Keyword research for SEO can be done using different tools and techniques. To begin the process of keyword research, start with a related topic relevant to your business or area of focus by using tools like Google’s keyword planner to analyze search volume and competition for those keywords. In a rapidly evolving search landscape keyword research remains an important aspect in digital marketing efforts. If you’re looking to use organic marketing methods to reach your target audience it is crucial that you have keyword research as a part of your digital marketing strategy.
Keywords form the backbone of SEO strategy. It helps you stay relevant and offer value to your target audience and thus help you gain more traffic to your website. If what you are writing about is hardly ever searched, then there will be no traffic coming into your website through Google. If you choose the wrong keywords, you will end up wasting your time and energy.
Did you know that Google’s search algorithm uses a whopping 200 plus factors to rank websites? If you are looking to rank your website high, keyword research is something you might want to focus on from the very start. The right keywords will help you to deliver content that satisfies your target audience.
This article will look at what keyword research is, why you need to focus on it and how to do keyword research for your SEO strategy and selecting the most suitable keywords for your website to drive traffic to your website and grow your online business.
Now, let’s look at what keyword research is below.
What is Keyword Research?
Keyword research is the procedure of searching and analyzing search terms people enter into search engines with the aim of finding information for a specific purpose of SEO or search engine optimization or general marketing. Keyword research can uncover the queries to target, the search volume or search frequency of these, how difficult it will be to rank and more.
Let’s explore why keyword research is key to ranking higher on search engines below.
Why is Keyword Research Important?
Keyword research allows you to figure out the right SEO strategies by identifying overlaps of keywords that aren’t difficult to rank and keywords that can be used to produce effective content. It is important as keyword research allows you to identify what queries your target audience are searching for on search engines like Google.
Your target audience will be using keywords to find solutions when they are researching online, so your SEO strategy should be to use the right keywords to get in front of your target audience to boost your website traffic.
Targeting search with content that offers value featuring those keywords is something you can do to grow your business online.
SEO plays an important role in inbound marketing which aims to create content that offers value to people by helping them learn more about what they want to find out.
Now let us look at some of the benefits of researching keywords.
Benefits of Researching Keywords
Keyword research has a number of benefits. Let’s look at some of them below.
To Identify Marketing Trend Insights
Carrying out effective keyword research can help give insights into current marketing trends which will be valuable as you can create content around relevant topics and keywords your audience will be searching.
It Helps Boost Traffic
When you identify the most suitable keywords for the content you create, the better the chance you have of ranking better in SERPs or search engine results pages.
Great for Customer Acquisition
If you offer great value in your content that meets and even exceeds your user intent by adding a strong CTA or call to action that will compel them to enter the first stages of the buyer journey from the awareness stage to the final purchase.
By doing proper keyword research for their competition, search volume and intent, it can help you deal with questions that help your target audience find solutions to their problems. Also, keywords research can be classified according to local SEO, ecommerce SEO or WordPress SEO based on website niche and target audience.
Difference Between Keywords and Topics
To be effective content should solve a problem of your target audience. SEO is constantly evolving, but its search intent remains integral in the keyword research process. Search intent is all about what topics your target audience cares about.
Keyword research can help you identify and separate your content into topics of buckets on which you can create content. You can use these topics to dictate which keywords you intend to target.
Key Elements of Keyword Research
There are three major elements when it comes to keyword research. They are relevance, authority and volume.
Relevance
Search engines like Google ranks content for relevance. This is where the concept of search is important. A piece of content will rank high for a keyword only if it meets the searches’ requirements.
Additionally the content needs to be the best resource for the query, and provide better value than competitor content in order to rank higher.
Authority
Google gives more weight to sources that it believes is more authoritative. You can be more authoritative by creating helpful and informative content and taking steps to promote your content to earn social signals and backlinks from other authoritative websites.
Volume
Even if you rank high for a specific keyword if no one is searching for it, you will not see your traffic growing.
The volume is measured using MSV which stands for monthly search volume, which means how many times the keyword is searched for per month across different audiences.
Steps to Research Keywords for SEO
- Create a list of important and relevant topics based on everything you know about your business.
Think about the topics you want to rank for in generic buckets. Come up with around five to ten topic buckets you think are important to your business, and use these topic buckets to come up with specific keywords later in the process.
If you’re a blogger, these topics will be topics that you blog about most of the time. They might even be topics that come up the most in your business conversations with customers or clients.
It will help if you put yourself in the shoes of your buyer personas. What types of topics would be most likely to be searched by your target audience and what search queries you want your business to appear on.
- Fill the topic buckets with keywords.
After coming up with a few topic buckets, you need to identify some keywords that falls into them. These keyword phrases will be important if you want to rank on the SERPs as your target audience will most likely be searching for those specific terms.
This step is not about coming up with a final list of keyword phrases. It is about brainstorming for keyword ideas you believe your target customers might be searching for on search engines like Google that are related to a specific topic bucket. You can narrow the lists down later.
