The keyword research mistakes that make your SEO strategy fail
It should be a given: accurate and strategic keyword research allows you to align your site content with user queries, thereby increasing visibility and qualified traffic. However, it is not uncommon to run into mistakes that can compromise the entire SEO strategy. And we’re not just talking about minor oversights or mistakes made by SEO beginners, but misinterpretations, pain points, or incorrect approaches that can have significant repercussions on a website’s success. That is why it is essential to recognize and understand the most common mistakes in keyword research, so that we do not deviate from the path that leads to optimal SEO results and unintentionally boycott our path to the first page of Google.
What are the main mistakes with keyword research
Misinterpretation of data, inability to effectively evaluate the competition, focus only on search volume: there are many possible mistakes that can be made in keyword research, from the most practical to those related to the approach to the activity itself.
Are you speechless?
As we were saying, today “keyword research” is a process that goes far beyond simply choosing popular terms and thus beyond trivial keyword research: keywords remain the pillars around which SEO strategies are built and also understand what perspective to fit in when writing content, but there are so many elements not to be underestimated and not to be mistaken. That is, you need to approach the process with a methodical and strategic approach, such as analyzing keywords to identify the right ones and take the first step in aiming to gain readers.
It is precisely the absence of a strategic plan that is one of the most serious mistakes: keyword research is not a one-off activity, but must be part of an ongoing and dynamic SEO strategy, not least because what was relevant yesterday may no longer be relevant today, or may have seen its “search intent” change.
Issues that undermine the work
From a practical point of view, a common mistake is not using the right tools or not knowing how to take full advantage of them, only finding ourselves in a sea of meaningless numbers. Likewise, we should not neglect the analysis of our data, through tools such as Google Analytics that can provide valuable insights into the keywords that are already bringing traffic to the site, allowing us to optimize the existing strategy and discover new opportunities.
And how can we not mention among the frequent issues the obsession with high-search-volume keywords, neglecting long-tail keywords, which often have less competition and can provide more qualified traffic. This is often linked to a lack of awareness of the competition and the sites that already occupy the top positions for the chosen keywords, which is crucial to understand if and how it is possible to compete: in this sense, sometimes it is more strategic to target less traveled niches, rather than challenging web giants for extremely competitive terms.
Lastly, today it is crucial not to ignore the user’s search intent, i.e., why a particular query is typed into the search bar: if we fail to understand this need, there is likely to be a mismatch between what we offer and what the user is actually looking for, with the risk of increasing the bounce rate and decreasing conversion.
15 serious keyword research mistakes to know and avoid
Wanting to categorize these reasoning in the form of a list, we have identified 15 frequent and serious mistakes that can jeopardize the outcome of our SEO efforts, leading our content away from the desired rankings and, above all, away from the real needs of target users.
- Not performing any keyword research activity
It is easy to find keywords and you don’t even need to struggle with SEOZoom: just go on Google, type in a query and get related information. But SEO activity is not just about collecting keywords, because it precisely takes the form of “research,” a work that presupposes an effort to find the best angle, niche, perspective and value for each term according to the site.
Therefore, there is no point in compiling a list of hundreds of keywords for each piece of content if those words are not useful in achieving the set goals, and in general it is better to always favor quality over quantity. The basic concept to remember is that high ranking is not just a matter of putting the right keyword in the text, and it hasn’t been that way for a long time.
And while doing effective keyword research can indeed be a difficult and time-consuming process, skipping this stage completely means creating content without any idea of what potential users are looking for, and just instinctively thinking about what the audience wants.
To put it another way: keyword research should not be considered a mere exercise in finding keywords to be inserted “as best as possible” into a piece of content, because SEO Copywriting is not just about adding as many keywords as possible into a new article (or into an old one that doesn’t yield results) and hoping it will rank.
This is why keyword research must be performed before writing the topic, to start off on the right foot from the title and be sure you know the correct focus, slant, and keywords to use in the heading structure and content.
- Ignoring search intent
Let’s repeat it: essentially a keyword is just a search term, literally anything someone types into any search engine. It is only when these keywords are placed in the right context and in the right content that they are relevant, because crawlers find the page and deem it useful to the relevant audience.
But to be truly meaningful, these keywords must be tied to user intent, which as mentioned is the goal or purpose behind a search query. Simplifying it as much as possible, it can be informational, navigational, transactional, or commercial, and choosing the wrong keywords as targets with respect to search intent risks bringing irrelevant or unqualified traffic to the site, which will not generate conversions.
