Numerous experts in the field of digital marketing argue that keyword research is one of, if not THE most important, thing a business needs to do to be successful in their SEO efforts. As far as we might be concerned, keyword research is the foundation of your entire SEO strategy and is without a doubt quite possibly the most important steps you as a business can take to optimize your site.

However, it's important to get this keyword research right, directly from the start. There are many hidden pitfalls with keywords, not least ensuring that they relate to the website user and their search intention at the point that they may draw in with your brand. Streamlining for some wrong keywords can be pretty much as awful as not optimizing by any means.

What is keyword research?
In basic terms, keyword research includes the analysis and research of keyword terms – or in plainer language, the searches your website user might be searching into Google. Using expert SEO tools, like SEMrush or Google AdWords Keyword Planner, we can find the search volume of specific terms relevant to your business and how difficult they are to rank for on Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Page). It's a key process to finding the right keywords for your customers to find you online.

If your website is excluding the correct keyword terms you could be missing out on for sure – your site might be loaded up with keywords that nobody is, in any event, looking for, and you'll struggle to acquire new customers if nobody can find you when they search.

Types of keywords
•     Short-tail keywords
•     Long-tail keywords

Note that a keyword doesn't need to be one particular word. Short-tail keywords can be described as containing three words or less, and long-tail keywords contain multiple words. Commonly long-tail keywords are simpler to rank because they will be more specific and niche, while short-tail keywords will, be more generalized.

You need to choose how narrow or broad you need your keyword focus to be, and this somewhat varies on the products or services you offer. As a decent thumb rule, it is important to focus on the keywords that apply to your product or services, not too difficult to rank for and have a good month-to-month search volume.

Benefits of keyword research
Let me tell you some of the primary advantages keyword research can have
•     Increase in site traffic from web crawlers
•     Appear when people are looking for your product or service
•     Rank higher on web search tools
•     Find out additional about your target market
•     Explore niche areas not yet found by your rivals
•     Achieve authority over your competitor sites

With this variety of advantages, is there any good reason why you wouldn't have any desire to put resources into keyword research?
Keyword research is the way to discover the keywords for your business and see how you are positioning or could rank these keywords on Google. Here are probably the most important  reasons why:
•     Knowing your keywords assists you with understanding your brand and your business. What are you selling? What are your services?
•     Keyword research can reveal to you fundamental data, for example, where you rank for keywords, which keywords are not difficult to rank for and which keywords others are using.
•     Keyword research can tell you what people are searching for, rather than what you think they are searching for.
•     Identifying keywords to use in a blog, journals and guest outreach can direct people to your site.

Which keywords to target?
Start with keywords that can normally be important for your content. Check the readability of your content so that anyone can understand it. Avoid inserting the new keyword or phrase and find another way to incorporate it.

1. Start with a seed list
Record however many words and expressions as you can about your page. You will need to do this for your site by and large and your page or post. This is your most realistic estimation of words that would portray the content on your page.

2. Ask these inquiries of each word/expression of yourself:
a) Do real users search for this word/phrase?
b) If users get to my site from searching for this word, will it be what people are looking for?
c) Are users who get to my site from that search my target audience?

3. How difficult will it be to obtain rank for the word/expression:
You may have exactly the keywords that people are searching for on your site, but if no one can find what they are looking for because your competition is too strong, all of your SEO efforts could be wasted. This is where keyword research comes in.

Conclusion

Keyword research is consistently the main task in the SEO cycle. Marketers should think of keyword research on the same level as market research when optimizing sites and creating new campaigns. As a part of your basic planning, it's always a good idea to look at what your competitors in the industry are analyzing keywords on their site. Using keyword tools, you can compare those with your own to figure out which is all the more commonly searched.