation, presentation, layout, and good User Interface/User Experience (UI/UX). While most of these work well with humans in large formats, when it comes to smartphones you have to adjust the interface/presentation to fit the smaller screen. This is why UI/UX designers do both a desktop and mobile layout of the page design, to simulate the experience for its users for the development team to implement. Somewhere in the page journey, your message has to be placed in - your value proposition.

The keyword research for your message that will both entice as well as differentiate is key since you are looking to have keywords that carry search volume yet, you want to have fewer competitors using the keywords chosen. It all comes down to the right combination of the keywords that you are looking to tell your story. Your keyword search has to be based on the key tenets of your brand, your market segment, your products, your service, and what it means to your audience. It doesn't take an SEO Agency to deliver these keywords to you if you have a simple tool to understand the trending keywords - trends.google.com provides this for free.

Creating a list of keywords that have good trends, and then putting them together to have an impactful sentence is the goal. The core keywords for your site can be part of the effort as well (Core keywords being pulled from the competition to attract their traffic).

Adapting your Value Proposition to your Marketing Channels

While creating your marketing strategy, your channels would be identified. And while your Value Proposition is being assembled, you can adapt the content created to your channels with minor variations to appeal to the audience in a more personalized way. Your target market has to be profiled via your market research, and while the core essence of your Value Proposition statement stays true to its brand values, the adjustment brings a higher comfort for your audience coming in from that particular channel. If you have a brick-and-mortar retail store and an online store, your brand and tagline may be the same, but your value proposition is what starts to adapt to the type of customer walking in through the door, or arriving at your online store.

Keyword Strategy and your Digital Content

While there are books written about SEO strategies, this is more of a tactical description of going about creating content for your site - landing pages, product pages, and blog posts. Sure, there are different types of marketing approaches, but no online store escapes the Google Algorithm when it comes to the Google Search Console and the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) placement. So to successfully market your online store, your content has to be sought after on all your channels, covering social media, email marketing, Google Ads, forums, and anything that might carry your message to your audience. However, to make your message resonate between all the various mediums - your keyword strategy has to be formulated.

Keyword Search and Research

Most of the work in your marketing efforts should be 60% in planning, and 40% in execution. Yes, that's right, it takes effort in "taking aim" and making your message hits the target audience just right while executing your plan requires follow-up with creative, launch, and metrics. In the planning keyword search for your message is needed for the title of your page, Ad, Product Page or Blog - searching for the higher volume keyword that fits the right industry and context. Then keyword research on the correlated keywords (semantic keywords) to write your content.

Content creation using choice Keywords

Writing with researched keywords as a guide can be a bit intimidating at first since for most creative minds, it will feel restrictive when it comes to expression. It is less restrictive when it comes to smaller sentences like a value proposition, or a tagline. But when you write a blog post where the narrative is a lot more extensive, "peppering" the keywords in can feel more natural if you use a content writing tool that checks for your writing. Google checks on your narrative for Originality, Readability, Tone of Voice, and SEO-based Keywords. Tools like SEMRush provides this service for SEO companies and is key to creating the resonance of your keywords for your industry - especially if you offer SEO services. Combined with Web Design (UI/UX), your keywords + media you can deliver a serious punch for your digital marketing.

Conclusion

A lot of online store owners focus hard on their conversion rates, via lowering checkout friction, reducing bounce rate, promotional methods, loyalty programs, online chat, and various other tools. Properly researched keywords also improve conversion rates by bringing the right audience to the online store. Traffic can be "irrelevant" or can be "your type of customer" - improving traffic must be aimed at the latter. If traffic is augmented in the former, it will distort the metrics, and lower your conversion rate by diluting the customer base that would be relevant. There are many ways in which a closely prepared strategy can harm a business, making sure the keyword research is done thoroughly on your competition, your market segment, for your products, your landing pages, your blogs, and all other marketing activities is key in ensuring your message is sharp and clear for the right audience to engage with your online store. If you have any questions on how to approach your digital marketing, feel free to reach out to us at wish@thegenielab.com