How to Find Better Converting Keywords
Keyword research is an integral part of digital marketing. It helps in analyzing demand, creating advertising strategy, brainstorming, content creation and more.
But did you know that it can also help improving your conversion rate? Yes, if you know how to find those better-converting keywords!
Let’s see how to find keywords that tend to convert better and implement them in your digital marketing strategy:
Start with Your Brand
Nothing converts better than your brand name. If a person is using a query that includes your brand name, they already know what they want and, more importantly, who they want to get it from. All they need is to land on your site and proceed to performing the required action.
The best thing you can do here is to ensure:
- Those people will actually land on your site and not some else’s
- Your website will cater to their need in the best possible manner: Gives them all the answers and smoothly walks them through the conversion funnel.
Make it a rule to closely monitor search queries containing your brand name and make sure your site and digital assets rank #1 (and possibly #2, #3, #4 and #5) for all of those queries.
I use Serpstat to research and monitor brand-related queries for my and my clients’ sites. Just type in your brand name and add all those queries to rank tracking tool right inside Serpstat:
It’s very important that you organize those keywords by types and actions: sort those keyword sets: Color-code them by sentiment (negative, positive, neutral) and sort them by action and department involved. For example, [brand-name alternatives] key phrases are highly dangerous (they actually drive your customers away), so keep it in your priority list for further actions.
Other types of queries, like [brand-name login] may signal of usability issues because it clearly shows your users don’t know how to login (These could be your lost conversions!) So have your web development team handle those.
A query like [brand name review] signals of informational research and shows that many people are searching what others are saying about you. Hand those over to your reputation management and customer service teams for them to publicize some user testimonials across your online assets.
Find Your Product-Related Questions
Another highly-converting type of search queries is a question type. Google pays lots of attention to questions these days addressing them in the (1) quick-answer boxes and listing (2) “related questions” right inside search results. That’s because people search to find answer and websites that answer their questions best win the conversion game.
Researching niche questions to answer them on your site is thus your best bet in achieving higher rankings and better conversions.
Serpstat is a great tool to research keyword-based questions but also give Answer The Public tool a try. The tool digs into Google Suggest results, retrieves questions and visualizes the results by the question type:
The tool makes keyword research really inspiring helping you come up with some awesome content ideas that can easily lead the customer into making a purchase:
The question modifiers are:
- Which..?
- Who..?
- What..?
- When..?
- Why..?
- How..?
- Are..?
- Where..?
Play with the tool regularly using all kinds of related core terms to see which questions you can cover on your website.
Monitor Trending Keywords
Taking advantage of trends and time-sensitive keywords to catch your customers right at the time they are willing to buy is another surefire way to improve your conversion rate.
Trends don’t have to happen in your niche for you to take advantage of them. That is, unlike traditional keyword research, we are tracking generic trends here and then brainstorm how we can apply them to our brand to get more attention and achieve a spike in conversions.
Don’t go too crazy there though or that may cause a serious digital reputation crisis.
Start with the selection of Twitter accounts that are the fastest in announcing trends like @Buzzfeed, @Mashable, @MakeUseOf and set up proper monitoring of those.
I use Cyfe because it allows me to monitor lots of social media accounts from one clutter-free dashboard:
Hooks is a mobile app allowing you to set up alerts on pretty much anything including breaking news. BestAndroidApps offers a good tutorial on how to set up mobile alerts using the app.
Buzzsumo has a “Trending” section that will also turn useful monitoring trends.
Another great idea here is to use calendars to monitor big and small holidays and get your content ready for them on time:
Each holiday name and/or a related hashtag become your keyword modifier to market, so create product bundles, special offers, etc. for keywords like:
- [holiday-name gift ideas]
- [holiday-name shopping list]
- [holiday-name coupons], etc.
Once you spot a solid trend that sounds like something you want to leverage, find related hashtags and create on-site and social media content around it. Here’s some more info on how to do that. Here are some basic tips for on-site content optimization.
Trending keywords won’t give you a long-lasting boost but when you take them as part of the strategy you’ll see those regular traffic spikes that will bring conversions too!
Are there any more tips on finding better-converting keywords? Please share along!