As a vegan business or organization, a strong online presence is absolutely crucial for success. The world of digital marketing can feel daunting, between product branding, creating a website, social media, digital ads and content marketing. Where do you even start? Where is the most effective way to allocate your budget for the most impact?
The first thing you should determine is the keywords you will use to target your ideal customer. You will implement these keywords throughout the entirety of your online presence, including website copy, online resources, social media and ad copy. Keywords play a vital role in conveying the content of your website to online search engines, making it easier for those searching for relevant terms to discover your online presence.
For example, if you’re a vegan nutrition coach, you want your website to pop up if someone searches for “vegan nutrition coach” on Google. That said, selecting the best keywords goes beyond just opting for the most obvious choice. Consider the number of existing vegan nutrition coaches who are already utilizing that keyword. How can you ensure your brand can effectively compete in such a crowded space?
By understanding the keywords your target audience is searching for, you can optimize your website content and improve your search engine rankings. In this comprehensive guide, we will walk you through the process of conducting keyword research as a vegan business. We’ll cover everything from how to do keyword research to analyzing important metrics and utilizing various keyword research tools.
Understanding Keyword Research
Before diving into the nitty-gritty of keyword research, let’s start with the basics. Keyword research involves identifying the words and phrases your target audience is typing in search engines to find information related to your vegan business. By targeting these keywords in your content, you increase the chances of your website appearing in search engine results pages (SERPs) and attracting organic traffic.
How to Do Keyword Research
“Research” doesn’t need to be a scary word, nor does it need to be complicated. By understanding how to effectively do keyword research for your vegan business, you can start implementing the words and phrases that will effectively increase your visibility. Here’s how to get started:
Brainstorm Relevant Topics
The first step in keyword research is to brainstorm relevant topics that are closely related to your vegan business. Start by asking yourself: What are the core aspects of my vegan business? What are the main products or services I offer? For example, if you own a vegan restaurant that serves vegan renditions of classic American dishes, you could brainstorm topics such as vegan comfort food, plant-based American cuisine, vegan soul food or meatless barbeque options.
Expand Your Keyword List
Once you have your initial list of topics, it’s time to expand it into a comprehensive keyword list. Start by breaking down each topic into subtopics or specific keywords. For example, under the topic “vegan comfort food,” you could have keywords like “vegan fried chicken,” “vegan mac and cheese,” or “meatless pot pie.” You can then use these keywords as the basis for your keyword research.
Use Keyword Research Tools
Armed with some good topics and potential keywords to use as a base, you then need to refine your keyword list further and determine which have the best-ranking potential. To do this, there are many different keyword research tools available for you to use. These tools can help you discover new keyword ideas, analyze search volume, assess keyword difficulty, and explore keyword variations. Some popular keyword research tools include:
When using these tools, you can start by entering your initial list of keywords or topics and explore the suggestions provided. Below, we will break down how to analyze metrics that these tools will present you with, and how to use them to choose the best keywords for your vegan business.
Keyword research tools can help you identify keyword variations and related keywords. These variations can be valuable in capturing a wider range of search queries and targeting specific niches. For instance, if you have a vegan bakery, incorporating keyword variations like “gluten-free vegan desserts,” “vegan cake recipes,” and “dairy-free baked goods” can help you attract a more targeted audience.
When it comes to SEO software, many have free tools that you can use to perform general keyword research. That said, there may be limits to how many queries you can make daily or how much data is available in the free version. Paid premium plans will give you access to a wider range of features and options that you can use to develop your keyword strategy more effectively. Still, you can obtain valuable insights using the free tool options offered by SEMrush, Moz and WordStream. You can also work with an SEO content agency like us, who have access to premium tools which we can use to help you create an impactful vegan SEO content strategy, rather than having to purchase the paid plans yourself.
Analyzing Important Metrics
SEO tools provide hundreds of valuable insights and data points that you can use to create comprehensive SEO and keyword strategies. But there are a few key metrics that you can use to identify if potential keywords may be effective for your vegan business.
