Discover the Best Keywords for Your Business

This is a free lesson from our most popular course, Optimize SEO Like A Pro.

We are going to talk about something I enjoy so much, which is finding the best keywords. There are a lot of methods to do this, uh, without getting into details, you can use things like SEM, rush, a H refs. Uh, you could use a keyword.io. There's a lot of tools out there. The one I recommend the most, mainly because.

It's Google is Google keyword planner. The one catch about Google keyword planner is that it is built in to the Google ads platform. And we're going to look, we're going to get you in there right now, but because it's built into the Google ads platform, it's a bit of a workaround. You have to build it.

You have to create a Google ads account, quote, unquote, launch it so it can spend money. You put in your credit card. And then as soon as you launch it, you turn it off. Yeah, that's not convenient or ideal for many people. So most people never get there. But in this process, I'm going to show you how to do it.

You won't spend a dollar, you won't ever have to spend a dollar. You'll get it set up. You'll get live right before I do that, I do want to talk about just one important thing. We're going to talk about different Google programs. So I just want to clarify, there are four different Google programs we are going to use outside of just google.com.

There are four different programs that we could possibly use. For your site, three of them are for sure. One of them is optional. First one is Google ads. This logo right here that you see, uh, I'll draw a little circle around it. This right there. That's the Google ads logo. Uh, this is what, let me get rid of this pen.

This is what Google ads looks like. Can back backend. It has a logo up here in the left top left. Uh, then there is Google my business, not necessarily a logo, just the name. So there's no logo just to name a Google, my business account. We'll talk about in the third part of this course, and you can review it.

There, there's a video there that walks you through this whole part of the process. We're not going to focus in on it now, but that is that there's Google analytics. There's also videos in this course about Google analytics that we walked through. Uh, and that is the Google analytics logo. This has changed multiple times, so just.

Mind you that that may happen. And then finally Google search console. Again, not a logo, just the text, but Google search console. So these are four different websites, uh, four different domains, uh, that we will be using. Let me just drag this down. Searched on google.com is Google search console. Uh, analytics is analytics dot, google.com.

Google my business is Gould, google.com forward slash business. And then Google ads is ads dot, Google dot. Calm. So just so we have a clear starting point for everything. That's just a big overview of all the different schools programs. Now let's cover getting into Google keyword planner. If you have a Google ads account, uh, you'll follow us in a few steps from here and I'll show you where that is.

But if this is your first time doing it, just go to Google type in Google ads. It'll be the first result. Trust me, it will. 99 point 99% would be the first result. You'll see a page like this beautiful laid out page like this that you can use to review. See this once you see this quick sign in one thing, uh, Oh, this is worth mentioning.

Make sure everything you do with all these programs. The most ideal case is that you use a Google based Gmail. Account or sorry, a Google based email account. So it can be blah, blah, blah. At gmail.com. It can be, if you have a business email set up, I have a business email set up with Google that's spacebar agency.com.

And so it's hello@spacebaragency.com. That is the email that all of these accounts connect to that way. It keeps everything. Connected. We want it to be connected. So you want to make sure all of them are connected to one email and it has to be obviously a Google email. So, uh, with that as quick on sign in, I have a few accounts signed in.

So bring me into here. If this is your first time doing it, I'm going to just quick new Google account. But if you already have an account, you want to find it. So right now it's saying I'm logged into this email DIA Scandore one at Gmail. You can quick switch account. If you need to find the right account log in and then go from there, but I'm going to stay here and then I will click on new Google account.

This will be the process for most of you. If you've never created a Google ads account before now, when you get to this page, you want to click on switch to. Expert mode. Uh, this will save you a headache later. If you ever do decide to start Google ads, uh, and trust me, I will walk you through this whole process is very easy, uh, for us.

So they're going to ask you to create a campaign. There is no way to skip this step, unfortunately, to get into an account. So where you'll do, you could just create a campaign without a goal. You can hit just search campaign and then you could hit continue. Really keep it basic. We're just going to go through search one is fine.

Literally. I don't want to do any of this. We will have to put a dollar amount for a budget and I'm just going to put $5. I believe that's the smallest number we can do. Maybe a little smaller, but that's fine. We're not going to spend any money yourself. Just hit, save and continue. We just have to create it to get started.

I would say ad groups, you hit save and continue, uh, create ads. Well, let me skip this we'll, which is fabulous. Then we have to set up billing. Uh, I have, uh, a billing card set up already, so, so that is fine. You'll just set that up and then you'll hit submit. It says it'll take an authorized payment, but that's fine.

Explore your campaign. Um, As soon as you get into here, what you want to make sure you do is click on campaigns. And then there's this little green light that says it's on, but you haven't put any keyword. You haven't put any ads, so it really can't spend money. So you'll hit that green light and you'll just hit pause, basically, that will turn off the campaign.

