You’re here because you want to know what to do after keyword research. We assume you mean on a mainstream search engine such as Google, rather than YouTube, Spotify, Pinterest, Amazon etc (which are all equally search engines).
The point of keyword research is usually to get a sense of supply and demand for people looking for stuff on some platform, e.g. Google search. Usually this forms part of someone’s marketing strategy for their business. But people do keyword research for different reasons, and this affects what you do after. The different scenarios usually are:
- Increasing website traffic;
- Doing competitive intelligence
- Getting product / business ideas
- Doing due diligence (e,g, when acquiring a company)
Let's get to it.
Keyword research Scenario 1: Increase My Website Traffic
For entrepreneurs and website owners who want to increase people discovering their brand, product, service etc – this is vanilla SEO material. After you’ve completed keyword research, you should have a list of relevant keywords that are not too competitive for your size.
I emphasize competition in this scenario because you are here to rank on search engines, and because in most scenarios you will be competing against other websites to rank for search terms, you need to factor in competition. Choose keywords of relevant competition to your domain authority.
For example, flamencowithrafael.com is a new, small website, and so has no chance of ranking for the term ‘flamenco’. Too competitive. But after doing keyword research, I can say that it has a pretty good chance of ranking for ‘flamenco guitar chords’ or ‘flamenco dresses’ or ‘flamenco instruments’ and so forth. In this article I am not detailing how to do keyword research; I assume you have already done all this.
Keyword research Scenario 2: See How Competitors Are Growing
For entrepreneurs and website owners who likewise want to increase people discovering their brand, product, service etc – this again is vanilla SEO material. Understanding how your competitors are using keywords to build their distribution is very handy. With tools such as SEMRush, AhrefsFirst and SimilarWeb, you can see what keywords they are targeting, how much traffic this roughly brings, and in a wider sense get a feel for how their distribution strategy stacks up.
In some cases, you can spot areas where you can do better than them. Maybe they're missing out on long-tail keywords or there's a lack of depth in their content. Use this insight to refine your content strategy.
So, what to do after completing keyword research for a competitor? – generally the answer is to outcompete them (if it’s working for them - if it’s not working for them, consider why? Are they too busy and have overlooked it, or is there something fundamental about this space that means search traffic is not useful?)
Keyword research Scenario 3: Entrepreneurs Researching Product Ideas & Trends
If you're exploring new product ideas or want to stay on top of industry trends, keyword research can be insightful. You’re not interested in ranking here, but just in seeing what topics or themes are growing in popularity.
Look for rising trends in search queries related to your industry. Google Trends is a decent tool for this purpose. Tools like SEMRush and Ahref are also good. For Amazon, JungleScout is useful.
Keep in mind with these tools that generally all professionals in a given space are using them –which takes away your edge. Let’s take Amazon sellers. While you have an edge over people who aren’t using these tools (who are probably new to the space and so not real competition anyway), you’re still competing against everyone else with the tool. Execution and having extra depth of insight does not come out of the box – that’s on you. There are some newsletter services which will surface trends, I like ExplodingTopics.
You don’t need to limit yourself to keyword research tools; you can look over related forums, social media conversations, and Q&A sites. These platforms can provide a wealth of information about what potential customers are discussing, their pain points, and what they are looking for in products or services. You can even automate this process and have insights surface automatically. Talk to Self Studio about this.
Keyword research Scenario 4: Website Acquisition Due Diligence
More of a niche area, but when acquiring a digital business, you want to understand the risks involved. It would be a bad thing to buy a website doing $5m a year but that website is 90% reliant on search traffic which exists on a flimsy edifice which is about to fall apart. It’s happened plenty of times I am sure.
Things to watch in this space would be:
- What keywords is the acquisition target ranking for?
- Is that sustainable?
- How quickly did it build this ranking?
- What is the domain’s toxicity rating
- Is the page’s content generally junk or expert cornerstone content?
- Is the website at risk of any algorithm changes or penalties?
- Are there any competitors who risk outcompeting the target website / growing rapidly in a similar space?
- Is there room to grow?
- Are there other niches with appropriate competition to expand out to?
- Is the process to rank on search engines repeatable once key employees have left?
- What proportion of website traffic, leads and revenue come from SEO as opposed to other distribution channels (eg partnerships, affiliates, paid, social, email and so on)
- Is the search engine / traffic data true? Is it fake or manipulated?
So What Do I Do After Keyword Research?
If you want more website traffic, you write content for it, and optimise existing pages for it.
If you want to suss out how a competitor is ahead of you, you take the research back to your growth team to plan how to beat them.
If you're fishing for product ideas, you go mull over the insights, dig a little deeper, and perhaps try and find a way to validate your service/product idea without spending more than $50.
If you're looking to acquire a digital business or property, you probably take it back to your lawyer and due diligence team.
Self Growth can help with most of these things, if not all; if you'd like a chat to see if we can help, get in contact.
