Keywords are one of the main ways that search engines organise their page results, so keyword research is essential if you want to produce content that will get your technology or FinTech brand noticed.
Any word or phrase typed into a search engine is a keyword. As you can imagine, some words are searched more frequently than others, meaning more people are looking for information concerning that word or phrase.
From a content marketing perspective, keywords represent a huge opportunity because you can tailor your content to match the most commonly searched words and phrases that your target audience is looking for. This can lead to an increase in organic traffic to your website, and it can bring in new prospects for your business.
The first step to finding the right keyword for your technology and FinTech brand is by understanding your target audience’s wants and needs. This can be found when creating their customer avatar, a fictitious profile of your brand's ideal customer.
Start by thinking of the types of questions and challenges they are likely to face and how you can help combat them. Then use this to produce content that will support and direct them to your website.
If you’re struggling to do this, take a look at some of your biggest competitors and see what kind of content they’re producing. Refrain from copying their content, but use it as inspiration and guidance, then add your creative spin and think outside the box to create better-suited content.
Once you have a good idea of what your target audience is searching for, you can start thinking about primary and secondary keywords.
Primary keywords are overarching terms you want to rank for when content marketing.
For example, if you specialise in online banking, a primary keyword could be ‘investing in stocks’.
Your primary keyword must have a high search volume that can bring a considerable amount of traffic to your website.
Although your primary keyword can be vague and address a wider audience, your secondary keyword will help your target audience reach more specific content.
So, your secondary keyword supports your primary by bringing in additional information. You can use these naturally throughout your content.
For example, ‘stocks and shares isa’ or ‘stocks to buy now’
These secondary keywords do not have as much SEO value as the primary keywords, but using them can still help you outrank your competitors.
As well as primary and secondary keywords, you also need to appreciate the difference between short-tail and long-tail keywords.
As the names suggest, their defining features are the number of words used in each keyword search. Another distinction between the two is the difference when targeting your audience.
Short-tail keywords are any keywords that are three words or less. They tend to be more generic terms and short questions. Therefore, they are more commonly searched, which means they’re an excellent way to attract website traffic.
However, because they’re more generic, other websites will be using these keywords, which can make them challenging to rank high on a search engine results page.
An example of a short-tail keyword could be ‘Online Banking’.
Long-tail keywords are any keywords that are over three words long. In terms of SEO, long-tail keywords are designed to answer more specific search queries. Most long-tail keywords have lower search volume in comparison to short-tail keywords.
An example of a long-tail keyword is, ‘How to open an online bank account?’
Despite their low search volume, they are still advantageous because they can bring genuine leads to your website as users can specifically look for that answer.
Now that you know the importance of including long-tail, short-tail, primary and secondary keywords, let’s run through some other important factors to consider when competing for keywords.
It is important to observe three areas. These include:
This is the purpose of a search in a search engine. For example, the image above shows that those searching for ‘artificial intelligence’ are doing so for an informational purpose, and they want to find an answer to a specific question.
Semrush shows the different types of user search intent when searching through their database.
The search volume indicates the average number of people searching for a given keyword over a 12-month period.
A high search volume means there are plenty of people searching for that term. For example, using the image above, we can see that 22,200 people have searched for information about artificial intelligence.
Although having a high search volume is great, there are also other factors to consider, such as keyword difficulty.
Keyword Difficulty shows you how hard it would be for your website to rank organically in the Google top 10 for that specific keyword. The higher the percentage, the harder it will be to achieve high rankings.
Going back to the example of artificial intelligence, we can see that although it has a high search volume, the chances of ranking amongst the top 10 on Google will be exceptionally challenging for that keyword.
The following image illustrates how Semrush shows its keyword difficulty percentage. When selecting a keyword, you essentially want the percentage to be below 70. The lower the percentage, the easier it is to rank higher on Google.
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