SEO is all about keywords. No matter how hard you try, Google will never send traffic to your site if no one is looking for what you’re writing about.
Let’s go through the basics of keyword research before we get into the nitty gritty of how to find the ideal keywords for your business.
What is keyword research?
As a marketer, you need to know what words your target customers use to look up your products and services. If your website has a lot of keywords, the next step is to analyse, compare, and prioritise them.
Why is keyword research important?
The only way to find out what people are searching for is to conduct keyword research. Be aware of what people are searching for in order to avoid generating information that is irrelevant to their needs. This is a common blunder made by website owners, and Ahrefs research shows that 90.63% percent of pages do not receive any traffic from Google as a result.
You can also use keyword research to find answers to the following:
- Will it be difficult for me to rank for this term?
- Depending on how high I rank, how much traffic am I going to receive?
- For this keyword, what kind of content should I create?
- How likely is it that someone searching for this keyword will become one of my clients?
- These questions will help you choose your conflicts carefully if you know the appropriate answers.
How to find keyword ideas?
Prior to beginning your keyword research, consider how potential buyers might find your company or website. These ideas can then be expanded upon using a variety of keyword research tools.
It’s a straightforward procedure, but for it to work well, two conditions must hold:
- You must have a thorough understanding of your field.
- In order to get the most out of keyword research tools, you need to know how they work.
In this guide, we’ll go over a few actionable techniques to increase your understanding in both of these areas, and we’ll also identify some potential winning keywords for your website.
- Brainstorm ‘seed’ keywords
- See what keywords your competitors rank for
- Use keyword research tools
- Study your niche
1. Brainstorm ‘seed’ keywords
The process of keyword research begins with the generation of a list of seed keywords. There are many ways in which they can help you determine your market and competition. In order to generate a large number of keywords, each tool requires a seed keyword (more on that shortly).
Coming up with seed keywords is simple if you already have a product or service that you want to market online. Think about what people search for while looking for your product or service on Google.
For example, if you’re in the business of selling women’s clothes and accessories, some possible seed keywords are:
- Women’s dresses
- Women clothing
- Wedding dresses
- Designer dresses
It’s important to keep in mind that your website’s pages won’t always be good targets for the seed keywords. Seeds keywords, as the name implies, are used as a starting point for the remainder of this procedure. With other words, don’t get too caught up in the seed keywords. To find them, it should take no more than a few minutes. Move on to the following phase as soon as you have a few basic ideas about the topic of your website.
2. See what keywords your competitors rank for
As a rule of thumb, it’s ideal to begin keyword research by looking at what terms are already driving traffic to your competition. However, you must first identify your rivals. Using your list of keywords is a great help here. To discover who ranks on the first page of Google for one of your seed keywords, do a simple Google search.
Search for appropriate ‘autosuggest’ questions if none of the top-ranking websites for your seed keywords are similar to your site (or where you’re trying to take it).
3. Use keyword research tools
An excellent source of keywords are competitors. With keyword research, you might identify a lot of terms that your competitors aren’t targeting.
Each and every keyword research tool is the same. When you enter a seed keyword, their database searches for variations on that keyword.
The Google Keyword Planner is one of the most widely used keyword tools on the internet. Even though it’s geared toward advertising, you can find SEO keywords with this free tool.
4. Study your niche
So far, we’ve covered enough to produce an almost infinite number of keyword suggestions. The method, on the other hand, keeps you somewhat “in the box.” Your seed keywords and the size and freshness of the database of your chosen keyword tool are the only limitations. As a result, you’re almost guaranteed to lose out on some potentially fruitful ideas.
This is something you can figure out by digging deeper into your area of expertise. In addition, forums, groups, and Q&A sites specific to your sector might be useful places to start. If you’re looking for problems that your potential clients are having but aren’t being addressed by your competitors or keyword tools, this is the way to go.
How to analyze keywords?
It’s great to have plenty of keyword suggestions. However, how can you tell which ones are the most effective? A manual review of each one would take an inordinate amount of time and effort.
SEO data can help you narrow down and separate the wheat from the chaff before you add material to your calendar.
Consider the following 3 keyword metrics as a starting point.
- Search volume
- Keyword Difficulty
- Cost Per Click (CPC)
Search volume: The monthly average number of searches for a keyword is represented by its search volume.
Keyword Difficulty: The complexity of a keyword is often determined manually by an SEO expert. These top-ranking pages for their keyword are what they’re looking at. They take into consideration a wide range of variables when determining how difficult or easy it will be to rank:
Cost Per Click (CPC): Search engine advertising costs are measured in terms of Cost Per Click (CPC). For advertisers, it’s more valuable than SEOs, but it can serve as a decent proxy for the worth of keywords.
Some Good Keywords Research Tools
Final Words
You should be able to grasp the basics of keyword research and content planning from the information provided here.
If you’d want to learn more about keyword research, we’ve included links to other resources throughout the course. Using these metrics and tools will help you have a better knowledge of what they are and how to use them.
