While Google keeps marketers on their toes with regular algorithm changes, one thing stays consistent for brands that want to optimize their digital content for internet search: keywords. Whether you have a formal SEO strategy or are looking to organically boost SEO, creating a keyword list is one of the most important things you can do to be successful.

While researching and developing a keyword list takes time and commitment, it is a critical first step to help marketers achieve the following 10 goals:

1. Provide direction. A keyword list will help you work smarter, maximize the impact of your work, focus on the most compelling topics in your industry and keep all team members on the same page.

2. Uncover new ideas. If you already have a topic or keyword in mind, keyword research can help you expand upon those terms and keep the ideas flowing.

3. Save time. Knowing and using the correct keywords will save you time and effort by creating messaging that will rise to the top in an ocean of content.

4. Gain customer insights. Researching keywords gives you valuable insights into your target audiences, including their needs, pain points and behaviors.

5. Understand what’s trending. Keyword research will help you uncover what is happening in your industry, as well as how your competitors are or are not addressing those trends.

6. Boost audience engagement. When you create quality content that addresses the topics your ideal customer is searching for, your audience will be more engaged, earning you a higher ranking in search engines.

7. Discover new markets. Effective keyword use helps connect you to the people who have an interest in your products and services. By researching keywords, you can discover related terms that can uncover marketplace opportunities and potential niche audiences.

8. Maximize existing content. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to content. Once you have your list of keywords, go back into your existing content, optimize it with targeted keywords and promote it again.

9. Better understand your own business. Knowing your keywords helps you better understand your brand and business while aligning marketing efforts with company values, mission and goals.

10. Boost SEO. This is the most obvious benefit. By choosing and leveraging unique and highly specific keywords, you can rise to the top of search engine listings. More traffic leads to more conversions and that leads to more business.

It’s common knowledge that keyword research is the foundation of any SEO campaign. After all, how can you optimize digital content if you don’t know what search terms you’re trying to rank for? The trick, of course, is discovering how to find the most effective keywords to target. Here are five steps to uncover what your target audiences will be typing into their search engines:

Put yourself in your ideal customer’s shoes and ask yourself, “What would they search for if they were looking for my content, products or services?” Be sure to include short terms as well as long-tail phrases of three or more words. There’s no such thing as too many keywords—you can always remove non-performing terms later.

Google’s autocomplete function is an excellent feature for generating keywords related to your initial ideas. Start with the common terms within your industry and search for them on Google. For example, look at all the results that pop up when we searched for “content marketing.” All of these could be related keywords. Also, check out the list of related searches at the bottom of the first page of results. Not only are these topics relevant and current, it’s safe to assume they are already optimized for SEO.

Consider your brand, products and services, buyer motivations and related keywords. Other free tools include Google’s Keyword Planner and Wordtracker. Popular paid tools include Ahrefs, SEMRush and Moz.

The free tool Ubersuggest lets you peek behind the SEO curtain of your competitors by identifying top-performing pages and the keywords visitors are using to find their sites. Use this insight to identify the strategies that are already working, adopt them, improve upon them and gain a competitive edge.

After you’ve curated a targeted list of keywords, it is time to put your hard work into action. Focus on a few of your top keywords and create new content (or modify existing content) to feature those terms in a way that is relevant to your customers and provides solutions for their challenges. Evaluate your keywords every few months and prioritize successful terms and consider removing those that aren’t performing. As you gain even more authority in the search engines, you can add more keywords to your lists to tackle while maintaining your current presence.

Keyword research and creating content that gets discovered takes time and effort, but if done right and with the customer in mind, it will pay off. To learn more about how to create content that reaches your target audiences, schedule a complimentary consultation with our experts today.