How to Find the Best Keywords for Your Pet Niche

Intro

The first step in creating any successful SEO strategy is performing keyword research. This is simply the process of identifying the keywords you plan to target in your campaign.

By targeting the right keywords, you can run a productive campaign to improve your online presence, raise brand awareness, and drive more visitors to your website. To get the most out of keyword research, you'll need to select the best keywords for your pet niche.

In this guide, we'll teach you everything there is to know about choosing the appropriate keywords for your growing pet business.

Study Your Niche

Before you can perform keyword research, you should first study your pet niche ideas.

In other words, understanding the online landscape as it pertains to your industry. For the pet industry, there are usually a few reasons people may perform a Google search.

(Image Source)

These are:

• A pet owner wants to find new pet-related products for their furry friend, such as medication and chewing toys.
• Pet lovers are curious and want to browse the internet for information. For example, a pet owner may want to know how to help your dog deal with separation anxiety.
• Pet parents want to buy a service, such as pet sitting or grooming.

By studying your niche, you can better understand what your target audience is looking for. Then, you can find keywords that are relevant to their buyer journey.

For example, you must choose the right keywords to promote your pet products. Business owners selling dog repellent for the yard should invest in running campaigns with keywords that'd benefit their pet niche.

When you perform industry research, you can also gauge the strengths and weaknesses of your fiercest online competitors.

Define Your Goals

Again, finding the best SEO keywords isn't all about performing keyword research. Without goals, you don't have a vision. Without a vision, it's difficult to choose keywords that'll mean anything to your business or audience.

Therefore, list 3–5 objectives you expect your SEO campaign to accomplish. All SEO campaigns are different, but most of them are designed to achieve these goals:

• Boost brand awareness: If your business is based on a cause you believe in, your goal may be to raise brand awareness and promote your ambitions to the world.
• Increase site visitors: This goal is the most common. The more site visitors you have, the more likely you'll be to convert them into customers moving forward.
• Drive conversions: If you're selling online products or running an ecommerce pet business, this is likely your goal.
• Attract local foot traffic: Local pet shops and businesses love to convert online attention into foot traffic to increase sales (think local SEO).

An SEO campaign can consist of one or two of these goals. It depends on what you want to achieve with your business. When you're done writing down your goals, write key performance indicators (KPIs) to accompany them.

A KPI is simply a measurable goal. For example, if your goal is to improve your website's conversion rate, a KPI would look like this:

“Improve conversions by 35%”

KPIs provide much more insight into what success looks like for your goals. All the exercises here will help inform your choices when conducting keyword research.

Choose the Right Keyword Research Tool

Once you're done with all the preliminary work, it's time to begin keyword research. Fortunately, many tools like Ranktacker, Semrush, and Ahrefs offer keyword analysis functions.

(Image Source)

Unfortunately, choosing between the two can be challenging if you're new to this kind of software. When selecting a keyword research tool, you should consider these factors:

• Functionality: How many features are you getting with a particular keyword research tool? Are these features worth the price?
• Pricing: Keyword research doesn't come cheap, especially if you're managing multiple websites. Make sure your new purchase doesn't become a massive overhead expense.
• Reputation: To avoid buyer's remorse in the future, always check online reviews. If you see any red flags, take them seriously.
• Scalability: Finally, will your keyword research tool support your website's growth? If the tool doesn't offer additional features to help you grow, you should look for another solution.

Not all keyword research tools are created equal. Finding the right one for your pet business will determine how well each solution meets your needs. But if you are on a budget, Ranktracker is the clear winner.

(Image Source)

Create a List of Relevant Topics

When you purchase a keyword research tool, the first thing you may see is a search bar. For example, here's what Semrush's dashboard looks like:

Screenshot by Brandon Lee

Without a list of possible topics you can create content for, the search feature doesn't serve a purpose. With that said, do your best to brainstorm possible topics you believe will resonate most with your target audience.

For example, exploring pet care opens up a world of specialized topics, including a financial aspect many pet owners contemplate — securing protection for their canine companions.

This niche encapsulates topics like dog insurance revolving around safeguarding your furry friend's health and well-being. On the Pumpkin page, there's tons of info regarding this topic and, within them, the best keywords.

(Image Source)

Reaching existing blog posts or landing pages in your niche is a good starting point. But you can also leverage Google Trends or People Also Ask. In others, pop an example keyword into the Google search bar and see what you find.

Ultimately, compiling a list of target keywords will guide the copywriting and content creation process, which is essential for nailing your search engine optimization in 2023.

Produce a List of Focus Keywords

Let's say you run an online pet store and decided you wanted your website to cover products for pets like:

• Pet toys
• Pet food
• Pet supplies

Now, you can turn your topics into sample keywords you can begin analyzing with your keyword research tool. Here's how this should work:

• Pet toys → ”affordable pet toys”
• Pet food → “organic pet food”
• Pet supplies “pet supplies near me”

See how we converted each topic into a focus keyword. It takes a bit of creativity and guesswork to imagine possible keyword variations from your chosen topics.

Again, leverage Google and Keyword research tools for more inspiration. They can spit out dozens of alternatives in seconds.

That's why it's important to first study your niche. If you know the ins and outs of the pet business, you should have a great idea of what your target audience is looking for online.

Prioritize Search Intent

Prioritizing search intent is critical to running a successful SEO campaign. But what's search intent?

Search intent is simply the meaning behind a keyword. It tells us what a person wants when they type a keyword into a major search engine like Google or Bing.

In other words, if you don't know what your audience is looking for, it's impossible to create helpful content for them.

There are three types of search intent:

1. Informational: The average person wants to find more information on a topic. Informational keywords usually come in the form of questions. Ex. “What is organic pet food?”.
2. Commercial: Consumers want to buy something. Commercial keywords should always be paired with useful buying guides to help the reader make an informed decision. Ex. “Organic pet food for sale”.
3. Navigational: This means the average person wants to go somewhere. Navigational keywords are best for local SEO. Ideally, you should provide information that helps them do just that. Ex. “Organic pet food near me.”

Depending on your SEO goals, you should choose keywords that align with your strategy. To boost brand awareness, you should avoid focusing on commercial keywords and value informational ones instead.

On the other hand, if you want to improve conversions, commercial keywords make more sense than navigational keywords.

Identify Long-Tail Keywords

Once you choose the right keywords, it's best to create variations to take advantage of more ranking opportunities.

Long-tail keywords help to serve this purpose. Here's an example of a long-tail keyword:

Screenshot by Brandon Lee

All of these keywords look very similar. The suffixes are different, but the format is the same. Yet, each of them generates search traffic.

If you target multiple long-tail keywords, you can add dozens of rewarding search terms to your content and boost your online presence.

Finding long-tail keywords isn't difficult. Upon searching for a focus keyword in a keyword research tool, long-tail keywords aren't far behind.d.

Final Words

Finding the best keywords for a pet business is similar to any business. Knowing the fundamentals of search engine optimization can help you speed up this process and set the blueprint for a successful SEO strategy.

Following the tips in this guide makes it simple to create a list of high-performance keywords that'll help our business build a strong online presence for long-term success.