MONEY KEYWORDS AND HOW TO FIND THEM
What Are Money Keywords and How to Find Them
Your content marketing strategy likely focuses on delivering content that your targeted prospects want to read. And, it’s also likely that you seed that content with keywords designed to grab the attention of search engines and help your web pages rank higher for search.
But are you effectively finding and using money keywords – the keywords that really matter?
Finding the right keywords for SEO starts with understanding user intent, or how your prospects search for information. “Good keyword research makes sure that you use the same words as your target audience and this makes the whole effort of optimizing your website far more worthwhile,” writes Marieke van de Rakt of Yoast.
By understanding user intent, you will be better able to find the right keywords for SEO. By aligning your content with these money keywords, you will increase the likelihood that more prospects will find and engage with your online content.
Understand User Intent SEO
Figuring out the money keywords that your most valuable prospects use to search for information can be a difficult process. You need to get into their heads to understand how they use language to search. A great first step is making use of your buyer personas. While your buyer personas have probably been developed to represent your ideal customers, these personas also can help you understand your buyer’s pain points and their intention behind searches for your product or service.
For example, let’s say you are a specialized widget manufacturer and service provider. You have three specific buyer personas representative of the most common types of specialized widget buyers. One of those personas is a hobbyist who buys widgets online. By identifying this persona’s pain point – perhaps it’s spending too much on buying widgets – you can understand this prospect’s intention during search. That intention may be to understand:
- How can I make my own series-S widgets?
- Where can I find low-cost S-widgets?
- What can I do to make series-S widgets last longer?
Prior to thinking like your prospects and understanding their search intent, you may have focused on keywords like widget parts and service or widgets for hobbyists, which don’t match your buyer persona’s intention.
Understand How Buyers Search
Once you understand the intention behind how your prospects search, you can take the next step in finding the right keywords for SEO: learn what your specific buyers typically search for and build a money keyword list around that user intent. There are several free and easy ways to learn this:
- Listen to your buyer personas. There are several ways to do this. You can observe what typical buyers are saying about your topic on the Internet. Simply visit message boards and forums related to your product type to see what questions people are asking. You should also ask your sales staff or customer service staff what questions they hear most often. These questions can become the basis for a list of potential money keywords.
- See what Google knows. Google knows keywords and is happy to help you uncover applicable search terms – for free. Start by going to Google and typing in a search term. You will see that Google will auto-populate keywords (search terms) based on popularity. You can click on these auto-generated terms and then scroll to the bottom of the page to see searches related to that term. These are additional searches that people are using. Make a note of these automatically provided search terms and related search terms to compare with your list of potential money keywords you discovered by listening to your buyer personas.
Here’s how this would work using the widget manufacturing example above. Your persona data tells you that your hobbyist buyer wants to save money on widgets by buying them for less, making them or taking care of them better. You talk to your sales team about this finding and visit some message boards or forums with this intent language in mind. You find that the majority of hobbyists are asking about instructions for making S-series widgets themselves.
Armed with that information, you type in “how to make my own S-series widgets” on Google, which auto-populates search terms including “how to make my own S-series widgets for free” and “how to make my own S-series widgets at home.” You also find that related searches at the bottom of those pages show this popular search term: “DIY S-series widget template.” You now have three money keyword phrases to use.
Finding and Applying the Right Keywords for SEO
Once you have a solid list of money keywords built around your buyer personas’ search intentions, it’s time to apply that knowledge. You should use those keywords to build valuable content. Consider those keyword lists (organized by persona) as blueprints for selecting topics to write about. Once content is written, be sure the money keyword phrases are appropriately applied throughout the content.
Don’t stop there. Review the content on your website and identify opportunities to increase engagement with that content by revising and adding applicable money keywords. You’ll find that by doing so, you’ll drive more value into your existing online content.
SEO making you feel like you are SOL? We can help. Contact CrucialContent today.
