How to Do Keyword Research for SEO?
Do you know what phrases your ideal clients use to find businesses, goods, and services that are similar to yours?
Do you know which terms have the ability to attract commercially motivated visitors to your landing pages?
Do you want to understand how to conduct proper keyword research? Don’t know where to start looking for the finest keywords to target? How do you even know what’s in the top ten?
Because keyword research is one of the most significant components of the SEO process, it generates a lot of questions. It is also one of the most difficult.
The core of your search engine optimization and paid search marketing efforts is keyword research.
You can’t optimise your content, sales pages, social media posts, or other digital marketing activities until you know what terms your customers use.
User behaviour and search patterns are constantly changing. With particular keyword phrases, it might sometimes be difficult to identify user intent. So, how do you establish a consistent keyword research procedure?
This is something we’ve experienced firsthand. That’s why we’ve put together an SEO how-to tutorial for you!
In this guide, you’ll learn what keyword research is and why it’s crucial to your overall digital marketing approach.
In addition to ideas and strategies, you will get a list of the top keyword research tools. You can also conduct keyword research via social media.
Local company and ecommerce store marketers will also receive keyword research guidance tailored directly to their business type.
What is keyword research and why it is essential?
Learn the fundamentals of keyword research, including the technique and metrics studied, such as search traffic, level of difficulty, and more.
Using local keywords to improve search engine rankings.
A detailed guide on how to choose the best local keywords and rank higher in local search results.
Localization and translation of content.
Methods for incorporating the localization process into your keyword research and local SEO plan in order to attract local search users.
Tools for keyword research.
Explore many free keyword research tools to identify the ideal keywords for your business, including realistic search volumes, difficulty estimations, and cost-per-click (CPC).
How to conduct keyword research utilising social media platforms?
It is absolutely free and gives you access to relevant issues in your field across many platforms.
In the future, you should avoid these errors. Avoid making these frequent keyword research blunders, which could harm your SEO approach overall.
Methods for conducting keyword research for ecommerce.
Understanding the importance of volume and competition while addressing transactional keyword keywords.
Expert keyword research. Learn about the development of keywords and how to take it a step further.
How to Get Started with SEO Keyword Research?
For marketers, keyword research is a constant effort. Learn the fundamentals of keyword research and analysis for SEO here.
Keyword research is still one of the most fundamental SEO duties, despite the many modifications to SEO practises over the years.
Some form of keyword research is still one of the initial tasks performed by SEO specialists of all skill levels, especially when launching a new website (or for any site for which they want to improve or expand search rankings).
Consequently, learning how to conduct effective SEO keyword research and analysis is among the most valuable skills you can acquire.
What is Keyword Research?
Keyword research is the process of discovering and identifying the keywords that are most relevant to a website’s goals.
In other words, it involves discovering not only the keywords for which you want to rank, but also the ones for which you should rank (what people who want what you have to offer actually search for).
Effective keyword research will also reveal the topics for which you should create content for your website.
Keyword research and competitive analysis are closely connected disciplines.
During your study, you can discover what keywords your competitors are ranking for but you are not, which can lead to important insights for your SEO strategy and business.
This tutorial will teach you all you need to know to do keyword research and develop a good SEO foundation.
Why Keyword research Is Crucial?
Keyword research enables you to comprehend the precise terms individuals are employing to address their problems, as well as the context surrounding those terms.
It is essential to do keyword research to debunk any misconceptions or presumptions regarding your users’ demands and the language they use to communicate them.
Keyword research informs every stage of your content optimizations.
The Process of Keyword Research
Good keyword research follows a methodical procedure, a series of actions that help achieve all of the aforementioned objectives.
Nonetheless, this is not a one-time process.
You will need to revisit these steps frequently.
Why?
Because your market circumstance will evolve over time.
Among the alterations that may demand new keyword research:
Changing wants and demands of your target audience.
Newly-appearing inquiries or phrases that searchers are utilising to find your product or service.
The entry of new competitors into the market.
alterations to search engine algorithms or search capabilities.
And many others.
