Quickie - 10 Minutes to Better Rankings in Google

In today's marketing, SEO is one of those topics that are difficult to wrap your head around. SEO is a little art and a little science. It stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO aims to get a website's pages to show up on page one of search engine results pages organically. It is always changing and nearly infinite in scope. It is necessary if you want to compete. Not all web designers or developers offer SEO, and you should not assume it is part of those projects. SEO has a high ROI, but most small and medium-sized businesses experience a bit of sticker shock when seeking a reputable, proven service.

As daunting as that sounds, there is a lot you can do on your own, and in just a few minutes, you can learn enough to make sure you have the on-page basics under control. 

SEO is based on keywords – the words people type into search engines like Google to find products, services, and content they are seeking. People think they understand and know what customers will type into a search engine to find their stuff. I am here to tell you there is a high likelihood those people might be wrong.

So let's start with keyword research.

Keyword research is the exercise of finding the most used keywords to get searchers to a website. But that's less than half of the story. If you are embarking on an SEO journey on your own or hiring someone, what I am about to tell you is critical. Not many companies do keyword research correctly. 

There is good news and bad news. The bad news is it's more difficult and time-consuming than most understand. The good news is when done properly, your results will be much better, and you won't have to go through the untangling of your first efforts, which is a lot of work.

Some SEO projects only need to focus on a few keywords, and some might require thousands. To find the soft gooey center of your most valuable keywords, you have to break down desired results – whether it be lead conversion or all the way through to purchase. Then you break up the keywords into smaller groups base on the desired outcomes.

The easiest way I can explain it is through an example. Let's look at the process of buying a new car. Here's a fun fact; it takes the average person 108 days to purchase a vehicle from the time they first consider buying. According to Google's research, there are 5 steps in the buying process:

1. Looking at all the best cars
2. Researching which car is the right fit
3. Deciding if the price will work
4. Finding dealers that have the car
5. Getting the best deal

To understand keyword research and keyword strategy, you have to know your customer's buying process. Whether your customer's buying method is more in-depth or less, or whether you are a B2C or a B2B, you still have the same work in front of you. 

Since SEO companies tend to over complicate or over-simplify things, and DIYers have to figure things out for themselves, I have devised 3 simple steps to help keep your project from getting away from you.

1. Identify the steps in your customer's buying journey
2. Determine which steps you must be involved in and understand that the keywords will be different for each step in the buying journey. In general, the keywords will be vaguer earlier in the journey and more specific as they get closer to buying. In the car buying example, they might search for fuel efficient 5 passenger crossover – early in their process, but when they are about ready to buy, they might search for 2019 Ford Escape Titanium
3. Research keywords your customers might use to find your content for each step your organization is involved in. Now you will be organized with smaller, more granular sets of keywords for each step of your customer's buying process.

So, how do you know what keywords people are using? Well, there are many keyword research tools, including Google Keyword Planner, Moz Keyword Explorer,