For example, someone searching for “how to fix a leaky faucet” has an informational intent-perhaps the person wants to try to fix the problem themselves-and Google responds with video tutorials or guides; conversely, “the best plumber near me” has a transactional intent, because the user is looking for a specialist who can perform the work-and the response will be a local pack with names and addresses, or a list of the best plumbers in the area. Depending on the type of our site and the service we offer, then, we need to understand where to compete, where it is most useful to appear – trivializing, if we have a blog that offers content explaining how to fix the faucet we will try to rank for the first query, while if we manage the SEO of a plumber in the area we need to optimize its visibility for the second query.
The best way to understand the intent behind a keyword is to analyze the SERPs for that query, because Google itself with its features provides a strong indication of the need it recognizes: if the results page is dominated by commercial ads, product pages, or the map package we can be fairly certain that the query is transactional in nature. If there are featured snippets and the first results are all articles or blog posts, the query is likely to be informational in nature. Of course, it is important to note that some queries may have mixed intent, with SERPs containing both blog articles and category pages.
The fastest and safest way to get this data is obviously SEOZoom, which immediately indicates the “nature” of each query by identifying its intent. And then, in a more in-depth way, our tools thoroughly analyze the query and extract useful insights to create content focused on what people are really looking for (and what Google really shows). Basically, the software reverse engineers Google’s SERPs to identify all the keywords that may be deemed relevant to a specific topic, allowing us to do more specific SEO keyword research, which can already target content creation with a view to ranking, revealing which strategies and articles Google has already rewarded with good rankings.
- Not studying context and users
As a direct consequence of what was written before, we thus come to the third critical factor: a keyword research can be effective if performed strategically, starting with the analysis of the site and its needs, the target audience and the context in which we move – and in which direct competitors operate, because we are not alone in the market!
In concrete terms, this means that we need to try to identify the keywords actually used by the audience we are targeting, monitor the audience’s search behavior, and consistently check that the content we produce is in line with that of well-positioned sites on Google (also using SEOZoom’s content gap analysis to uncover any keyword holes!).
Studying the context also allows you to understand whether Google evaluates queries in the singular or plural differently-an analysis that can be done quickly thanks to SEOZoom’s SERP Comparator, which precisely indicates the percentage of affinity between two different SERPs by studying the pages present in both occurrences. Or, to verify that the keyword is not a brand name, and therefore a branded keyword, which will “inevitably” result in a SERP of navigational intent in which there is little room to stand out.
- Choosing off-target keywords
But let’s turn now to a series of more practical mistakes related to keyword research, starting with a mistake that can be common, especially for those who are just starting out and don’t have much experience: amassing all the keywords resulting from a search without selecting only those that are useful to the business risks leading content astray and not offering any benefit to the site.
Specifically, this error of declines in two equally critical variants: focusing only on keywords that are too specific or, conversely, targeting irrelevant keywords. In the first case, one risks losing organic traffic that comes from other keywords, while in the second scenario, the keywords included may not contribute to achieving the hoped-for visibility goals.
The solution is, again, to deepen the analysis of the keywords found, taking care to actually select only the really strategic and relevant ones.
- Performing a keyword research based only on the existing structure of the site
It is certainly important to orient your keyword research to the structure of the site, but this does not mean neglecting the possibility of including keywords that we had not thought about and that can bring excellent results to the project.
The search should not be based only on the main pages and sections of the site (and then optimize only keywords for these), but should also extend and include important keywords that may not be expected from the existing content. In this case, it is even possible to go so far as to twist the structure of the site and create new categories if the new keywords found are functional to intercept potential customers.
- Writing an article by keyword
It should be old SEO history by now to write content for each keyword and to optimize a page for a single keyword, but in reality there are still negative examples of this.
This error stems from a purely quantitative assessment of the keywords that are functional to the project. Since its inception, as also said several times by our CEO Ivano Di Biasi in his blog posts, SEOZoom has had as a distinguishing feature a different perception of keywords and keyword research: instead of being content to be a simple rank tracker, our suite has aimed at showing the performance of each individual web page of the site. A choice dictated by the realization that “every web page ranks for numerous keywords, even those that we had not chosen to rank for,” and therefore “focusing on the single keyword” is reductive to increasing traffic and we must instead work on content.
The “secret” lies in the ability to offer added value and come up with quality content, including through language, as we see now.
- Working on keywords that are already present on the site
This case is also quite common: it may happen to deal with similar topics on a site, but in any case you should never try to concentrate content by aiming to cover the same search intent.
Creating a new page that competes with keywords already in our portfolio of placements is risky due to cannibalization of content and can be a waste of resources at best.