Make keyword research a frequent part of your routine for optimal SEO health and growth.
There are other legitimate approaches to keyword research, however for the purposes of this guide, we will follow these steps:
- Examine current keyword usage.
- Formalize your objectives.
- Create a keyword “wish list”
- Analyze the competitive environment.
- Diversify your keyword repertoire.
- Opportunities should be prioritised over investments.
In the end, if you are seeking organic search traffic, you are still attempting to “sell” anything!
First Step: Analyze Existing Keywords
If you already have a list of keywords you’ve been trying to rank for, you should begin here.
Step 2: If you are beginning from scratch.
If you’re taking over an existing site or have been working on a site for a while, you likely have a list of keywords for which you’ve been attempting to rank.
You should first compile a list of these keywords and conduct an analysis to determine their performance.
To examine larger apps, you will likely require a premium application.
However, there are several free rank tracking solutions accessible for websites with fewer features.
If your list of keywords is reasonably small, you may be able to search for them on Google to check where they now rank (though this will not provide their ranking history).
Examine the ranking history and search volume for these keywords using the appropriate tool.
Next, using Google Search Console to see which terms your site ranks for already (if any).
The objective here is to develop a benchmark for keyword performance.
You can use this to expand your keyword universe in the subsequent steps.
Utilize the metrics you’ve collected on your existing keywords to distinguish between high-performing and low-performing yet valuable keywords.
These are keywords with adequate search traffic and impressions, but lower rankings and/or click-through rates.
Set away the bad but valuable keywords to add to the list you’ll generate in the subsequent steps.
The new keywords you discover through keyword research will influence your subsequent SEO efforts (at least in regards to things like content optimization and link building).
The purpose of this phase is to set a baseline of keyword performance that may be used to expand your keyword universe in subsequent rounds.
Formulate Your Objectives
You may believe that you are now prepared to conduct actual keyword research.
Without carefully stated goals — the exact company and brand needs for which you wish to gain organic traffic — the endeavour will be fruitless.
What’s the point?
Because these goals will help you figure out which way to go with your research.
Many times, keyword research will turn up keywords that you could rank for, but if they don’t bring in visitors who can solve the problems you listed in your goals, it won’t be worth your time to try to rank for them.
I think this is the step that gets skipped most often when people do keyword research.
Having goals will help your chances of doing well with SEO.
You’ll also save more time and effort than you need to, and you won’t waste time on so-called “vanity keywords” or keywords that don’t give you much or any return on investment (ROI).
Here are some questions to ask yourself when setting your keyword research goals:
- Who are we trying to reach? Why do people buy what we sell?
- What do we sell, and what makes us different from other sellers in our market?
- What are the most important needs and/or wants of the people who buy from us?
- What are their other needs that are related?
- What do the people we want to sell to need to know so they can feel good about who they choose to buy from?
Step 3: Make a “wish list” of keywords.
This step is really research inside the company.
That is, it all starts with you (or the collective heads of your team, if you have one).
Using the answers to the questions in Step 2 and what you know about your business or industry, make a list of the keywords that you think best describe what your potential customers search for at different stages of their buyer journey.
If you know the answers to these questions, you can focus on the keywords that will help your business the most.
What would they look for if they just wanted to find out more about the things you sell?
What would they look for when they want to know more about who to buy from so they can make an informed choice?
What would they look for if they wanted to buy something specific from you?
The goal of these lists made by brainstorming is the same as the goal of Step 2: To help you figure out what matters for your business by doing some research.
Don’t think that all of the keywords you come up with in this exercise are good.
Among other things, Step 6 will help you figure this out.
Step 4: Take a look at the competition
Your competitors are one of the best places to look for keywords you should be ranking for but aren’t yet.
If they’ve been playing longer than you, they’ve probably found and taken advantage of many more chances, whether they did research or just happened to find them.
Many SEO tools will show you the top keywords for a certain domain, but if you want to go deeper, you may need to pay for a tool.
Let’s look at a few different ways to do keyword research for competitive terms.
Using Google
We’ll start with the easiest and most free way to find competitive keywords: Google.