If you want to take it a step further, you could check the box here, then click edit, and then hit remove. And so, uh, permanently remove one campaign. Yes. So now there are no campaigns running or live. So now you are just, you are at, you are inside. This is where we want to be. This is exactly where we want to be.

And so once we're in here and if you already have account, this is where you'd start, right? You're in your account. You'll click on tools and settings, and then you'll click on keyword planner.

Once this opens, let me close that once this opens. We'll hit discover new keywords, and now we can begin the actual work of setting up, uh, if finding the best keywords

All right. So before we go any further on this note, a few things I want to talk about with finding the best keywords. There are a few key items we want to focus in on, which is we want to focus in on relevant topics, uh, that are unique enough specific enough that they're not too broad. Also not too narrow.

Sometimes a bit of narrow, narrow keyword choices are good. Uh, what we would call those often are long tail keywords, which basically means it's a. It's a bigger query than, than most. And so we're going to try to search for something right in the middle, and I'll use a few different examples. So you can get an idea of what that looks like, uh, for us here.

And then also all kinds of point out some red flags of things to look out for and things to stay away from. So let's begin with, let's talk about if you were an accountant and you had bookkeeping services, so let's try that. As an example. So here, what you'll do is you'll type in ideas of keywords. Uh, let's say, freelance, go keeper.

Let's do that. And then let's do, I'm going to hit enter and it highlights it like this remote bookkeeper. Am I spelling bookkeeper, right? I think so. And then remote CPA services and. CPA services, orange County. All right. So a few ideas to begin with. What we want to do is click get results. Once we do this, now we could start to look at what is happening now.

This is a bit of a. Bit of a fun exercise where you're going to try to choose the top five keywords and keyword phrases that work for our business. So as you can see here, CPA services, orange County is search less than 10 times per month on average, over the last 29 months, or sorry, over the last 12 months, which, uh, is not a great number.

Uh, remote bookkeeper is about a hundred to a thousand searches per month. Freelance it's bookkeeper about a thousand to 10,000 per month. One caveat. Let me do this for you. So when you are using Google ads or spending any money on Google ads, they actually give you much more refined results. So you can see here.

Uh, remote bookkeeper has 720 average searches per month. And if I go back to this page, you'll see remote bookkeeper. It says a hundred to about a thousand. Doesn't give much information. I know some SEO experts who do focus in on competition and all of these areas as a B gainer. And as we're starting out, I would say focus in on getting the right keywords, the right top phrases.

Keywords for your business. And we're going to focus in on five. So in this case, remote bookkeeper, I think is a good one, especially too. If that is a service that's being offered, remote is a great one. Freelance bookkeeper also is a really good one. Let's see what the searches are here. Uh, freelance bookkeeper's about thousand.

So it's on the lower end, but this, these are still good numbers. And you might ask what are good numbers. It is all very relative. And so. In one case having anything below, I would say this, if you have anything below, say 50 searches, probably don't use that. If you have anything above say 10,000 searches, probably don't use that in that range of about a hundred searches to 9,999 searches.

That is an ideal space. And the most ideal space is probably a thousand to 3000 searches. You say, you may say, where are you getting these numbers? These are things that are relevant enough, but not too widespread that the competition isn't crazy. And so what I focus in on here is finding these main keywords and then from there seeing what people actually search.

So as a good example, here, do more people search remote bookkeeper or freelance bookkeeper. Well, more people search freelance bookkeeper. What does that tell me on my website, I should probably use the terms freelance bookkeeper. If I write blog posts a lot more on the content, a lot more on my products, a lot more than remote bookkeeper.

Remote bookkeeper works somewhat well. I'd say that. Definitely. It works really well, but freelance bookkeeper works a bit better. Then they have things down here that you can look at. Part-time bookkeeper, remote. Okay. That's good as well. If you're writing content or creating things, that's a good one to look at a remote book, keeping services.

Okay. These are these, uh, search quantities are very low. And so I would spend some time digging in and doing a few other searches. So this is where I'll type in probably CPA services, or let's say remote CFO services, things like this, and kind of see what we get there. So now with this search, we're looking at CPA services five 90 per month.

That's good. Uh, now one other thing I want to touch on locations. So when you're looking at this, you're getting information, you may say CPA services on based in orange County. I could say CPA services, orange County. It doesn't have to show up here with a lot of searches. So before I did this search CPA services, orange County, not a lot of people search that specifically, but that doesn't mean a lot of people aren't searching for an orange County.

And that could be, you'll never see, like near me searches here because near me basically defines like our location. You'll you'll see them show up, but near me is so relative. So it doesn't really add up or make sense if, if it's close to you or not. So. The locations may or may not show up here. You don't need to have the location with the results.

