Newbie Question about the first steps of website SEO

[KathyAshley]

Hello. I'm new to Moz and know very little about SEO. I just finished going through the Beginner's Guide to SEO and I'm ready to take action. I plan on doing the SEO work myself.

The guide says before doing keyword research, I should first answer certain questions about my business, such as: What types of my product are people searching for? Who is searching for these terms? When are people searching for these terms? How are people searching for my product? There are several more.

How do I go about finding the answers to these questions? Thank you in advance.

[alexspur]

I can give you a couple of articles that you can read but that would be silly.  You've gone with keyword research first which is correct in terms of SEO. If you have any competitors. See what they're doing. Try to find the best longtail keywords that will suit your business and beat their current ones. Incorporate them in your content without sounding like a robot. SEO is about being creative. Find the things that make you stand out.  Don't just follow guides.

On another note. Check your website. And check it thoroughly even if you have to use paid help. Speed, mobile friendliness, URL's, the whole lot. On-site is crucial nowadays and no content or keywords will help you if there are problems with on-site.

[MiriamEllis]

That's a very good question, Kathy!

I believe the section of the guide you're referring to is here: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/keyword-research

And what that section  is saying is that, if you're an SEO and you have this client who sells ice cream coming to you, here are some questions you can ask them to start learning about their business. This framing assumes that the client knows their own business from selling their products, serving the public and hearing their FAQs, and, possibly having something like Google Analytics hooked up to their website so that they have some demographic/seasonal information in place to share with the SEO.

For you, if you're doing your own marketing for your own business, this is going to come down to you knowing your own business, its customers' FAQs, etc. If you don't yet have any anayltics set up to track traffic coming into your website, now would be a good time to start gathering such data via Google Analytics which is free.

I would also recommend that you:

• Start formally logging your customers spoken/written FAQs. This would include in-person/phone/form questions you frequently receive that help you understand what customers are looking for and how they word their questions in relationship to your company's goods/services. For example, if you sell clothing, do your customers ask questions about "plus size blouses" or "plus size tops"?

• Do searches directly in Google for your products/services. Then, look on the results page for the section titled "Searches Related to (X)" There, Google is showing you a bunch of terms related to the search you've performed.

• You can also try a similar technique by going to Google and typing in a search phrase slowly, letter by letter, to see what other phrases come up in the search box dropdown as you type. For example, when I type "women's blouses" in slowly, Google also shows me "women's blouses for work", "women's blouses on sale", etc. This lets me know customers are looking for these things.

• Go to AnwerThePublic.com and do searches surrounding your products/services to see how people ask search engines questions about these things.

• Go to Google Trends and type in your products/services to see if there are hot topics surrounding these things. For example, Google is telling me that "women's lace tops" are currently trending in NY.

A combination of efforts like these will help you pull together a lot of keyword phrases of possible value to your business and its clientele. Once you have these, you can then further investigate the value by using more sophisticated tools like Moz Keyword Explorer, so that you can prioritize and organize your research and create a strategy from it.

Hope this helps!

[KathyAshley]

Thank you for your response, Alex. Great advice, and I appreciate your time and info!

[KathyAshley]

Miriam, thank you so much for clearing all that up for me. It is exactly what I was looking for, and I appreciate your taking the time and effort to lay it all out. Thanks again!!!

[MiriamEllis]

You're so welcome, Kathy. We're glad to have you here and please keep your good questions coming as you move along in the learning process.