Digital Basics Part 5: Keyword Research Without the Jargon

So let's start with the word itself.

Keyword.

It sounds technical.

It sounds like something a marketing agency says to justify an invoice.

But a keyword is just this.

It's the word someone types or says into a search engine.

That's it.

Plumber Richmond.

Why is my dishwasher leaking? Best coffee near me.

Accountant for small business.

Every one of those is a keyword.

And here's a little secret.

Most keywords aren't one word at all.

They're usually a few words strung together, sometimes a whole question.

People in the industry call the longer ones long-tail keywords, but you can just think of them as specific searches.

Now, why does this matter so much? Remember the librarian from episode 3? When someone walks up to the desk and asks for something, the librarian has to work out which books best match what they asked for.

If your page never uses the words people are asking with, or anything close to them, you're making the librarian's job much harder.

To be fair, Google has become very, very good at understanding meaning.

It knows that deck builder and decking contractor are pretty much the same thing.

It knows that cheap and affordable are related.

So this isn't about matching words letter for letter like it was years ago, but it still needs clues.

And the clearest clue you can give it is to talk about your business the same way your customers do.

Here's where most businesses go wrong, and it's completely understandable.

You know your industry inside out.

You use the technical terms every day.