How to Keyword Research. Keyword research is the first step in any SEO strategy, and it’s one of the most important things you can do to get your content ranked for the keywords that matter. However, there are a lot of different ways to do keyword research, and some of them are better than others. In this post, we’ll take a look at the best and worst ways to do keyword research, and help you decide which one is right for your website.
How to Keyword Research
Keywords form the backbone of any SEO strategy, backlinks, and content.
Here we’ll discuss how to choose the right keywords, and use popular keyword research tools. We’ll then move into more advanced keywords and how to maximize the results using free keyword research tools.
We’ll start with the basics. In this article, we’ll cover the basics of keyword research.
You’ll discover why SEO is important, and how to proceed with it.
So what exactly is keyword research?
Keyword research discovers phrases that people use in search engines like Google, Bing, and YouTube.
Keyword research is the first step of any Keyword campaign and it’s important because it impacts almost all of the other tasks related to SEO like finding content, on-page SEO, email outreach, and content promotion.
Let’s say it another way;
keyword research is like a compass that hires all other SEO activities.
It’s important to understand your target audience through research. Market research for the twenty-first century is known as keyword research.
Let’s start with how to find good keyword ideas. We will come up with a list of proven strategies..
We can start by brainstorming a list of topics your target audience is interested in. For example, if your domain is digital marketing, you can brainstorm and come up with some topics like Social Media, Email marketing, website traffic, Content Marketing, Blogging, and PPC.
You can also use Wikipedia’s table of contents and often overlooked keyword research goldmine.
Head over to Wikipedia and type in a broad keyword that will take you to the Wikipedia entry for that keyword. Look at the content box on the page, and you can find lots of subtopics there that you can use as a keyword.
Another way is to use the “Searches related to” feature on Google. Whenever you search for a topic, Google also suggests related topics that people search for, given at the bottom of a page.
Reddit is also a goldmine of keyword ideas, and chances are your target audience hangs out on Reddit, whatever your niche is. You have to find a subreddit of your specific niche. You can look at threads and posts and find lots of keyword ideas from there.
Now you can also type your topic into Google and YouTube, and they’ll show you suggestions for what people are searching for. And you can be sure of the fact that people are searching for that keyword since Google pulls out data directly from their database.
Forums are another way of finding keyword ideas. The easiest way to see forums where your target audience hangs is to type your keyword and forum in the Google search bar. Or pair the keyword with forums or board, and you’ll be taken to the forums.
We’ll talk about some excellent keyword research tools next
Sure, you can find keywords without a tool, but using a tool makes the process easier to follow.
Here are some tools you can use
Number 1; is Google Keyword planner. It’s the most reliable source of a keyword because the data for keywords comes straight from Google, unlike other tools.
So you know they’re pretty accurate.
Although it is made for people to help with their ad campaigns, you can still use it to get keyword ideas and search queries that get lots of searches.
Number 2; is exploding topics, a nifty little tool that scrapes the web for terms surging in popularity. And it brings those topics for you.
Number 3; is Keywords everywhere. This incredible tool shows you keyword ideas from different places around the web, including YouTube, bing, and google analytics. You can install the chrome extension and keywords everywhere will list out many keywords next time you visit a site it supports.
Number 4; is UberSuggest another good tool that got a significant overhaul and upgrades last year. It can generate keyword ideas and give data on each keyword, like search volume, CPC, and keyword difficulty.
Number 5; is SEMrush, and although it is a paid tool, it is worth the investment.
Here’s what it can do.
Instead of popping random keywords into a tool, SEMrush shows you exact keywords that a site already ranks for, so you can easily find what your competitors already rank for.
Number 6; is Ahrefs is a link-building tool, but not a lot of people know it has a great tool for keyword searches. It gives you a lot of data on each Keyword, which you can use to make a decision on which one to use.
Next, we’ll discuss the difficulty of the keyword
How do you find if a keyword is worth going after or not?
If you choose a super competitive keyword, you have a meager chance to rank on the first page of Google.
But a low competition keyword can enable you to work hard and rank in the top three for that keyword.
Long-tailed keywords are probably your best bet at ranking for a term.
Most of the keywords are divided into three categories, Head terms, which are single-word keywords with lots of search volumes, and Competition, for example, words like vitamins or digital marketing.
These terms usually don’t convert that well. Another is body keywords, they are two to three-word phrases that get a decent amount of traffic. They are more specific than head keywords and less competitive.
Our long-tail Keywords are long four-plus word phrases that are very specific. These keywords don’t get as much traffic, but if you combine a lot of long-tail keywords, they make up the majority of searches online. And since they don’t get as many searches, they’re not that competitive.
You can also evaluate a keyword’s difficulty by checking the authority of sites on Google’s first page for a given keyword.
Search for your keyword on Google, then look at site ranking. If it consists of authority sites like Wikipedia, it’s better to move on from that keyword. But if the first page consists of small blogs, you have a chance to rank on the first page.
You can also use tools to check keyword authority, for example, SEMrush, Ahrefs, kwfinder, and mozpro. Although not perfect, it can make do for starters.
There’s also a specific tool dedicated to keyword difficulty called CanIrank. It evaluates a keyword’s difficulty competition relative to your website.
So how to choose a keyword? Unfortunately, you can’t use a tool for this. You have to rely on your judgment and common sense to size up the keywords based on many factors and then pick one.
So some factors to consider
The first is Search volume.
It’s self-explanatory; the more people search for your keyword, the more traffic you can get.
Search volume depends on industries, so there’s no correct answer to what is a good search volume. You have to figure out your industry’s high and low search volume numbers and then go with what’s expected in your niche.
Another criterion is Organic CTR.
Or click-through rate. Search volume only tells part of the story, so you also need to ascertain how many people click on your site.
If there are many featured snippets on a keyword’s first page and multiple Google ads, you’re not going to get clicks even if you’re number one. You can also use Ahrefs or Moz pro tools to calculate organic ctr.
CPC is another important criterion to consider
It is a metric that answers a single question, do people searching for this keyword spend money?
So apart from traffic, commercial intent should be present in your keyword, without which there’s no point in ranking for a keyword.
Also, consider if a keyword is suitable for your business and if it’s well-fitting for your niche. And you can also see keyword trends through Google trends and use them to know if a keyword is decreasing or increasing in popularity.
Let’s discuss some advanced topics
Barnacle SEO
Barnacle SEO aims to occupy as much first-page real estate as possible with your keyword and ad.
For example, if you rank first for a term, you can cash it in and make other content like a video that can also rank on the first page.
To optimize your content on other authority sites like YouTube, LinkedIn, and Medium.
You can also use shoulder keywords that aren’t directly related to what you sell, but they’re keywords that your customers search for.
Use synonyms and related keywords. You can also optimize your content around related keywords.
Another essential strategy is to use Ahrefs content gap analysis, with which you can see some of the keywords that your competitors rank for, but you do. So you can also make and optimize your content around that topic.