Search Volume
When analyzing keywords, search volume plays an important role. The search volume indicates the average number of times a keyword is searched for in a given period. But a higher search volume is not always better. While the term “vegan bakery” might have a high search volume, you’re also competing with every other vegan bakery in the whole world. Whereas “vegan bakery Chicago” would narrow the playing field. But you also don’t want to go so specific that you miss out on targeted traffic, i.e. “gluten-free sugar-free vegan bakery Chicago”
Keyword Difficulty
Keyword difficulty measures how hard it is to rank for a particular keyword. While highly competitive keywords may bring in more traffic, they can be challenging to rank for, especially if you are just starting your online presence. But keywords with a low keyword difficulty generally have low search volume, so you don’t want to invest much in trying to rank for those words. You want to strike the perfect balance between high search volume and low difficulty (let’s call them the unicorn words).
Any keyword that has a keyword difficulty score of over 70 will be quite hard to rank for, meaning you’ll have to invest a lot in SEO and link-building over a long period of time if you want the chance to rank. Keywords with a difficulty between 30 and 70 would fall into the moderately difficult category and are a much more realistic place to start. Anything below 30 means low difficulty, but they usually don’t have very steady or high search volumes.
Trend and Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Staying up-to-date on current trends and search patterns related to your vegan niche is essential. Monitor seasonal shifts and leverage them in your content to attract more visitors. Additionally, pay attention to click-through rate (CTR) data, which indicates the percentage of users who click on your website’s link in the search results. Optimizing your titles and meta descriptions using quality keywords can help improve your CTR and increase organic traffic. If keywords have a high organic click-through rate, it means that those searching for these keywords are most likely to actually visit your website and invest in your product or service. They are what we call qualified leads.
Useful Keyword Research Tools
Here are some of our favorite keyword research tools that we recommend utilising when conducting your own keyword research:
Google Keyword Planner: Google’s Keyword Planner is a free tool that provides valuable insights into keyword search volume and helps you discover new keyword ideas. Start by entering your initial keyword list or topics, and the tool will provide you with search volume data, related keywords, and keyword suggestions specific to your target location. You will need to have a Google Ads account to use the Google Keyword Planner, but you don’t actually need to launch a campaign to access the tool.
SEMrush: SEMrush is an all-in-one SEO tool that offers powerful keyword research capabilities along with other SEO metrics and features. It provides in-depth analysis of your competitors’ keywords, allowing you to stay ahead in the vegan market. SEMrush can be a valuable tool for tracking keyword trends, analyzing keyword difficulty, and optimizing your overall SEO strategy. While many of the features require a paid subscription, you can access some of the keyword research tools with a free account.
Ubersuggest: Ubersuggest is a comprehensive keyword research tool that offers a range of features to enhance your keyword research process. It provides keyword suggestions, search volume data, keyword difficulty analysis, and backlink information. Ubersuggest can help you identify untapped keyword opportunities for your vegan business.
WordStream: WordStream is primarily known for its PPC advertising tools, but it also offers a keyword research feature that can be useful for SEO purposes. The tool provides keyword suggestions based on a user’s initial seed keyword and generates a list of related keywords along with their search volume and competition metrics. WordStream uses data from Google’s keyword planner and combines it with its proprietary algorithms to provide keyword suggestions tailored to a user’s specific industry or niche. While WordStream does have a paid version, it also offers a free keyword tool called the “WordStream Keyword Tool,” which provides basic keyword research capabilities for users who may not require the full suite of PPC features.
Moz: Moz is a comprehensive SEO tool suite that offers a range of features to assist with keyword research. It provides valuable insights into keyword difficulty, search volume, and organic click-through rates, helping users identify profitable keywords for their websites. Moz’s flagship feature, Keyword Explorer, allows users to enter a seed keyword and obtain a list of related keywords along with their respective metrics. It provides data on monthly search volume, keyword difficulty, organic click-through rate, and priority score, which indicates the potential value of targeting a particular keyword. Moz offers a free trial, but it is primarily a paid tool, with different pricing plans available based on how many features you want access to.
Keyword Research for Vegan Businesses
Keyword research is an essential aspect of building an effective online strategy for vegan businesses. By understanding your target audience’s search habits, analyzing important metrics, and utilizing keyword research tools, you can optimize your content and increase your online visibility. With the right keywords, you can attract more visitors, generate leads, and grow your vegan business to increase your impact. But keyword research is just the beginning. If you want to increase traffic to your vegan business, then you need to implement keywords effectively as part of a comprehensive content strategy.
Get in touch to find out how we can support the growth of your vegan business today.
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