Don't think from yourself but from your target audience
Conducting a keyword research is a relatively easy way to gain insight into which search terms are of interest to your target audience. A good keyword research will lay the foundation of your website's menu structure, categories and subpages.
In practice, I often see companies making decisions about the hierarchy of their website based on market knowledge and gut feeling. I think this is a shame, because companies can miss out on a lot by wrongly assuming they know the needs of their target audience. With a keyword research, on the other hand, you are not looking from yourself but rather from the perspective of the target audience. Using the keyword planner in Google Ads, it is possible to gain insight into:
- The estimated monthly search volume;
- the proposed bid to advertise;
- The level of competition for the search term in question.
With these criteria, you can easily determine which landing pages to create and what content to write for them.
Determine the hierarchy of your website in 4 steps
Let's go through the steps you can use to lay the foundation for a solid website hierarchy.
Step 1 - Retrieve trends & search volume
The first step is to query trends and search volume. Personally, as I also describe above, I like to use the keyword planner in Google Ads, but there are plenty of other tools out there. You could check out KeywordSpy, KGEN, Keywordtool io, Moz, SEMrush, Spyfu and Soovle. Decide which one works best for you. As for querying trends and search volume, include in your keyword research anything that seems interesting to your website and that your visitor and potential buyer should be able to read more about on your website. After all, you are (or will be) the authority in your market or industry, right?
Step 2 - Categorizing and labeling
Suppose you are an interior stylist. Then you will also notice in the keyword planner that there are other synonyms for the keyword "interior stylist," such as "interior designer," "interior designer" or "interior decorator. Don't forget to include these in your keyword research, depending on to what extent these synonyms are relevant to your business. In fact, when writing your future content, it is also important to include other focus keywords in your text, should you want to rank high on those as well. You probably want to be findable on multiple keywords and prefer/prioritize the one that has the most search volume.
Grading and naming
Back to the roadmap: categorizing and labeling. Divide all your found keywords into groups about which you can write a page. Name these groups, too. You will also find search volume for the keyword 'interior stylist' on 'living room decorating', 'interior design tips living room' and 'living ideas'. Determine if these keywords are also interesting for your business and place them again within your own chosen category. Perhaps you yourself see opportunities in monthly blogging about interior design tips (read our earlier blog on how best to blog for business).
Determine the priorities
By the way, what is also important is keeping track of the combined monthly search volume of each self-defined category. Based on this you will determine in the next step how important each category is and how extensively it should be written about. The more search traffic there is in a certain category, the more potential visitors can be attracted to the website and the more priority this category has. Below I give you an example of a covert keyword research. Of course, there are hundreds of other keywords that are relevant that you can include in your own research.
Step 3 - Lay out the hierarchy of your website
Based on search volume and keywords, you can categorize your site hierarchy and set up your website. To illustrate, in the "rooms" category, we see several rooms. Create a subpage for each room and categorize it based on search volume. The more search volume, the higher it will be in the hierarchy.
Step 4 - Don't forget the open doors!
The keyword planner is a handy tool to see from the potential visitor's perspective which page layout best suits your website. But beware: with all these keywords, don't forget the most obvious pages for your website such as a 'contact page' and an 'about page'. Although the potential visitor is not looking for these directly, it is obviously very important to include them on your website.
Even more benefits
There you go! You've just laid out your site hierarchy. Is that all? No! Keyword research brings even more benefits.
Ideal for your ads
For conducting a keyword research, you are already indirectly laying the groundwork for your future Google Ads campaign. With the keyword research, you know what potential visitors are searching for, and with the site hierarchy you've categorized, you've probably written a large portion of pages that can serve as landing pages. This makes setting up your Google Ads campaign, ad groups and ads a lot easier.
Capitalize on your competition
You can also use the keyword research to focus on specific keywords with which you want to rank high in the organic search results. For this, it is important that the website structure optimally matches the search terms and that you take into account the corresponding search volume. The competition factor also comes into play here. With the keyword planner in Google Ads it is possible to see the competition of a keyword. This score is between 0 and 1 (0 is little and 1 is a lot of competition). If there is high competition on a specific search term, it can be a considerable and costly challenge to achieve a high ranking in the search results. In that case, it may be more attractive to focus on similar search terms where there is significantly less competition.
Leave your keyword research to us?
It should hopefully be clear that keyword research is very important when starting and optimizing your online business. Hopefully I have helped you a little bit on your way. If you still have questions about conducting a keyword research or want to outsource it, feel free to contact us. We will be happy to help you with the next step for your website.
