Keyword research is vital for any successful digital marketing effort.

• PPC - you need to know the keywords that have the intent to buy/book/engage
• SEO - in addition, you need the research keywords to connect with people who are 'mid-funnel'.

Building a list of keywords is not immediately evident and straight forward.

Basic Keyword Research

You can do basic research using your own intuition and these 2 tools:

• Google Trends - looking for volume 
• Search Engine - testing search terms to see the competition

This will allow you to come up with keywords that are high volume and that you believe are relevant.  But this level of keyword research is much too simplistic.  You are missing keyword difficulty (how leveraged the keyword is from other websites) and you may not have enough context to intuit on your own the intent of the searcher.

Examples of oversimplistic keywords:

• whiskey tasting - the searchers intent could be the proper way to taste whiskey, or to have a whiskey tasting at the house with guests over, or to go out to distilleries for whiskey tasting
• solar panels - Is the person looking to buy? Wanting to know how Solar Panels work?  Or is researching brands of panels?

Examples of Good Keywords:

• whiskey tasting paso robles - with the geographic qualifier, it is much more likely this is a search for an activity at a specific destination.
• Solar Panel charger for my boat - with this search, it is more evident that the person is not looking to learn how solar panels work, and with the additional specificity it could be a purchase or it could be product research but is much closer - allowing you to develop a strategy to leverage this keyword in both a product page and a blog article.

Conducting Keyword Research

The key is to recognize multiple resources for valuable keywords and to merge these together. Both the keywords that are popular in search ads and the keywords that the client is currently ranking for is a good start, but there could be other keywords that the client 'should rank' for and that is where research comes into play.

Content Strategy and Keyword Intents

You are not done yet, now that you have conducted your keyword strategy, consider the intent for each keyword.  Intent is connected to an action (Info research, navigation, purchase, etc) but it is also an indicator of where on the funnel the user is:

A 3-stage sales funnel is the most simplistic:

• Awareness - this is mostly branding
• Consideration - this is where a user would conduct comparisons, look at reviews, and learn more about the product or service
• Purchase - this is where there user purchases or at least becomes a lead and 'requests a call, or books an appointment)

When you look at the keywords you found in your research, you now need to see if there is content on the site that supports each keyword.

References:

SEO