SEO gives you the power to reach people when they’re actively searching for information related to your products and services through the use of keywords. However, working on SEO, particularly keywords, day in and day out can exhaust marketers.
If you’re looking for inspiration – and actionable ways to put them into play through HubSpot – continue reading.
What Are Unique Ways to Collect Keyword Inspiration?
Most SEO experts and marketers rely on mainstream tools like Google’s Keyword Planner or Moz’s Keyword Explorer for their keyword ideas, which could result in you targeting the same group of terms as one of your competitors. While mainstream keyword tools are useful, sometimes to beat your competition, you need to get a little creative. Here are some unique ways to discover keywords to use in your SEO strategy.
Interview Your Customers
To get the best keywords, why not go straight to the source by talking to your current customers? Whether you speak directly to them, by phone, email, or even a customer survey, try to ask them questions such as:
- Where do you see your industry going in the upcoming years?
- How can we or our services better support your 2019 objectives?
- What are your 2019 goals?
- What are your struggles and strengths?
By carefully examining their language and the phrases they use, you may discover keywords you never previously targeted.
This is especially true if common themes arise from multiple customers when you’re asking for feedback. And if you somehow don’t gather any new keywords from this practice, you’ve expressed ongoing interest in your customer, and likely, made them feel good. It’s a win-win.
Explore the Platforms Your Customers Use
When you ask your customers for feedback, think about including a question that asks where they get their news and other industry information from. Then you can begin scouring these sources for keywords.
Focus on more relevant and timely articles and other pieces of media. Examine their headlines to see what’s trending and how your offerings may relate. If you want to stay on top of new content being created, implement Google alerts. That way you’ll never miss anything your consumers are also reading.
Browse Social Media
Social media is excellent for many reasons like brand awareness and engagement. But it can also be used to study your industry and, that’s right, hunt for new keywords. Why?
People tend to do minimal editing on social media, making their posts reflect the way they speak naturally. Social media is also the place most people turn to when they have an issue or a question.
So, how do you go about looking for keywords on social networking platforms?
Begin by browsing profiles of people in your industry – from your customers, prospects, competitors, to thought leaders. For B2B companies, LinkedIn profiles can be a hotspot for keywords because people describe their skills, interests, and experience concerning whatever industry they’re in. If you’re a B2C business, you may find luck searching Facebook groups that are related to your business.
No matter where you’re looking, try to notice the broader vocabulary they’re using. Take note of the questions people ask and look for common topics.
Talk to Your Coworkers
Your sales and customer service teams deal with your prospects and consumers more than anyone else in your company. That means they’re probably brimming with common questions, issues, and accolades that revolve around your product and services. Talking to them can spark some keyword inspiration for your marketing efforts.
However, they may not understand SEO like you and the rest of marketing does. Try using a mind-mapping exercise with your coworkers to glean the keyword knowledge from them. Mind mapping is a visual form of note-taking that breaks down a complex topic. For example, you may begin with a central theme like “Inbound Marketing” and then create branches and subbranches of topics that relate to back to it.
How Do I Put It Into Action?
After you’ve come up with a great list of keywords and keyword phrases and checked their volume with a source like Moz, it’s time to start putting them to good use throughout your content.
That starts with your team writing engaging content that has your keywords or keyword phrases sprinkled throughout. Be careful not to go keyword crazy because that’s considered keyword stuffing – or putting too many of your keywords in the same sentence or paragraph, hoping for a positive outcome. Pro tip: it’s not going to be positive.
What other parts of content should you consider adding your keyword to?
Meta Description
This short piece of content appears under your URL in the search results and when you share your post on social media. Create a compelling one that’s under 160 characters that accurately summarizes the page’s content. Be sure to include the keyword you’re targeting, and try to place it near the beginning of the description. But don’t force it. A robotic tone will lose to a more natural one.
Title Tag
A title tag is an HTML element that shows the title of a web page. They appear as clickable headlines when people are searching on Google, making them an essential tool for SEO. When it comes to this piece, the optimal format looks like:
Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword | Your Brand Name
Like a meta description, title tags have character limits. However, a title tag’s is much shorter and should be under 65 characters.
Permalinks
Also known as the article’s URL, you can usually edit the permalink of your articles. It doesn’t need to match your headline completely and can contain up to four keywords, with the most important keyword first. Again, don’t be overly robotic and stuff your URL with only keywords.
How Can HubSpot Help Me?
If you’re a HubSpot user, you’re in luck – the marketing platform comes with SEO tools natively built into all of their content tools. Whether you’re creating a blog post, landing page, or site page, you’ll receive on-page SEO advice, including:
- If your images have alt text, which helps Google understand what an image is
- If you have a meta description
- If you have a title tag
- If your meta description doesn’t repeat your page title
- If your meta description is quality and includes a keyword
- If you have an H1 tag
- The strength of your URL
HubSpot also offers traffic analytics linked to your keywords and topic clusters that can track your content’s influence on generating traffic, leads, and customers. If something isn’t working, you can revisit your keyword and content strategy as a whole and press forward.
What Does it All Mean?
SEO is tough. It’s difficult to continually come up with fresh new keywords or ways to discover them. But with the above ideas, and HubSpot’s tools backing you up, you should be well on your way to managing your keyword and SEO strategies.