In cases of similar keywords that have been already covered, one must have the ability to cover with the article and content the possible different nuances of the same search intent, so as to avoid the risk of duplication and, through good internal link structuring, try to strengthen the older, already positioned page.
An efficient editorial calendar and a look at SEOZoom to check publication rankings helps to manage content planning strategically and avoid these internal competitions.
- Underestimating keyword extension
In SEO and digital marketing, the concept of semantic extension refers to the set of keywords and phrases that are semantically related to the main term or topic of interest. This includes synonyms, keyword variations, related queries, and other terms that users might use to search for information on a given topic. We are talking about semantic search, about evolved algorithms capable of understanding context: therefore, considering semantic extension is crucial to creating content that responds to a wide range of search queries related to the topic, and at the same time, simply stuffing content with exact-match keywords is no longer effective.
- Persisting on vanity keywords
We reiterate it even more starkly: as a general rule, vanity keywords and, more generally, vanity metrics should be avoided, i.e., ranking for keywords that are competitive but too generic to really generate a conversion and that serve “only” to build volume and be flaunted as a flagship.
It serves little purpose to rank well if the next step, conversion in whatever form it takes, is missing. It is then better to direct keyword research toward keywords that really match the search intentions of potential customers. Rather than getting found by everyone, it may be more important for the success of an online business to get found by the right people, the users interested in the products or services we offer.
- Getting the keyword allocation wrong
Having completed the research, you need to study how to place keywords within the site, with the process known as keyword allocation. The mistake to avoid at this stage is to add irrelevant keywords on pages, that is, to create content that does not match the keywords or, conversely, that does not respond to the identified search intent.
To summarize: writing good content is not just about stuffing the text with keywords, but connecting the keywords to the purpose of the search, the topic of the web page, and the intentions of the users who will come to the site.
- Focusing too much on metrics
But it is also wrong to completely focus keyword research only on the metrics indicated by SEO tools – it may seem paradoxical written here, since our software presents precisely such metrics. As always, it is intuition, experience and expertise, however, that drive the work, even in this area.
Relying blindly on Keyword Opportunity or, conversely, dismissing a priori all keywords with high Keyword Difficulty values is not good keyword research.
KD and KO metrics should always be contextualized and it is not advisable to choose one topic over another solely because of a higher or lower score. They are metrics that can let us know at a glance what kind of engagement and strategy needs to be worked out in the production of a piece of content, but they should be considered along with the many other factors that are at play when it comes to ranking and SEO.
- Underestimating long-tail and low-volume keywords
Some market niches are very competitive and, in some cases, it is more strategic to focus our work on keywords that seemingly have a low search volume, but can give faster and sometimes more useful hits. These are the classic long tail keywords, with which it tends to be easier to rank our content and give a better chance of conversion.
Likewise, not knowing how to properly evaluate low-volume keywords can also be a mistake, because it precludes the possibility of carving out space in areas not yet manned by competitors or very specific, where users are often more likely to convert.
The general advice (and goal) is to aim to get qualified traffic to the site, meaning forgo quantity in favor of quality users landing on the pages.
- Disregarding competitors
Speaking of competition, it is not possible to think of doing keyword research (and online activities in general) without taking into account the tactics of direct competitors: doing direct competitor analysis also means understanding when there is a chance of outperforming them or at least competing with the same keywords.
We are all good at finding keywords with high search volume and good chances of conversion, but if we hope to take rankings away from the industry giants, we risk making resounding flops and just wasting time and resources. Better to pay attention to seemingly less advantageous combinations but which, if well thought out, can yield better results in terms of concrete results.
- Failing to update and optimize keywords
Keyword research is not a one-time task, we said earlier, but an ongoing process that requires constant monitoring and optimization. Algorithms change, search trends change, users’ intentions and interests change, competitors change: if everything is evolving, we cannot assume that our content created with old keyword research will stand the test of time forever, with no impact on its performance and relevance.
Did we leave you speechless?
And therefore, it is critical to use tools such as Google Analytics or Google Search Console to monitor actual user behavior or with SEO tools such as SEOZoom to get the picture on overall trends, taking action accordingly to regularly update and optimize searches and content by making data-driven changes.
- Not regularly revisiting keyword strategy
It follows that the last mistake is, precisely, letting our content “rot” due to not updating keyword research. The digital landscape is constantly changing, and what worked well a year ago (or even earlier) may not be as effective today. Reviewing and updating keyword strategies regularly is then a crucial lever in trying to continue to be relevant and competitive.
