The Eight Steps To SEO Success

4. Do your keyword research and rank tracking

Getting this right makes everything so much easier.

Good keyword research allows you to clearly define and optimise your target market(s) as well as learning from your competitors (life’s too short to reinvent the wheel).

Going back to our earlier keyword examples, look at competitiveness and volume.

• Competitiveness: gets a score between 1 and 100, with 1 being easy and 100 being difficult. We recommend working with keywords scoring below 50
• Volume: this is shown as the average number of monthly searches

Keyword tools

A good keyword research tool, such as Semrush, Moz, Ahrefs, or SE Ranking, will help you create a baseline and track your progress. They all work on similar principles and come with a free trial so you can discover which one suits you best. They are good at explaining what you need to do to improve your rankings and tend to have helpful support teams.

Be aware that the free and budget keyword tools can give misleading competition and keyword difficulty scores. And there’s nothing more frustrating than putting in time and effort creating content that doesn’t have an impact because your chosen keyword is more competitive than you thought.

This is the fourth step in a series of eight from my SEO Guide. If you’d like a free copy of the whole guide, simply click here with ‘SEO Guide’ in the Subject line.

Alternatively, if you need help making sense of this, let us know!