So CPA services here, orange County is less than 10. And then CPA services here is five 90. I would go off of that five 90 and say, that's a good number for me. CPA services. Great. I could potentially add location. And as you see in the work we do with the optimizing pages and stuff like that, You always add in location, whether or not it's necessarily tied to your keywords.

So remote bookkeeper could also have next to it, orange County, or could have, uh, a specific city or a specific location or a specific industry tied to it. So just because a lot of people don't search that doesn't mean it's not relevant. Uh, what we would want to stay away from is something like this.

Bookkeeper is probably going to have a ton of searches. Yeah. So here you'll see, it has over 60,000 searches per month. If somebody can be searching for the definition, uh, who knows what they could be looking for this by itself is very, uh, is too broad. So I would stay away from very broad, general topics like that.

I would try to hone in. With enough topics or relevancy. So it makes sense for you and your business. Another one to look at here, as it's doing, broaden your search remote accounting services. Okay. We could try that. We could try remote accounting position, maybe freelance accounting services or professional bookkeeping.

I think those are good. So we can click on those, get results, add those to the list and. And see what is coming up. So remote accounting services, like 50 professional bookkeepers at one 40. Okay. Yeah, we're, we're getting somewhere. So at the end of this, we want to get the top five keywords. Now, the list you make, you don't want to include the words near me.

You'd rather include a location because if someone searches near me, Google knows locations and they could, they can marry that information. They think worth keeping in mind is I wouldn't suggest going to Google and then typing in, let's say free lands. Bookkeeping services. And then seeing what would, I would definitely recommend staying away from is coming here.

And then looking at these keywords, these keywords are, are geared towards a different audience. These keywords are geared towards someone who they're trying to keep searching more, not necessarily that these are actually relevant searches online. If that makes sense. So just because it says freelance bookkeeping, salary, um, jobs from home or any of these, it could be that people search a lot, search it a lot, and it could be that they don't even hear again.

It says bookkeeper, and this is relevant for someone searching and wanting to have more and more searches done for Google. Google wants people to stay on Google longer or use Google more. But in a case like this, we don't want to use this as. A final say we use it as a reference point if we need ideas to think about, but we don't want to use it as a final say.

So we'll go back to go. He word planner, you can look in here to find keywords. Um, anything you could find here between say a hundred and up to 10,000 would be great. So you see here, part-time bookkeeping remote a hundred to a thousand. If you feel that is relevant. Great. That's a good word to use. Uh, let me do another one, uh, for us, which will be, I'm going to do this.

Designer or Squarespace website designer, or let's say just website, designer. You'll see here. Website designer is going to have a lot more. Yeah. So here you'll see, 10,000 to 100,000 searches. And in Squarespace website, designer and Squarespace designer. These, if, if it was me and I was doing a Squarespace website design as a key word that I wanted to, uh, show up on, well, I wouldn't want to just do website designer number one, because there's a hundred different platforms to build websites on and a hundred different ways to build websites custom nowadays.

So that is probably not the way I want to go. And my. My website would be in a, in a herd of competition of so many different websites. But with Squarespace website designer, there is a lot more relevancy there for me. If someone searches that I would want to show up for that search and that's overall what we're getting at here to find the best keywords and phrases that work.

Now, let's say your business is very unique. One of the businesses we worked with recently, they were, uh, They built in home entertainment systems, basically like many movie theaters inside, inside homes. A lot of people don't search for that, but that doesn't mean they go then change their keywords to broad general keywords outside of the category.

What that means is they just focus in on if someone searched this thought or this thought or this thought we want to show for that. And it might not be, there might not be a lot of data there, but in those cases you want to use your best judgment. If someone went to Google and typed in, in home building an in-home entertainment system or in-home entertainment, builders, or services or something like that, uh, would they find our website relevant?

And if so, those are good keywords to use as well. So around all of this up by the end of this, you want to have, let's say five, maybe six, but five, four to six general topics, keywords or keyword phrases. When I say keyword, it could be two or three words. So Squarespace website designer is one key word. I know that's not.

Accurate, and it's kind of a misname, uh, but one keyword would be Squarespace website designer. Another one can be Squarespace designer and say, if you have a third one, that's like Squarespace designer, orange County, you don't necessarily need to separate that because the actual main keyword outside of location is the same.

So location is separate a bit. We're going to use that separately if it shows up here and a lot of people search it great. But in most cases, we're going to keep. The keywords to the main phrases for the actual service or product or business or, or work you offer. And then the location is tacked on as a, as a secondary thought.

All right. So that is the summation there of keywords. Uh, as you go along, use Google keyword planner, if you do find another tool, that's helpful. Great. Use that. Uh, and then once you create your, your keyword list, probably take you about 20 or 30 minutes. Don't take too long on it. Don't overthink it. 20 or 30 minutes.

I'll see you in the next, from there. I'll see you in the next video.