When starting an SEO plan for your business, you may find it enticing to skip keyword research. You must already know the keywords people use to find your website online. After all, it is your business. Right?

One of the benefits of keyword research is, you can learn plenty about the phrases and words people actually use while searching online. In fact, your keyword assumption may be quite different. You may also believe that search engines no longer place importance on keywords. However, this is not the case. The reality is, keyword research is still vital for SEO. Here are some reasons why keyword research is still important:

Keywords You Choose May Be Wrong

One of the first steps in SEO is keyword research. If you decide to skip this step or get this wrong, you are setting yourself up for a letdown. Keyword research ensures the right keywords for your business are used.  A few examples of using the wrong keywords include:

1. Incorrect usage

2. Low search volume

If you choose keywords with no significance to your web content, visitors who click through search results are likely to leave your page. The bounce rate for your web page will increase, negatively impacting SEO.

Keywords with low search volume have almost no individuals searching for them. Web content related to these forms of keywords will likely not be seen. The reason being, nobody is searching for those types of keywords.

Keywords Provide Information about Your Webpage

After you’ve finished keyword research, you’ll start assigning the best keywords for each page of your site. Keep in mind, you must ensure the keywords are relevant to your webpage. You’ll also want to ensure that the chosen keywords are used properly.

Keywords help to communicate with search engines making them a necessity for SEO. However, for your webpage to tell a story to various search engines, there must be a foundation that you’ll do with keyword research.

Keyword Clustering Requires Keyword Research

Keyword clustering helps with optimizing a single webpage for several keywords. It also helps to improve ranking. Still, keyword research is needed before you can begin clustering.

Keyword Research is Still Vital for SEO

Keyword research is still vital for both your search engine rankings and SEO. If you don’t do keyword research, the chances of choosing the wrong words are increased. This results in little to no traffic to your webpage. However, with keyword research, you can start to drive more traffic to your site, engage more individuals, secure conversion as well as revenue.