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Discover How To Thrash the Competition With Ingenious Keyword Research Hacks

Believe it or not, but in SEO, keyword research is one of the most debated topics. It is one of the most important aspects which have a major impact on what you’re trying to achieve on search engines. Right? In this blog post, we are not going to talk about the tedious and laborious process of keyword research. However, what we are going to talk about is how you can align your business goals with keyword research hacks. The result you get after that will be amazing. If you learn the hacks of keyword researching, your project and site will never be the same as it was before. You’ll start getting a good amount of traffic from different channels which in turn increase your leads, sales and return on investment (ROI).

What Does Keyword Research Do?

Let’s cut the crap and face it. If you pick the wrong keywords, you’ll be certainly going to miss your targeted audience completely. And, if you choose to go with super long-tail keywords, you may miss out on desired traffic. If you choose highly competitive keywords, you’ll find yourself nowhere on Google search engine result pages (SERPs). So, how do you put all this together in a strategic way to make the most out of it? Or, how do you align your keywords with your business’s revenue goals? Well, keyword research should be the answer to these questions. So, now take a look at the keyword research hacks to beat the competition.

Step 1: Understanding That Keywords Are Divided Into 3 Major Categories

It is considered wise to understand that keywords are divided into 3 major categories that belong to different stages of the funnel. The phrase of the keyword or search query shows how far in your sales funnel the prospect customer should land.

Enlisted Below Are The 3 Major Categories:

Top-of-funnel keywords are completely informational (for example: how to, step by step, a guide to, the best way to etc.).

Middle-of-funnel keywords are the solutions of queries (for example ways to fix, how to stop, ways to avoid, things that actually works and so on).

Bottom-of-funnel keywords aim at high buyer intent (for example: from where can I buy, compare prices, best prices, affordable, order online and so on).

As you can see, top-of-funnel keywords are completely informative in nature while bottom-of-funnel keywords are purely transactional. This is the biggest separation gap between your list of targeted keywords. So, you need to identify the keywords which you need to target. Figure out your keywords for top, middle, and bottom of funnel keywords. After that do the needful on-page SEO changes required to target these keywords.

Step 2: Think What Sort of Keywords You Need To Focus To Target Your Audience

Every business be it small or large should do comprehensive keyword research based on their desired goals. For that, you need to first decide whether you want to build a long-term connection with your audience or you are targeting those shoppers that are always ready to buy or compare products. If you are aiming for a long-term audience build, you should target top-of-funnel and middle-of-funnel keywords. On the other hand, if you are aiming for running an SEO campaign for an e-commerce site, you should go for bottom-of-funnel keywords. By creating a projection for your keywords in your mind, you can follow your prospects’ trail through your site.

Step 3: “Hack” The Process By Setting Your Business Goals

It comes with no surprise that keyword research involves tons of data and spreadsheet formation. We understand that this process is boring as hell, but we can’t skip this part because it’s highly imperative to take a business to the next level. To be honest, we hack this process for our clients. Instead of this, we prefer to set goals for our clients and cast a vision accordingly. Goals define the content and the sole purpose of a site gets clarified. Let us clarify you more by giving an example of “hacking” the process by setting goals.

If you’re into SEO for more than a year, you must have heard about Neil Patel, the famous entrepreneur and top influencer on the web. Right? Erstwhile, he wrote a blog post in which he talked about how he built a 7-figure SEO agency. Have you ever thought how did he grow his SEO agency to such a vast level? Referrals? No, not exactly. By speaking at conferences, blogging, and by helping out famous bloggers to draw more customers in. But, how did he manage to convince them that they need to hire him for their SEO work? Not by selling SEO services, but by selling the realistic results they would get if they hire him. He focused on their goals. He talked about how he could improve their search engine rankings for each targeted keywords, which would drive X no. of visitors every month to their website. Then, he talked about he could improve conversion rates. Eventually, he talked about how much more money they could make if they decide to hire him. This is why it is crucial to set goals. Although, we don’t do everything that Neil does, yes we truly liked his idea about casting a vision and relating it to the revenue.

It is always considered wise to set your traffic, conversion, and business revenue goals. Then, keep an eye on them. This will keep you focused on your aim and give a clearer vision of what you are supposed to do.

Step 4: Find the Competition

Whenever we work for any new client, the very first thing that we do is find their competition. Within an hour or two, we have a list of companies that are way ahead of our client; we mark them as our potential competitors. Then, we decide on how much time we’ll give a tough competition to them.

Our goal pattern somewhat looks like this:

5 Years Ahead: 2 million Search Traffic
2 Years Ahead: 1000,000 Search Traffic
1 Year Ahead: 100,000 Search Traffic
6 Months Ahead: 50,000 Search Traffic

It completely depends on where you’re starting. For example, if you are starting from the beginning, you may have to put some extra efforts in searching SMEs to target first. You can take the help of free online tools out there for doing this research work. Find out similar sites in your niche and prepare a list of the same. Then, go through the same list using free online tools such as Alexa, SEMrush, and Open Site Explorer and so on. Note down the traffic of each site and put the site in sequential traffic order.

Step 5: Time To Put It All Together for Ranking Magic

Now, you have almost every single detail of your competitor, it’s time to do some SEO. Start setting up the link structure to match or beat your competitors. Initiate with writing engaging content with your targeted keywords. There are many large sites that produce content with great speed, but it isn’t impossible to beat them. Apply some basic math, and you can clearly analyze what it will take to beat them. Now, put your solid result-driven plan into action. Make sure you have enough content and link acquisition happening to achieve the desired goal. Wait for some time but make sure you are progressing towards your goal.

Know Why This Process Really Work To Achieve The End Goal

The simple reason is that this process is far better than just doing mediocre keyword research and coming up with content. The best part of this entire process is that it shows your clients that you’ll hit the target indeed because you’re not just making lofty claims but you have a solid plan to achieve the end goals.

Hopefully, this blog post turns out helpful for you to rank higher on Google search engine result pages (SERPs) and even beat your high-ranking competitors.

Atul Kumar

Atul Kumar is a Digital Marketing Manager at Impressico Digital with over a decade of experience, making him the go-to expert for SEO, PPC, Social Media, Email Marketing, and Content Marketing. With a deep understanding and expertise, Atul has helped numerous businesses improve their digital presence and strategies to maximize ROI.

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