Link building is still one of the key seo strategies. If your site has links, it indicates to Google that it has quality content worth linking to. For an effective link-building strategy, you need to research the right keywords.
Keyword research will help develop an actionable plan for your link building. This includes identifying linkable topics, anchor text, and the best keywords to target for link building. Let us look at ways you can use keyword research to enhance your link-building strategy.
Benefits of Keyword Research For Link Building
While webmasters know the importance of link building, many still don’t think keyword research applies. Here are reasons to consider keyword research when link building:
Using Keywords in Anchor Text
One of the reasons why you need to do keyword research in link building is to use targeted keywords as anchor texts. This will apply to both internal and external links. However, you should be careful with your keywords in anchor texts to avoid over-optimization.
Since you want to use your keywords in the anchor text without over-optimization, you will need to research for related keywords that you can use. You can then vary your keyword distribution between the main and related keywords.
Keyword Matching
Another reason to do keyword research is to determine the keyword category in the sales funnels. Normally, a keyword can be categorized as informational, navigational, commercial, or transactional. Understanding the search intent of a keyword can enable you to match it with the right page of your site.
For instance, if a keyword is informational, you can use it for link building on the blog post page. On the other hand, a navigational keyword can be used to build links in the FAQs section. A commercial investigation keyword should be used to interlink on the product comparison pages. Finally, the transactional keywords can be used on the landing pages. Since searchers have already decided to buy the product, you only need to explain the product’s benefits.
Once you understand the user’s search intent, you can ensure that each person who visits your site is satisfied with the information they get.
Guest Post Titles
To maximize the value you get on guest posts, you need to have a content strategy. You don’t want a situation where you only create content to get a backlink, whether using the white hat or black hat method. You want to rank the guest post on the search, bring traffic to your site and earn traffic juice.
Therefore, when searching a topic for a guest post, you want to ensure that you pick a good keyword. You can even pick the high-competition keyword to target as your main anchor text and use it in the title of your guest post. You can easily rank for the keyword if you publish the guest post on a high authority site.
Steps to Keyword Research For Link Building
Here are some great reasons to do keyword research for link building:
Understand Your Target Audience
You will need to determine the main focus of your site and the products or services it sells. Once you know your niche, aligning your keyword with your audience’s specific interests and demands will be possible.
You should also do a comprehensive research on your audience. What are their needs, preferences, and search behaviors? You can get valuable insights on the Google search console, Google Analytics, and other keyword research tools.
Do an Audit of Your Current Keywords
Before you start link building, you should determine what keywords you want to rank for. Research the keywords that are already bringing organic backlinks. Similarly, check keywords that are already performing well but without many backlinks. These keywords have the best-ranking prospects when given a boost using links.
You can find such keywords using tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, and Semrush. Check for the search volume of these keywords and where they are ranking.
Check Your Competitor’s Site
In this step, you will need to find the keywords that you think are driving the most backlinks to your competitor’s sites. When analyzing the sites, check if they have better content than yours. Check their domain authority to see if they are better than yours. This data will give you an idea of how hard or easy it is to outrank them for that keyword.
For instance, if your site has a domain authority of 5, it will be hard to outrank another site with a domain authority of 70.
Understand Different Types of Keywords
Seed keywords describe an industry broadly. While these are a good place to start your research, they aren’t the best choice to use for link building as they cna be too general and competitive. When searching for link building keywords, you want to be more specific.
Find complementary keywords that can support the current keywords on your site. For instance, you can target trends and statistics for link building. Site owners love them as they can help to strengthen their arguments.
Create a Content Strategy
The heart of effective link building is having a content strategy. This will help to bring valuable backlinks and also increase your website authority. To get organic backlinks, get keyword topics that will captivate your audience. The keyword should provide value, engagement, and information.
Some linkable content includes in-depth guides, blog posts, infographics, and research studies. When done right, these will entice other sites to link to your site. Once you have created great content, you must promote it on social media, email outreach, and content-sharing platforms.
Final Thoughts
Keyword research can remove the guesswork in your content production strategy. It can provide a clear plan for writing articles and structuring your content. The same thing applies to keyword research for link building. Without proper keyword research, you just hope other sites will link to your site. But with a good keyword plan, you can have a roadmap toward your link building strategy. Therefore, this is one of the powerful link building strategies.
