Let’s face it–figuring out the best SEO keywords for your small business can feel overwhelming and complicated.

But, keyword research is the first step in a good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy. These keywords are targeted words and phrases you can use on your website and blog to help people who are interested in what you offer find you when they search online.

Most medium- to large-sized businesses either employ an SEO specialist (or a team) or hire an agency to handle it for them. For large companies with enormous websites and big competition, this is a necessity to stay competitive.

But if you’re a local small business or entrepreneur just starting out, you likely don’t have the money or resources to devote to SEO. You also likely have never done keyword research before and are new to SEO.

So, in this blog post, I’m going to teach you how to do some basic SEO keyword research that anyone can do to give you a starting point. This will help you come up with a list of keywords to focus on with the content on your website and blog posts. Let’s get started!

Start by Brainstorming

No one knows your business better than you do. So, your first exercise in basic keyword research is to write down all the services or product categories you offer.

Think about things that make your office or business unique and add those things to the list. What makes you stand out from your competition? What would your ideal client type into Google to find services like yours?

Let’s pretend I’m opening a midwife birthing center in Boulder, CO. My list of brainstormed keywords and keyword phrases would look like:

Birthing Center
Boulder, CO
Midwives
Pregnancy care
Prenatal care
Natural birth
Waterbirths
Birthing tubs
Doulas
Low-intervention
Unmedicated birth
Home-like environment
Prenatal massage

Use Search Engines to Research Your Keywords

Next, you will enter those words individually or grouped together in top search engines, like Google, Bing, or Yahoo! to see the results. The results you get can tell you a lot about your competition and what a typical searcher’s intent would be with that keyword.

Here are some things to keep in mind when doing keyword research:

Broad keyword phrases get more traffic and are harder for small businesses to rank. Broad keywords typically attract bigger companies with more resources to rank at the top of those high-traffic keyword searches.
Specific keywords get less traffic but are easier to rank as a small business. The more specific you are, the less traffic you’ll have, but you’ll also have less competition. Your competition will also likely be smaller companies that you can outrank with the right SEO strategies.
Searches that have “Sponsored” results are your first sign of a competitive keyword. If you see “Sponsored,” that company has paid for advertising to rank at the top. If you want to rank up there with them, you’ll have to pay for advertising.

Let’s look at some real examples of this.

Broad Keyword Phrase Example

Let’s start with a broad keyword phrase to see how hard it would be for my imaginary small midwife birthing center to rank in the top results. Let’s try “prenatal care near Boulder, CO.”

Right off the bat, there are four sponsored (aka paid advertising or inorganic) results. Two are hospitals, one is an ob-gyn collective, and one is a search engine. Just from this alone I would say this would be a tough keyword to optimize for. There’s just a lot of paid competition.

Next is the map, which has:

a pregnancy resource center
a prenatal center in Tokyo, Japan (that should not be popping up in searches here! I suspect this person used to be in Boulder, CO)
Family birth center in a hospital

After that, we reach the organic search results. Organic SEO results are NOT paid advertising. Google ranks these based on the content and keywords it finds on the websites. Websites that it thinks satisfy someone’s search query will land at the top.

In this case, the top results are:

Boulder Pregnancy Resource Center
UC Health Center for Midwifery
Planned Parenthood

Two out of three of these are large organizations. I would guess that all three of these have an SEO expert working for them.

Based on this, I’d say “prenatal care near Boulder, CO” would be a pretty tough keyword phrase for me to try to target on my website and get good results in searches. Prenatal care is just too broad because it encompasses too many topics and sevices.

Specific Keyword Phrase Example

My broad keyword phrase was really too broad. What happens if I choose a more specific keyword for midwife birth center? Let’s try this keyword phrase: “birthing center boulder.” Below are my results.

Right away, I see that currently, no one is paying for any ads to rank at the top for this keyword phrase. That’s a good sign.

Next I see the map, which only have three results:

Boulder Birth & Holistic Health: Based on their website, this would be a direct competitor of my imaginary business.
Family Birth Center: This is a birthing center within the BCH hospital in Boulder.
Birth & Being: A birth center in Florida (they should not be appearing on this search but I bet they used to be in Boulder, CO)

This tells me that there’s not a lot of competition in my area. It also tells me no one is spending any money currently on online advertising for “birthing center boulder.”

Let’s scroll down some more.

Under the map are “People Also Ask.” These are common questions people ask Google that are related to this keyword phrase. If you come across these in your keyword research, these are great to make note of. It can give you ideas of related keywords you could use. It also can give you ideas of common questions people are googling and could be good information to have on your website. You also could write a blog post addressing one of these questions.

Under the questions are more organic search results. Actually, these are just repeats from the top. There’s just not a lot of competition for this keyword phrase.

From this, I would say this more specific keyword phrase is one I want to target in my website content.

If I had ended up with more competitive results, then I would try getting even more specific, like “birth center with birthing tubs boulder” or “midwife birthing center boulder.”

Taking Your Basic Keyword Research Further

Keep in mind that this exercise is a really basic form of SEO keyword research. But, it’s easy for anyone to do, and you don’t need any technical SEO training to do it. If you want to dive into more technical SEO research, I recommend Moz or ahref. They both have a free version that allows you to get into more analysis of keywords, your competition, and how difficult a keyword is to rank for.

Applying Your Keywords to Your Content

Once you’ve identified the keywords you want to use for your website, it’s time to create content for your website. I’ll go over how to apply keywords to your website in my upcoming blog posts.

Here’s some real quick basics:

Only use one keyword phrase for each webpage or blog post. Do NOT try to rank for multiple keyword phrases on the same page of content.
Use your most important keywords on the main content pages of your website (like your home, services, and products pages)
Use your less important and more specific keyword phrases for blog posts

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How to Do Basic Keyword Research for Your Small Business