Practically all of us in the Internet marketing industry have heard the phrase, “content is king”, but just because you have written relevant content for your website does not make it worthy of the 1^st position in Google search results (a.k.a. the throne). Sure, your website’s content may rank decently for some keywords and phrases. But without performing industry-specific keyword research, your website’s traffic (and the flow of online organic search leads) will suffer in the long run. And with so many factors contributing to a website’s rank at the top of search engines in today’s competitive world, one must capitalize on every possible strategy to gain the competitive advantage. Again, none of this can be achieved without performing thorough and industry-specific keyword research.

We at iMarket Solutions regularly create and manage relevant content on behalf of our clients. But we understand that some of our clients want to proactively perform keyword research to identify any low-hanging fruit for their online marketing campaigns. To help guide them down the right path, I have put together this blog post that will briefly detail why you should perform keyword research specific to your industry, and how you can go about doing so.

Perform Keyword Research Like You Dress for Work: Appropriately

Would you consider flying to Alaska in October without a jacket? The most likely answer: no. The same concept can be applied to online marketing. What may be appropriate for one region or industry may not necessarily apply to all. One must also take into account seasonal changes. For example, “air conditioning” focused keywords are not as popular in Seattle, WA as “heating” related keywords, especially in the winter months. This is why you need to put in the time and effort to ensure you are targeting as many of the most relevant, likely, and widely searched combinations of keyword phrases used to find businesses of your nature.

This is how you maximize your intake of organic search engine leads.

[caption id="attachment_1969" align="aligncenter" width="328"] THIS is how you perform keyword research![/caption]

Fortunately, your hard work will not go unnoticed, as this keyword research will pave the foundation for the focus of your content creation – both on the main pages of your website and on your blog (if you have one). For the sake of this blog post though, I will focus primarily on how to perform keyword research to rank better in Google search results.

What Are the Best Ways to Perform Keyword Research?

You can utilize many different techniques to help ascertain the best possible keywords to use for your Internet marketing campaign, but I’ll share with you some of the techniques we use here at iMarket Solutions.

1. One of the best ways for you to perform keyword research is to watch the top-ranking websites in your industry. After all, they are there for a reason. Chances are your competition has put in the time and effort to determine the most viable keywords to pursue. If you notice any particular competitive websites ranking for numerous keywords you would also like to target, then we suggest you reverse engineer them using a tool like SEM Rush or SpyFu. At no cost to you (besides the time spent researching) you can get a better understanding of which keywords your competitors are ranking for, and an estimate of how much search volume they are receiving as a result of their efforts.

 

2. If you have not already done so, set up Google Webmaster Tools. Once you have gathered enough data (we recommend waiting at least one month before viewing the report), you can go to the Search Queries report within the Search Traffic tab and view a list of keywords which your website is ranking for. To better determine the keywords that will drive the most traffic to your site, we recommend you take your filtering a step further by sorting impressions from greatest to least – I refer to this as the “keyword opportunities” report. Search for keywords with large amounts of impressions that are not on the first page, or even better are not in the top 3 positions. At this point, these keywords stand a much better chance at getting to the first page than others, and we have found they can end up being some of the more widely searched keywords in your targeted service area.

 [caption id="attachment_1971" align="aligncenter" width="676"] Perform keyword research using the Google Webmaster Tools search queries report[/caption] 

3. Even though this SEO tool is being phased out, the Google Adwords Keyword Tool has always been a favorite among SEO consultants and agencies alike. And as it has still not been pulled offline by Google, I figured it was still worthy of at least a farewell posting. The Google Adwords Keyword tool has long been the go to keyword research tool, as it provides data directly “from the horse’s mouth.” Once you have completed your competitive keyword research, you would want to take your list of keywords and input them into “Word or phrase” box. For a more targeted search, you can specify the website you are performing keyword research for, and even choose a relevant category. Additional search filtering options include match types (which allows you to receive search data for broad, exact, and phrase match type keywords), select the location and language of interest, view desktop or mobile search data separately, and even view search volume on either a global or local level.Once the Google Adwords Keyword Tool is phased out, it will be replaced with the Google Adwords Keyword Planner. This modified version of the tool has a much more user-friendly user interface. The most useful of the new features is not only having the ability to combine multiple keyword lists together, but also being able to view and select cities from an interactive map online, making it that much easier to ascertain search volume for targeted keywords in very specific cities or regions.

Help us, help you with your online marketing strategy – call iMarket Solutions today!

Now that you are armed with some basic strategies and tools that can help you further expand your company’s reach on your target demographic, get out there and start researching new potential keywords to use for your site. Once you have a thorough list of keywords to consider, the next thing you need to do is create some awesome content to publish to your website. Not sure where to start? Then learn how to write your own website content first. If you at any time find yourself overwhelmed by any part of the process, or feel more comfortable passing off your duties to a professional online marketing company that specializes in helping HVAC, electrical and plumbing contractors, then consider calling iMarket Solutions.

Internet marketing for electrical, plumbing, heating and air conditioning contractors is what we do.

Our SEO experts will build and market a website that can dominate the plumbing, heating and air conditioning, and electrical SERPs in your region – and all with a goal CPL (cost per lead) that will make your competitors weep. Contact us today for pricing.