keyword planning

Why Keyword Planning is Essential for SEO Success

Keyword Planning for SEO is an essential marketing practice vital to your website’s success. In fact, keyword research is usually the first step of any SEO campaign since it impacts every other SEO task you might want to perform, such as choosing content topics, on-page SEO, promotion, outreach and more. In this blog we’ll explore the most important concepts behind keyword research and review some essential keyword planning tools.

 

What is Keyword Research and why is it important?

Keyword Planning for SEO is the process of researching and coming up with an extensive list of words and phrases that people use in search engines with the goal of optimizing content and improving traffic.

It is extremely important since it clarifies what search terms your audience is using, and therefore can help you decide where to go in your SEO campaign.

No wonder keyword research is considered to be one of the highest return SEO processes. It gives you a detailed insight into thoughts, desires and fears of your target audience – making it a truly essential tool for marketing success.
 

Keyword Planning Tools

With keyword research being more important than ever, plenty of keyword planners are being offered online – both free and premium. Let’s have a closer look at the ones we’ve been using here at VA Partners.

Google Keyword Planner
Whatever niche you’re in or your needs are, you are likely to come across Google Keyword Planner when employing keyword research strategies. It is a powerful, free tool for new and experienced advertisers that can be used for just about anything, including keyword planning for SEO. It allows you to search for keywords based on terms that are relevant to your services, products, website etc. In addition, it provides historical statistics like search volume, and traffic forecasts like predicted clicks and estimated conversions. These forecasts will give you an idea on how keywords might perform for a given bid and budget.

Moz Pro Keyword Explorer
Moz KWE is another powerful tool that allows you to discover, prioritize and build lists of high-quality keywords. The great thing about Moz KWE compared to Google Keyword Planner, is that Moz makes it somewhat easier to decide which keywords to pursue by providing helpful data sets like “difficulty”, “opportunity” & “potential”. In addition, KWE allows you to easily export keyword lists and reports to other platforms, including Google Keyword Planner.

It’s important to note that Moz KWE is a freemium tool. Users can either sign up for a free account for up to 10 free queries per month, or buy a subscription for unlimited access.

Yoast
Last but not least, Yoast is one of the most widely used WordPress SEO plugins around the world. It’s not surprising given its wide array of capabilities aimed at helping you make your site as search-engine friendly as possible. The plugin makes it easy for users to edit link titles, meta descriptions, manage sitemaps, track keywords and how often they are used, and anything else you might need for SEO success. In terms of pricing, Yoast has a free and a premium options, however its most important functions are part of the free version.
 

Final Thoughts on Keyword Planning for SEO

There are plenty of tools available to help you with keyword research, but no matter which ones you decide to use, it is vital to prioritize keyword research in your SEO campaign. After all, keyword planning lays the foundation for SEO success. Good keyword research can make or break all your SEO efforts and affect the future of your website.

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Why Keyword Planning is Essential for SEO Success