Maybe you have been on our blog at Creative Collective for some time, and you know the potential profit just waiting for you. After all, there is a huge return on investment with search engine optimization. The problem is that a small local business lacks the budget of corporations that throw everything they have into advanced keyword research, bumping them to the top of Google.
What can you do if your budget is the thing that’s holding you back from moving full steam ahead with your SEO efforts?
The good news is that all you need is a solid keyword research tool – and there is plenty you can do even with a tiny budget. For less than twenty dollars a month, you could find relevant keywords that help you to show up on more search engine results pages, generate more sales, and boost your return on investment.
If we had only a few dollars to spend on SEO keyword research, here is exactly how we would do it.
Google Keyword Planner: A Free Tool to Get Keyword Ideas
Most people who are thinking about their rankings are thinking primarily of Google search. Other search engines are surely out there, but Google has the corner market for most people across the world. This means that you don’t want a seed keyword that hasn’t been tested through the giant search engine.
Why not use Google’s in-house tool to help you find those relevant keywords that could help you skyrocket to the top of the rankings?
If you need a keyword idea, Google Keyword Planner should be your first stop. It gives you a snapshot of how many people are looking for a given set of words and the historical trends of those searches, and it positions you nicely to have an advertising campaign if you know that you want to go the pay-per-click way to getting more traffic (which could boost sales short-term).
Even if you don’t plan to set up a campaign through Google Ads, you can still use the Keyword Planner to get an idea of what might give you a leg up on the competition. For a free tool, it’s fairly robust and shouldn’t be overlooked.
If your boss gives you no marketing budget (or if you’re the boss who has to choose between a paycheck and SEO), then this is the way to go.
Just don’t be pressured into running an ads campaign with them if it isn’t the right fit for your growth strategy.
Keysearch: Advanced Keyword Research on a Shoestring Budget
When you have a small budget to spend on your content marketing, we feel that Keysearch is the way to go for a powerful keyword tool that encompasses everything a small business needs to be successful. For less than $20 per month, Keysearch is light on the wallet but helps you with every aspect of planning your content.
How does it work and why do we prefer it to Google’s Keyword Planner?
First, you start with a seed keyword that relates to your business or the promotion you’re running. It will start to pull hundreds of options with its keyword suggestion function, helping you find long tail keywords that are easier to rank for than more generic or general terms for your industry.
It even gives you the keyword difficulty so that you can see whether you have a chance at getting your content in front of people for a given term. You can scan through their list of ideas to find a related keyword with a lower score, indicating that there is less competition for that search term. The keyword explorer is all color-coded so that you can see key information at a glance.
Keysearch also allows you to see the keyword gap between your website and your competitors’ sites. This competitor analysis gives you a better idea of what your competitors are seeing traction with and may give you inspiration for a new target keyword. Alternatively, you might see a gap in the market that your business can fill, setting you apart and securing a new source of revenue.
They also have a content assistant that allows you to write content directly on their platform and hit all of the right keywords to create something that has a serious chance of ranking. But we prefer Market Muse for a comprehensive keyword research strategy.
Market Muse: (Potentially) Free Advanced Keyword Research Strategies
Now you have a target keyword in mind after you spend an hour or two on Keysearch mining through the data. It’s worth your time to invest in the Keyword Explorer and make the most of it, creating a spreadsheet with the long tail keyword that best matches your business and aligns with the search intent of your ultimate customer.
However, even the best keyword research tool needs a little support to help you move from a list of potential search terms to content marketing that stands out from your competitors.
This is where Market Muse comes into the picture.
The advanced keyword research tool also shows you keyword clustering and LSI keywords (keywords that are related to or paired with the search term you have already found). It tells you what words you need to include in addition to how many times each one should be used throughout the piece.
It highlights them as you write so you can space them out evenly and hit all the main talking points.
The best part is that Market Muse is free if you have a professional email address (and you probably should if you run a small business serious about communicating with clients). You can run up to ten keywords per month which should be enough for you to post two pieces of content per week on your website.
It’s a slow-growth strategy that can help you move the needle forward – without spending a fortune.
More Expensive Tools Where You Can Splurge
Of course, there are other similar tools in the SEO landscape if content creation is where you want to double down and spend the bulk of your efforts. This is where we would recommend saving your budget to splurge on premium services if you have even a small amount to spend.
Bulk up on Market Muse if you’ll be creating tons of content or branch out to Surfer SEO or Frase.
Be warned that this can eat up your budget, so be prepared to maximize your subscription. If it gives you twenty credits per month, you should plan to implement a content marketing strategy with twenty pieces of content per month. There’s no sense in wasting credits when Market Muse is free to those who create fewer pieces of content, landing pages, or blogs each month.
Once you know that you like a tool and are planning to stick with it for the long haul, you can often see some savings in paying for an annual subscription to some of these tools. You’ll need the capital to invest in your SEO and this type of advanced keyword research upfront, but it’s an investment in the longevity of your brand.
While you can get away with bootstrapping your keyword research strategy, these tools are invaluable to help you create content that resonates with readers.
How Will You Manage Your Budget for Advanced Keyword Research?
There are tons of benefits to keyword research beyond just ranking at the top of Google. This marker is a sign of success, but it isn’t the only thing that matters. Especially for small local brands who need to compete with mega-corporations for the same set of customers, advanced keyword research strategies might be the difference between paying the power bill and closing your doors forever.
Local businesses need keyword research for digital marketing more than ever before.
Fortunately, you don’t have to invest a ton of money into the tools that supply you with an endless array of words that people are looking at to find businesses like yours. For as little as $20 per month, you could gain access to the premium tools that many marketers use to great success.
Of course, you may not have the time to invest in leveraging these tools and making the most of them. Instead, you can rely on content creation companies like Creative Collective. We emphasize the importance of search engine optimization, take the time to understand search intent, and come up with multiple keywords you might try to rank for.
Then, we execute a content marketing strategy that leverages that research so that you can improve your rankings and get more clicks on Google. Stop worrying about how to “do SEO” for your brand and trust this part of growing your business to our experienced team.
Reach out to us today to learn more about our strategic process and how we work with small local businesses in the Lowcountry to secure you more sales than ever before. You can sit back and reap the benefits without ever having to lift a finger!