It is important to keep in mind that Google is encrypting more keywords daily, so another way to go about it is to identify what keywords are bringing visitors to your website.
To find out what keywords are bringing visitors to your website, you can use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Identify your website’s traffic sources and go through the organic search traffic bucket to recognise the keywords used by your target audience.
Do this for all the topic buckets you have. If you have an issue brainstorming with relevant search terms, you can be inspired by work colleagues involved in managing customers such as those working in sales and service. You can go to them to find out about common questions customers ask.
- Have a clear understanding about how intent affects keyword research
Having a clear understanding about user intent is key in helping you rank on SERPs on search engines.
It is important to note that your web pages need to help your target audience solve a problem rather than just stuffing your content with keywords in a meaningless way.
Keywords can often have different meanings that those you might identify at first. Since search intent plays an important role you might want to be careful when you interpret the keywords you choose to use in your content.
- Research relevant and related search terms
This is a step where you must get creative where you can fill up the lists you came up with earlier. If you are having trouble figuring out what additional keywords your target audience might be searching for, you might want to look at related search terms that are displayed when you search for a keyword.
These keywords will help you generate more ideas.
- Make use of keyword research tools
SEO tools can be used to conduct keyword research as well as help you brainstorm more keyword ideas that are based on exact-match or phrase match.
Some commonly used SEO tools include Ahrefs, SE Ranking, SEMrush, Ubersuggest and Google Keyword Planner.
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
Ahrefs webmaster tools offer lots of information into any verified domains you own if you want to gain an idea of the backlinks and organic keywords.
SE Rankings
SE Rankings is a user-friendly keyword tool. You need to probe deeper to get keyword research and suggestions. This tools offers comprehensive data and will help you brianstorm a lot of keyword ideas.
SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool
SEMrush is one of the most versatile SEO tools. You can set up an account for free and type in your keyword to generate a list of similar keywords sorted on how specific you require your results to be in.
Ubersuggest
The SEO tool ubersuggest allows up to three free searched daily, and is user-friendly. It can be used not just to find out keyword performance but it can also be used to find related keywords and conduct a quick reverse search to identify what your site is ranking for at the moment.
It is easy to use and a beginner friendly tool.
Google Keyword Planner
Google’s tools are known for their excellent quality. They are free and it’s great to get information from Google tools to rank on Google which is the most popular search engine at present. To access Google Keyword Planner you need to sign in with your Google account. Then search for keyword ideas based on the keyword you have identified or your website.
Difficulty of Ranking for Certain Keywords
Qualified and experienced SEO professionals will usually gauge the difficulty of ranking each keyword manually, which means looking at the search results for every keyword and analyzing them. These account for different factors which will determine how difficult or easy it will be to rank. They are:
- Search intent
- Depth of content, relevance, freshness and authority
- Number and quality of backlinks
- Rating of Domain
- SERP features
The SEO process might differ from individual to individual as there is no one important factor mentioned above that undermines the rest.
One SEO expert might think that Domain Rating is important while another might think it is not as important.
The opinions might also differ based on the type of search query that is being analyzed because Google gives preference to different things.
Most SEO experts firmly believe that backlinks are super important for ranking. Keyword Difficulty or KD is usually dependent on the number of linking websites a page needs to rank higher in the SERPs.
Most will usually just focus on easy keyword ideas. But avoiding high KD keywords might not be the best thing to do.
You might want to consider trying to rank for high KD promptly
A lot of backlinks are required to rank for high KD keywords, which often takes a lot of time and resources. It is important to create your page and start promoting as soon as you can. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll achieve your goals.
Look at High KD keywords as opportunities for linking
The top ranking pages for some keywords have plenty of backlinks is a sign of a link worthy title, If you create authentic content on that topic there is quite a good chance of you getting links from other websites.
KD is not there to intimidate SEO professionals from trying to go after specific keywords. Its purpose is to help clarify what it quill take to rank for a certain query.
It is important to manually assess keywords before trying to rank for them and not depend solely on any tool’s difficult score to deter you from your final choice. No single tool from an SEO tool can fathom the complexity of Google’s algorithm into a single number.
What is CPC?
CPC or Cost Per Click depicts the amount advertisers are willing to pay for a click on an ad shown on the top of the search results for a certain keyword. It’s more a metric for advertisers rather than SEO experts, but it can help assess the value of a keyword.
A key factor to keep in mind is that CPC is more volatile than search volume. HWile the search demand for most keywords remains the same from month to month, their CPC can vary more frequently.
This pints out to the fact that the CPC values depicted in different SEO tools are just snapshots of a given time and they’re not completely accurate
How to Identify Keywords with High Potential?
Most SEO specialists decide the value of a keyword by mapping it to the buyer’s journey, which is the process involved when people go through before deciding to buy from your business. Common intuition might suggest that people in the early stages of the buyer’s journey will be less likely to purchase from your website initially.
