Keywords and site design

Although the most obvious benefit of keyword research is an SEO one, there are others. Keywords can give you great insight into the minds of your target users. For example, without in-depth technical keyword research you might think that your list of keywords for your blog about dog handling would be ‘dog handling’, ‘dog training’ and so on. You might include variations on ‘dog’, like ‘puppy’, and other variations on the ‘handling’ side of things. Keyword research can give you a bit more insight into the minds of your target user, however, and include things like ‘aggressive dog’, which is something a desperate dog owner might type in when looking for a solution to their canine’s aberrant behaviour. Targeting this keyword will get you the business of people who haven’t connected your business to their need yet.

Your keyword list can also give you an idea of the angles to take with your pages. The above case is a perfect example of keywords providing a new way to look at a business. With the knowledge that some users are looking for answers to dog behaviour, you can use one of your pages to target these questions, getting your blog seen whenever anyone is wondering why their pooch is misbehaving.

Your keywords can even give you an idea of the user paths you should lay down. Using the dog handling example again, you can see that the user’s mind may travel from ‘aggressive dog’ to ‘dog behaviour’ to ‘dog training.’ This provides an obvious path that you can then lay down in your site’s navigation, drawing the user further in by answering their immediate questions.