This is the first part in a series of six articles about SEO. Sign up in the sidebar to receive Schoolhouse Marketing in your inbox and enjoy marketing tips and advice for the home education market.
Is research of keywords, hashtags, and buzz words just an in-depth marketing tactic for those big businesses that need to keep their marketing department busy?
After all, Google recommends making the wording on your site natural and appealing to your visitor. So doesn’t that mean keywords don’t really matter anymore? The Googlebot will crawl your site and know whom to show your site to, right?
Well, not quite. Your wording should be natural and appealing, but do you know what wording your customer finds most appealing? Keyword research helps you understand what type of wording to use on your site—not to abuse the search engine mandate to show the user the most-appropriate results for what they’re looking for, but to use the phrases your ideal customer is using so they can find you and then be converted into a buyer.
The focus of your keyword research should be to identify phrases used by your target market. Remember that you need to appeal to your audience in the different stages of the customer journey and their experience in home education. They will likely be using different phrases as they move through the different stages and as they get more familiar with the homeschooling world. For example, people who know a lot about homeschooling may be using different keywords in their search queries than someone who is new to educating their children. Realizing these differences in search behavior and using a mix of keyword phrases while writing your page content, blog posts, and product pages could produce positive results for gaining organic traffic.
Researching words isn’t just for your website, though. Take this customer research to social media, as well, to identify the hashtags used by your audience and the style of language used in their posts and comments.
Keyword Research Resources
Ubersuggest – keyword research tool along with a lot of SEO training
SEO Article – learn more about keyword research and planning from Wordstream (you can check out their free keyword tool, too)
Google Webmaster Resources – Search Console (you already have this connected to your site, right?), site troubleshooting, training, and more to maintain a great site
Receive the individual attention that will help you reach the segment of the homeschooling market that is right for your business by contacting us for personal help with your advertising needs.