This method can help you find a lot of opportunities, but because it requires you to make some guesses, it won’t give you the whole picture.
Still, if you don’t have good tools on hand, it can be a good way to start.
Google is best for finding out who your biggest online rivals are.
Keep in mind that these may not always be the same as your competition in the “real world” (if you and others are selling your wares through brick and mortar stores, for example).
Start by searching for the things you sell and seeing who always comes up in the top few results.
Let’s say that garage door openers are one of your products:
If you skip the paid ads, it’s clear that Home Depot and Lowes are your main competitors for this product in organic search.
If you sell more than one product or service and these two keep coming up in searches, you should put them on a list of your top competitors.
Make sure to also look for any other names that people might use to find your products or services.
Next, search Google for each product and its other names on each competitor’s domain.
To do this, type the search term into Google followed by site:domainname.com (using the domain of the competitor).
This search tells us the other keywords for this product that the competitor ranks well for in Google.
Using Keyword Tools
For more in-depth research on your competitors, you’ll need a tool from a third party.
Some of the free tools will only give you limited access to this information, but almost all of the paid tools will give you a much more complete picture of the competition.
You can put a competitor’s domain into many tools to find out which keywords they rank highest for.
Here’s what that looks like in seoClarity. (I work for seoClarity, but the results you get from most paid keyword tools will be the same.)
Add any keywords and variations that are useful to your list.
Most of the time, you can dig deeper with these tools and find:
Keywords for which both you and a competitor rank (if you rank lower, what would it take to move you above them?
They rank for keywords where you don’t (it’s time to make or improve some pages to get in the game!
Step 5: Look for more keywords.
Even though keywords are still the basis of good SEO, optimising just for them won’t get you very far.
Google’s ability to recognise topics and all their related terms has gotten a lot better over the years. Now, every keyword is really the gateway to a universe of related topics.
There are a number of free tools that are made to find related topics for any keyword.
Here are some of the most popular:
- Keyword Explorer.
- Keywords Everywhere
- Answer the public
This list of tools on Search Engine Journal has more.
Most of these tools find the most popular search terms and questions for a given topic or keyword by scraping Google SERPs (and sometimes the sites that rank highest there).
As always, paid tools will give you more information, such as words that are related to your keywords semantically.
Most of these tools find the most popular search terms and questions for a given topic or keyword by scraping Google SERPs (and sometimes the sites that rank highest there).
As always, paid tools will give you more information, such as words that are related to your keywords semantically.
As a final step, look over your now-longer list of keywords to find the high-level topics. Then, group the rest of the keywords under these topics based on how relevant they are.
You can use this organised list as a guide to build out content with links that will give you a wider range of topical relevance to search engines.
Also read 12 Important On-Page SEO Factors You Need To Know
Step 6: Sort by investment vs. opportunity.
This last step isn’t really research, but it’s a key part of turning what you learned from research into actions that get results.
In this process, you should put the best opportunities at the top of your list, but you should always keep in mind how much it will cost to get those opportunities.
In other words, a keyword may have a lot of traffic potential, but it’s not worth it if you have to spend too much time trying to get a good rank for it or if you can’t use that traffic to reach one of your business goals.
Get the numbers and sort them.
Put all the keywords you’ve found into a spreadsheet and make columns for key indicators of value and cost, such as:
- Average number of searches.
- Impressions.
- Clicks.
- CPC bid price.
- CPC is not a metric for organic search, but it can be a good way to tell how competitive a keyword is.
The higher the CPC, the more competitive it is, and the harder it may be to get a good organic position for it.
Trends are another thing you might want to look at.
- What has happened to this keyword over time?
- Are more people looking for it?
- Has the CPC gone up or down?
If you don’t have a tool that tracks these kinds of trends, Google Trends can at least give you an idea of how search interest in a topic has changed over time, though you won’t find every keyword there.
Don’t just use these metrics to decide what to do first, though. Think about the goals you set in Step 2.
Which keywords are most likely to help you reach your business goals at each step of a buyer’s journey?
Keywords
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