Everything we do as Marketers is based is some way around keywords. Some keywords can be targeted directly based on their intent and others can be incorporated into a broader category targeting

Everything we do as Marketers is based is some way around keywords. Some keywords can be targeted directly based on their intent and others can be incorporated into a broader category targeting multiple sets and subsets of keywords.

Short Tail: Short tail keywords like “weight”, “tennis”, “bowling” have no meaning to them. What type of results is someone expecting when they type “tennis” into Google?, who knows, it’s not specific at all, so these can be ignored or as I stated above incorporated into a wider subset.

Long Tail: Long tail keywords are the exact opposite of short tail keywords, usually around 5 words and very specific, something like “how do I improve my backhand tennis swing”. These are super specific but are usually low volume keywords, however these are definitely ones we will look into depending on their search volume and intent.

Medium Tail: These in my opinion are the perfect middle ground between short and long tail keywords, something like “weight loss tips”, again very specific but this time accompanied by a large search volume and buyer intent

Keyword research is the process of discovering words and phrases (aka “keywords”) that people use in search engines, like Google, Bing and YouTube.

Keyword research impacts every other SEO task that you perform, including finding content topics, on-page SEO, email outreach, and content promotion.

That’s why keyword research is usually the first step of any SEO campaign.

Put another way:

Keywords are like a compass for your SEO campaigns: they tell you where to go and whether or not you’re making progress.

How Keyword Research Helped My Site’s Traffic Grow

Obviously, there are a lot of factors that went into my site’s success with SEO, including content, on-site optimization, link building and technical SEO.

But the factor that contributed to my site’s traffic growth was keyword research.