Some of the popular buyer’s journey frameworks include:
Top of the Funnel (TOFU) – Individuals who are searching for general information about the subject
Middle of the Funnel (MOFU) – Individuals who are searching for possible solutions to their problems.
Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU) – Individuals who are looking to invest in a certain product or service.
While these frameworks might be useful it can be said to be a bit limiting if you rely solely on these. Some of the reasons to say so include:
Since someone might be searching for a TOFU keyword, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are unable to promote your product to the,.
It’s also quite challenging to assign every keyword a distinct TOFU, MOFU, or BOFU label since it is not always clear in which stage a buyer might be in, it might depend on how you look at it. No drama, As a marketing agency in Brisbane we have professional Google ads and SEO experts who can deliver quality results for our clients . Browse our SEO services packages or contact our SEO Sydney team, Melbourne SEO experts.
How to Locate and Select Keywords for SEO
- Use Google Keyword Planner to Narrow Down Your List
In the Keyword Planner tool you can identify search volume and traffic estimates for your target keywords. Once you have this information you can use another incredible free Google tool called Google Trends to identify gaps in you keyword research.
You can use Keyword Planner to flag tents on your list that might not have the right search volume and don’t help you have a good mixture of keywords. Before you decide to disregard keywords you can check the trend history for those keywords using Google Trends. You can identify if you might want to invest in low-volume terms so that you can reap organic traffic growth in the future.
- Focus on low-hanging fruits
By low-hanging fruit, it means that you give importance to keywords that are comparatively less difficult to rank on based on your website’s authority,
Large companies usually prefer to use keywords with high search volume and as these brands are already well-known Google usually helps them rank higher and gives them authority over other content.
- Keep an eye on Monthly Search Volume (MSV) for keywords you have selected.
Checking MSV can help you in your goal towards creating content people want to discover. MSV is the number of times a specific search query or keyword is searched each month on a search engine.
- Consider SERP when choosing keywords
When selecting keywords it is best to keep the different SERP feature snippets that Google will highlight if used right.
One simple way to go about it is to look up keywords and check what the first search results might be. There are 22 of these types of SERP features snippets but we will look at only a few of them here.
Image Packs
These are search results shown as a horizontal row of images that can be seen among organic results. If you wish to be featured in an image pack, you need to create an image heavy post to increase the chances of getting a placement there.
AI Overviews
This is one of the most recent features introduced by Google. AI Overviews gives an AI-written summary for a specific percentage of searches.
Paragraph Snippers
Paragraph snippets are short snippets of text appearing at the very top of the SERPs on Google which gives a short and sweet answer to frequently asked questions. Having a good understanding of the searcher’s intent and providing brief answers to questions might land you a featured snippet.
List Snippets
List snippets or listricles are made for posts that describe steps on how to do something from beginning to end. Often these are shown when someone searches for How To do something. Creating content with direct and clear instructions and formatting can help in your content getting this placement.
Video Snippets
Video snippets are short videos that appear at the top of SERPS instead of text-based featured snippets.
- Check for a blend of head terms and long-tail keywords in buckets
If you are wondering what head terms and long tail keywords then you are about to find out. Head terms are keyword phrases that are usually shorter with just one to three words. Long tail keywords are longer keyword phrases which often contain three or more words.
It is important to ensure that you have a good mix of both head terms and long tail terms so that you can build a well-balanced keyword strategy.
Head terms are often searched more which makes them more competitive most of the time and makes it harder to rank.
While head terms usually have the highest volume the website traffic you get from a longer tailed keyword will be more targeted and therefore more useful.
This is mostly due to the fact that someone who is searching for a specific query possibly knows more about your product or service than someone with a less specific search query.
Long tail keywords are more specific which makes it easier to deliver precise information. Experts believe that targeting long tail keywords is best for a new website as they have less competition most of the time than head terms.
- Analyze how your competitors rank for these keywords
You don’t need to do everything your competitors do with their SEO strategy. While a certain keyword might be important to your competitor, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to be important for your content.
Regardless, having a clear understanding about what keywords your competitors might be attempting to rank for is an excellent way to help evaluate your list of keywords.
If your competitor is ranking for specific keywords that are a part of your keyword list, it is quite sensible to try and improve your ranking for these keywords.
It is also important to keep in mind not to ignore keywords that your competitor might not be using as these keywords might be a chance for your to own market share on these terms.
It is important to keep in mind that the final goal should be to have a keyword list that not just gives you quick winds but also allows you to progress into greater and more complex SEO goals.
What are the Best Keywords for SEO?
It is important to note that there are no best keywords, but keywords that are searched a lot by your target audience. It’s up to an SEO specialist to create a SEO strategy that will get your pages to rank higher in the SERPs and drive traffic to your website.
How Can Keyword Ranking be Maintained?
To maintain keyword rankings, you need to stay up to date on algorithm changes and look for various ways to refresh and enhance the quality of your content. Regardless how good you might believe your content to be, it is important to keep in mind that there is always room for improvement. If you want to stay relevant you might want to identify new opportunities or trending keywords.
