Which of Your Competitor’s Keywords You Should Target for Better SEO – How to Choose?

Understanding the keyword funnel is very significant when looking to rank higher in search engines by targeting the correct keywords. A strategic and intentional approach is required when deciding with what keywords to focus on having found that list your competitors are working with. The idea to always keep in mind is that targeting all of your competitor’s keywords doesn’t necessarily yield the best possible results as being a different business, you are ultimately bound to offer some unique different products or services regardless of how significant they are (or not).

Even when tracking your competitors, targeting the right ones is pretty significant and once you have chalked out the right competitors that are doing exactly what you are, the next step is to hunt for the best keywords that might suit your business. Many of you like to use quality tools like SEMRush, KeywordSpy, Spyfu or Moz’s Keyword Explorer that have this modern feature that allows to investigate which keywords your competitors are using to their advantage and it actually is a very smart and much less time consuming way to do this as well.

The real challenge comes in when you consider what keywords related to certain products or services yield your particular business style the maximum benefit and which ones are not that efficient at doing so. This is where all those tools will practically fail to keep you updated and all you will be getting from them is a list of keywords that your competitors are working on regardless of how much difficulty you might face with those particular products or services attached with those keywords. Getting the order of keywords for your business is highly personal and based on what you do best rather than what everyone else is doing right.

We will be focusing on difficulty, volume and organic click-through rate, which are the most common metrics found in all the mentioned tools. Here’s how you can choose the best keywords for your business with regards to the ones your competitors might be working on:

Make Sure to Understand Your Keyword Conversion Funnel First

The conversion funnel after going through many complex processes is quite a simple one, it is the narrow path all the visitors pass through to become actual buyers or customers from any business website. If you can possibly understand what type of people actually visit the mouth of your funnel and which ones go through it to become customers, it can be really helpful for your business. We do mean all the people that visit businesses similar to yours here not only your website especially if yours is a new one. This can be narrowed down to people searching for certain phrases and special keywords and the people actually purchasing from websites after typing in certain phrases or keywords can be separated from others who might type something similar and not actually purchase at all.

The people moving away without making an actual purchase are termed as dry traffic and are not necessarily the ones you should be focusing on when selecting keywords. Your competitors might be targeting all of the traffic including the dry one to suit the nature of their business but the big knowledge to gain here is that you can restrict your keyword list to only the ones that actually make through the funnel and generate revenue for your business.

You should only go after such dry traffic when raw traffic is your goal and your business suits that kind of an arrangement or even if you have worked out a plan to capture a lot of people’s attention through retargeting as well. Because sometimes a section of traffic might not convert instantly but can come back and be your future customer if you are presenting them what they might require anyway.

Choose Competitors that Go After the Same Audience As You Plan to

Competitors are businesses that sell similar products or services as your do, so for example if you are a sportswear brand and only focus on that particular product industry, someone like Amazon will be in your competitors list as well because they sell same products as well. However, focusing on them when selecting keywords for your business website to target might not be that fruitful because they also sell a ton of other products as well from entirely different product industries. The keywords they might have for their sportswear section will only be the direct keywords that will be that much harder to beat and to master.

The best thing you can do when selecting which competitors to focus on while creating your list of keywords is to look for your direct competitors that largely focus on products or services that match yours. So for example continuing with our sportswear products, selecting a brand that only sells sportswear products when looking for what keywords they are focusing on will benefit you greatly. The phrases they might be using like “comfortable gym pants” or “easy wash workout clothing” will benefit you much more when getting organic traffic than phrases or keywords like “sportswear tops” or “workout clothing”.

It should be easy enough for you to know who your direct competitors are but if you still need help with that a great tool for that kind of purpose is SimilarWeb. It will be a bit costly but every efficient when looking for exact same business types like yours.

Follow Some of These Rules When Selecting Keywords

1)    Easy At First

When starting out, selecting easy keywords that are relatively easy to optimize is the best option. This would mean you should look for keywords that have relatively less competition and get optimized with much less effort that those highly competitive ones. When you do choose easier keywords at first, things are going to be easy for you and getting success early on can be really motivating rather than staying stuck on a particular high competition keyword altogether. Your SEO team will feel great after successfully optimizing easy keywords to start off the campaign as well.

2)    Similar Keywords that You Target and Convert Well Too

Having understood the keyword funnel thoroughly, you can start on your AdWords campaign for the ones that convert easily rather than bring in dry traffic. The trick is to look for your paid keywords that send high converting traffic and BOOM your initial job is done.

The major benefit you will get with targeting similar keywords that convert easily is the initial success in terms of successful business growth that you can later use to make your brand name more famous and well-known. It is a bit un-ethical like some might say but highly efficient indeed.

3)    High Volume, High Organic Click-Through Rate or Other Similar Features

Continuing in the same vein of easy keywords, the difference is in the volume of searches a keyword might have, long-tail keywords will take a hit with this as they are not that much search heavy as direct short keywords but you should be wise enough when selecting them from the competitor’s list. Similarly, keywords with higher organic click-through rate, the ones that get clicked by visitors a lot many times and land them on your or the competitor’s landing pages are a better bet than otherwise more difficult and more in-direct ones.

You are looking for easy keywords to optimize but should not make the mistake of mixing them up with the more successful ones. There should be a balance with easy keywords and the ones that have the highest volume. Once you are well settled in your campaign, your SEO Experts should be able to focus on more complex and time consuming keywords as well.

4)    In-Title Keywords and Their Search Volumes

Sure we have touched previously on search volumes for keywords but this is different. If your title has certain keywords in them and they have a search volume of 500 – 800 as well, they will serve your business very well. Take that example of sportswear products again, if you have a page titled “Branded Sports T-Shirts for Men”, the keyword “Branded Sports T-Shirts” will work great for your cause regardless of how much competition it has.

Titular keywords tend to not only optimize the keyword for that particular product or service but also take the page’s rank much higher with them as well. Ranking your landing page and a popular product or service along with it can only spell success for your business.

5)    Do Consider Attached Keywords Too

Most of the times keywords even the shortest most direct ones can have other attached keywords with them. Consider the example of a mirror and glass business with “Laminated Glass” as one of their major product categories, a keyword such as, “Laminated Glass for Sale” or even “Laminated Glass Windows” tend to not only have their own weightage but also take the page to much higher ranking as well when worked on in the right manner.

Working on attached keywords especially at the beginning of your SEO campaign not only brings quicker results but also motivates the SEO Agents in a way that they get good vibes from the campaign and give it their best shot. Once these attached keywords get ranked, you should not forget about them as well, these are important and will stay important for the whole length of you SEO campaign.