Want to write content that hits the nail on the head for your target audience, without trial and error? You need to conduct keyword research before writing a line of content.

Keyword Research is the secret sauce separating an effective content strategy from one doomed to fail from the start. Without it, your content would attract the wrong audience. 

Here’s a step-by-step approach to conducting Keyword Research for your brand’s SEO. Sit tight and let’s dive in.

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword research refers to searching and studying relevant key terms that people use when searching on Google, enabling you to target and include them when writing, to make your content rank on the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs).

In simple terms, it is discovering relevant keywords that you want to rank for. 

As a B2B business owner, you need to know the key phrases that people use when searching for information related to your business. This helps you anticipate their content needs beforehand and helps you to create relevant content to satisfy these needs.

Now, B2B Writing differs from B2C or other forms of writing. This is because your target audience differs in those two contexts. 

As a B2B brand, your target market is businesses like yours. So, you have to write content targeted to meet business needs and not individual needs, and keyword research can help you achieve this.

Importance of B2B Keyword Research for SEO

1. Helps you to be intentional in content creation

Keyword research is fundamental to the success of your content writing efforts. With it, you can write user-focused content that answers the core questions burning in the heart of your target audience. It also distinguishes intentional brands from careless brands who just write what they like, without a care for what their audience wants to read.

2. Helps you to understand the buyer journey

Buyers go through various stages, from awareness to decision. With keyword research, you can determine the exact content to create, to cater to their needs, at each level in the buyer journey.

3. Makes your SEO and Content Strategy effective

Keyword research forms the foundation of any effective SEO and Content Strategy. So, to get the best results from your SEO and Content Strategy, you must focus on the right keywords that your audience use when searching for brands like yours.

4. Helps you to understand the competition

B2B Keyword Research is also vital to make you understand how the competition works in your field. It makes you see the content your competitors are ranking for and identify content gaps to fill in your content strategy.

Step-by-Step Guide to Conducting B2B Keyword Research for SEO 

Here’s a step-by-step process to get you started with performing keyword research for your business, in no time.

Step 1: Understand your niche and research your target audience

The first step is to research your niche. This is vital because having a great understanding of how your niche works would help you know the content to create that would appeal to your target audience.

Aside from researching your niche, you should also research your target audience and find out the questions they are asking about your business. 

For example, let’s assume you are a B2B SaaS company that offers customer service tools, like HubSpot. Some questions your target audience, who are business owners, may ask could be “How do I increase customer satisfaction?” “how to create good customer journey maps”, etc. You can answer these questions by conducting audience research.

Now, you can perform audience research in various ways. Start by checking online forums like Quora, Reddit, Facebook groups, etc. to see the questions people ask relating to your business.

The images above show the questions people are asking about customer service. This is a good place to find keywords and topics. 

You can also interview your existing customers to tell you specific questions they want answers to, as it relates to your business.

Step 2: Brainstorm seed keywords that your target audience uses

After having a deep understanding of your niche and audience, it is now time to generate seed keywords, which would serve as the foundation of your strategy. These seed keywords are words that people are likely to use for your business when searching for general information.

For example, for a marketing agency, some seed keywords they would target include digital marketing, content marketing, etc. 

To get these keywords, start by brainstorming with your sales team, marketing team, and customer success team. These teams interact more with customers, thus, they know what your customers need.

Step 3: Check the keywords your competitors are ranking for

Your competitors are another source to get relevant keywords that you should include in your strategy. To do this, google some of the seed keywords you already wrote, from Step 2 above. The top websites that rank for those keywords are your competitors.

You can also do a competitor analysis using a tool like SEMRush, which informs you of who your competitors are, and the keywords they are ranking for. To do this, simply go to the SEMRush Keyword Overview tool and insert one of your seed keywords into the search bar.

For example, for a marketing agency, one of your seed keywords is “digital marketing”. Let’s try this.

