Researching a Head Term

Because head terms are at the centre of your campaign, it’s crucial that you find one that will work for your site. This will be the basis for everything that follows: the variables you use, the data you find, and the results you can expect from the campaign.

There are different ways to find a head term, but this approach works for us.

Categorise your offering

Think about how you would describe your product or service. Do you sell T-shirts or dog toys? Are you an electrician or a plumber? Do you provide email marketing or CRMs?

Try also to use everyday language, even if it isn’t as accurate. For example, ‘watches’ is a much better category than ‘chronographs’ or ‘timepieces’.

Check Google suggestions

Google’s search bar is probably the best head term recommendation tool you can use. When you enter a keyword, it populates a bunch of different variations to help the user hone in on what they’re looking for. This is based on information Google knows about you and what people commonly search for.

Type in the categories you found before and take some notes about what comes up. You don’t need to get them all, but if any stand out as something relevant to your site, record it.

See what ‘People also ask’

Don’t worry; you don’t need to run a survey or anything.

Pick some of the suggestions you noted before and search. You’ll usually see a little box called ‘People also ask’.

Google uses this feature to help people find information on common follow-up questions they might have. This is a pSEO gold mine.

Take note of a few of these questions and click on some to get more related results. We’ll use these questions to help us determine what people are searching for in the following steps.

Define your audience

Write down a few points on who you want to try to reach:

• Are they in a specific place?

• Do they have a particular job?

• Do they already own certain products?

• Do they use specific tools?

Understanding who we’re trying to target will help us think about how we can actually reach them.

Expand your searches

You might not have realised, but by now, you’ll have the basic building blocks of your head term drafted out!

We already understand:

• What we’re trying to promote (watches)

• What people who are looking for our product or service are already searching for (watches for men/women)

• Some of the words that people use to help modify their searches (best, popular)

• Who we’re trying to reach (men/women, people with particular budgets)

We can now repeat step 2, adding more relevant information to our niche.

Tip: If you move the cursor around your search term, Google will suggest different keywords to fill in.

Check what’s ranking

Click on a few search suggestions and see what appears at the top. If you look carefully, you’ll probably see some potential head terms sticking out.

Why have we highlighted these sections?

These terms could easily be replaced with something else. Our price category, for example, could be ‘Under $100’, ‘Under $500’, or ‘Between $500 and $1000’.

Our audience could also change from ‘The Savvy Collector’ to ‘Divers’, ‘Pilots’, and ‘Athletes’.

Because people like current information, particularly about fashion, including the year also helps to get people to click. Using pSEO automation, we could swap out ‘2024’ with ‘2025’ on New Year's Day and update our content with the latest models as they release, ensuring our content stays on top of the latest trends.

Draft some head terms

It’s now time to start putting some head terms together. Try to get a few different ideas and variations down so you can settle on the best—we’ll cover validating head terms in the next section.

{Year}’s Best Watches {Price Category} for {Audience}

Best {Watch Category} for {Occasion (Birthday, Anniversary, etc.)}

Top 10 Watches {Price Category}

Buy Watches in {Location}

In our example above, we followed one path that could have gone in different directions if we had modified our search terms slightly. In your research, try different approaches to get potential head terms with varying structures; try to aim for at least three.