By researching and developing an understanding of the keywords that your customers are typing into search engines when looking for your products and services, you can build a content strategy that is perfectly optimised for both keywords and visitors.
This has several benefits:
Our keyword research combines a number of processes and tools to create an accurate and data driven keyword map and content strategy. We will extract ranking and keyword data using tools like Google Search Console and tailored SEO software like Ahrefs and WebCEO, pulling data in from various sources to make sure no stone is left unturned.
Volume groups keywords by size; purpose groups them by job. We also classify terms by what the searcher is trying to do:
Keyword variations matter too. We include variants that share the same intent — “running” and “run”, for instance — so you capture every searcher reaching for the same thing.
We target the language your customers use, not your own. A business might describe its courses as “updated”, but searchers type “colleges with modern facilities”. Aligning keywords to real search behaviour, and to your strengths, is what gets you in front of the right people.
Before a keyword makes the map, we weigh it on four questions: does it reflect a genuine user question, does it capture clear intent, does it have enough volume to be found, and does it carry real commercial value to your business? If a term fails on those, we find a better one.
With the potential for thousands, if not millions, of potential keyword combinations that could relate to your business and what you do, we need to break some of these keywords down into their various component parts. Keyword structure can be understood through the search demand curve which is broken down as follows:
The fat head makes up 18.5% of all searches conducted on the internet and will typically contain just one or two keywords. These head terms will have a high to very high search volume (anything from thousands to millions of monthly searches) and as such tend to be very competitive, as they have the potential to deliver a huge volume of traffic. Although head keywords represent a huge volume of search, unlike long-tail keywords, they tend to imply less consumer intent and so have lower conversion rates.
The fat head will typically contain just one or two keywords
The chunky middle represents 11.5% of all searches
The chunky middle represents 11.5% of all searches and consists of a far greater number of potential search queries. Like the fat head terms these tend to be high volume and highly competitive search queries with considerable traffic of hundreds or even thousands of monthly searches. Like fat head terms though, they also do not tend to convert as well as long-tail terms.
At 70%, the long-tail makes up the majority of all internet searches and will consist of two or more (usually more) words. Although monthly search volume is in the tens or less, there are literally billions of potential long-tail search queries so they represent a huge amount of the potential traffic out there if you can rank well for a significant number of them. What’s more, because these search queries are a lot longer, they tend to be more specific which usually implies more user intent. Conversion rates are therefore around two and a half times higher for long-tail terms compared to head and chunky middle terms.
The long-tail makes up the majority of all internet searches and will consist of two or more words
By optimising your website for terms that span the head and long tail, we can drive volume whilst also bringing in traffic from very specific search queries.
Whilst it’s important to optimise your content for both fat head and chunky middle, a leading SEO expert once warned that businesses ‘ignore the long-tail at your peril’. Whilst header terms have the potential to deliver a lot of traffic, it’s the long tail terms that tend to catch people later on in the purchasing cycle.
If we were to take a website that sells Apple computers for example, then a search like ‘Apple computer’ might be a very useful term for this site to rank for but it also implies the searcher is just browsing Apple computers and hasn’t made up their mind about what they want yet. If we were to take a long-tail search though like ‘Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Display and 13 inch screen’ then we can infer that this person has made their mind up and is pretty ready to buy.
By optimising your website for terms that span the head and long tail, we can drive volume whilst also bringing in traffic from very specific search queries.
Search volume is only half the picture. Every keyword also carries an intent — what the searcher actually wants, and where they sit in the buying cycle. We group keywords into three broad types:
Intent decides where a keyword belongs. The same research that surfaces a term tells us whether it should sit on a service page or in supporting content — so we never point informational searches at a sales page, or bury a transactional term in a blog. We also read the results page itself: the pages Google already ranks reveal how it interprets a query, which sometimes splits a single keyword across both informational and transactional content.
Search intent determines where a keyword belongs in your SEO strategy
Keyword research goes beyond search volume to uncover real audience demand
Alongside our core tools, we mine other sources for keyword ideas: Google Trends for seasonality and rising topics, Google’s own related searches and autocomplete for the exact language searchers use, and social listening — the questions your audience and your competitors’ audiences ask on platforms like LinkedIn. We benchmark against other leading platforms (Semrush, Moz and similar) when it adds confidence to the data.
A free tool and one of the most useful and accurate ways of determining what your site is ranking for, as well as other important metrics like click through rate (CTR).
Although you need an AdWords account to use Google’s Keyword Planner it still remains one of the most insightful tools out there when it comes to ascertaining search volume and competitiveness on your keywords.
One of the most powerful and respect SEO tools out there, Ahrefs gives us a huge range of metrics on keywords and their potential traffic, value, rankings, etc.
Great content starts with understanding what your audience searches for
Keyword research doesn’t stop at your service pages. The same insight shapes a content plan: the questions and informational terms your audience searches are the blueprint for blogs and guides that reach people earlier in their journey and build your topical authority. We map content keywords to the gaps your money pages can’t cover, so the whole site pulls in the same direction.
Keyword intent (or search intent) is what a searcher actually wants from a query, and where they sit in the buying cycle. It falls into three broad types — informational (learning something), investigative (comparing options) and transactional (ready to act) — and it decides whether a keyword belongs on a service page or in supporting content.
It uses the same data but with a different aim. Rather than the commercial terms your service pages convert on, it surfaces the questions and informational terms your audience searches earlier in their journey — the blueprint for blogs and guides that build topical authority and feed people towards your money pages.
We weigh every candidate on four questions: does it reflect a genuine user question, does it capture clear intent, does it have enough search volume to be found, and does it carry real commercial value to your business? Terms that fail are swapped out — volume on its own is never enough.