With this, you would get a SERP analysis report of the top 10 websites ranking for that keyword.

After this, click on one of the URLs, and you will see the top organic keywords for the brand. You can then click on “view all organic keywords”, to see all the organic keywords the brand is ranking for. 

Do this for the other brands, and you will have a comprehensive list of relevant keywords you can use in your strategy.

This knowledge also helps you to know the keywords your competitors are ranking for, content gaps that your competitors have covered or not covered, etc.

Step 4: Find relevant long-tail keywords from the seed keywords

The next step is to find long-tail keywords from those seed keywords generated.

These long-tail keywords are important, especially if you are a new brand, or just starting. They would help you create content that answers specific questions that people are asking. 

For example, if someone searches “digital marketing courses in Lagos”. Such a person is searching for something specific, and not just general knowledge of what digital marketing is. So, targeting long-tail keywords gives you the advantage of appearing on page 1, for that kind of search query. 

Now, there are many ways to get these long-tail keywords. You can get them from the People Also Ask Section on Google, after you type in a keyword.

You can also use keyword research tools, such as Moz, Ahrefs, SEMRush, Google Keyword Planner, Keywords Everywhere, etc.

Below is an image showing the long tail keywords generated from using the SEMRush Keyword Magic tool, for the keyword, “digital marketing”.

Step 5: Analyze and pick relevant keywords

After you have gathered many keywords from various sources, as stated above, the next step is to analyze them and pick the most relevant ones. You do this by measuring them on the criteria of search volume, trend, Keyword difficulty level, Cost Per Click (CPC), etc.

The best keywords to pick are the ones with high search volume, high CPC, and low keyword difficulty (KD). SEMRush provides information on these metrics for each keyword, as shown in the image above.

Step 6: Group keywords by search intent

It is now time to group these keywords by search intent.

For informational search intent, the keywords under this category are focused on educating and informing people. Some words that point to informational keywords are “what is”, “types of”, “how to”, etc.

Keywords used in the navigational search include your brand name, such as “SEMRush keyword magic tool”, “Content and Planning Worksheet”, etc.

For commercial search intent, the keywords are used to make a comparison. Some words used in these keywords include “best tool”, “this vs that”, etc.

While transactional search intent includes keywords such as “how much”, “buy tool”, “subscribe to”, etc.

Step 7: Group keywords by stage in the sales funnel

You should also group the keywords according to their position on the buyer’s journey. From the awareness stage to the consideration stage, and then to the decision stage.

In the awareness stage, the user is just getting information about the issue and trying to learn about it. So your keywords here would align with the ones in the informational search intent.

After the awareness stage, they move to the consideration stage. Here, they already know what they want, but they don’t know who to buy from yet. So, they are trying to choose from several options. Here, you should target keywords that compare your product with others, while presenting your product as the best choice.

The last stage is the decision stage, where they’ve decided to patronize your brand. At this stage, you must target keywords that tell them about your product, its benefits, how to use it, pricing plan, etc. This makes the purchase process easy for them, and it is a win-win for everyone.

Now, it is important to know that the buyer’s journey is not a linear one. This is because a buyer can spend up to a year at the awareness stage, just getting information about the product. Afterward, it can still take them a while to decide on your brand, before even buying from you.

Thus, you must stay consistent and keep creating relevant content for all the stages in the buyer journey. This would be helpful to them whenever they move from one stage in the buyer’s journey to the other. 

Final Thoughts

Just like the foundation of a house is important in determining how firm a house would be. The same applies to your SEO strategy. Keyword Research is the foundation that would determine how solid your SEO strategy would be. 

It is the overarching factor that determines the success or failure of your content marketing efforts. So, it is important to get it right, and with this guide, you are well on your way to achieving that.

So, carry out the steps in this guide, then apply them to get relevant keywords that would help you create great content your audience would love to read. Once you can please your audience, you are on your way to landing on Google’s Page 1.