What is key word search

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Keyword research is a practice search engine optimization (SEO) professionals used to find and research search terms that users enter into search engines when looking for products, services or general information. Keywords are related to queries which are asked by users in search engines. There are four types of queries :

1. Navigational Search Queries

2. Informational Search Queries

3. Transactional Search Queries

4. Commercial Search Queries.

Search engine optimization professionals first research keywords, and then align web pages with these keywords to achieve better rankings in search engines. Once they find a niche keyword, they expand on it to find similar keywords. Keyword suggestion tools usually aid the process, like the Google Ads Keyword Planner, which offers a thesaurus and alternative keyword suggestions. Google’s first party data also aids this research through the likes of Google autocomplete, related searches or People Also Ask.^[1]

Importance of research[edit]

Keyword research[edit]

The objective of keyword research is to generate, with good precision and recall, a large number of terms that are highly relevant yet non-obvious to the given input keyword.^[2] The process of keyword research involves brainstorming and the use of keyword research tools. To achieve the best SEO results, it is important to optimize a website’s content as well as backlinks for the most relevant keywords. It is good practice to search for related keywords that have low competition and still a high number of searches. This makes it easier to achieve a higher rank in search engines which usually results in higher web traffic. The downside of this practice is that the website is optimized for alternative keywords instead of the main keyword; main keywords might be very difficult to rank due to high competition.^[3] There are three essential concepts to consider when conducting keyword research. Good keywords are closely related to the subject of the website. Most search engines use an internal quality system to check website relevance related to possible keywords, a non-relevant keyword is unlikely to rank well for a website.^[4] Good keywords that are highly competitive are less likely to rank in the top. Keywords that have no monthly searches are believed to generate little to no traffic and therefore of little value for SEO. Keyword stuffing in a web page should be avoided.

Types of keywords[edit]

Keywords are divided into two primary groups based on search volume.

• Short-Tail Keywords: Short-Tail Keywords are the most commonly searched keywords and the conversion rate is between 15-20%. They do not contain any specific details and have fewer word counts (1-2 words). They get high search traffic but have a lower conversion rate. For example: «Buy shoes» is a short tail keyword.
• Long-Tail Keywords: Long-Tail Keywords conversion rate is between 70-80%. They contain more specific details and have longer word counts (2-5 words). They get less search traffic but have a higher conversion rate. For example: «Buy breathable running shoes» is a long-tail keyword.

Research examples[edit]

A very popular and highly competitive keyword on Google search engine is «making money.» It has 4,860,000,000 search results, meaning that billions of websites are relevant or competing for that keyword. Keyword research starts with finding all possible word combinations that are relevant to the «making money» keyword. For example, the keyword «acquiring money» has significantly fewer search results, only 116,000,000, but it has the same meaning as «making money.» Another way is to be more specific about a keyword by adding additional filters. For example, the keyword «making money online from home in Canada» is less competitive on a global scale and therefore easier to rank for. Furthermore, keywords also have various intents (informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional) which can affect whether the marketer would want to target that keyword. Multiple tools are available (both free and commercial) to find keywords and analyze them.

Keyword research tools[edit]

Google Ads Keyword Planner[edit]

Google offers free tools to do some basic keyword analysis. All the results are based on data of the Google search engine.

Google recently released an update to the Google Keyword Planner and changes some of its policy by which the first campaign must be set in order to get the Keyword Planner back. This is a type of Google Ads account that is used by agencies and consultants to manage many different advertising accounts.

Features of Google Ads Keyword Planner:^[5]

• Get search volume estimates for the keyword.
• Generate new keywords by combining different keyword lists.
• Create new keyword variations based on primary keyword.
• Provide Keywords used for websites – useful for competitive analysis.

Limitations of Google Ads Keyword Planner:

• Hides long tail keywords’ data as the tool is made for Google Ads and not for SEO purposes.
• Keywords are generated by the device may not produce good results as the tool is targeted towards advertisers and not SEO.
• The search volume displayed received a change in 2016, Google started limiting the output options to advertisers (or accounts) with lower or no monthly spending.^[6]

Google Trends[edit]

Google Trends is a free research tool provided by Google to see the trends of any particular keyword. It particularly helps to visualize and compare the data from Google searches. The tool uses graphs to showcase the trend of data over time. It allows users to compare multiple keyword trends to find out which keywords are popular than others in particular regions at a particular time.

Google Suggest[edit]

Google introduced Google Suggest in 2012. Google Suggest is typically used as a live feature while a user is typing a search phrase into the browser or Google website. Google Suggest uses the organic search input of billions of users and try to «guess» that way what a user might be searching for even before he completed entering the query or all the words of a keyword phrase.

This makes Google Suggest a relevant source for keyword research, as it contains numerous organic keywords very closely related to a full or partial keyword and can be used to find additional most searched appending keywords that make the whole keyword less competitive. Google Suggest can be researched through the Google Search website or through a compatible browser for a small number of keywords, but also in large scale using free scraper tools.

Bing Ads Keyword Planner[edit]

The Bing Ads Keyword Planner^[7] provides keyword and ad group suggestions and shows average monthly search volume trends, relative competition and suggested bids. Features of Bing Keyword Planner:

• Get search volume data and trends.
• Get performance and cost estimates.
• Multiply keyword lists to get new keywords.

Limitations of Bing Ads Keyword Planner:

• Bing holds only 20 percent of the U.S. search engine market share, the data provided may not be reliable at least not for optimizing websites for Google search engine.
• Similar to Google Ads Keyword Planner, data furnished by the tool is for helping advertisers and not publishers.

See also[edit]

• User intent
• List of search engines
• Search engine marketing
• Search engine results page

References[edit]

Introduction to Keyword Research

1.6 billion live websites (and counting) – that’s how many sites search engines like Google have to sift through every time someone types in a phrase in the search field.

In a matter of seconds, the search engine trawls through millions of websites, collating a list of relevant sites for that person’s consideration. This exclusive, shortlist is referred to as the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) and if you fail to make the cut, you’re out of the game before it even started.

How do search engines decide what sites to display?

Search engines strive to provide users with the most relevant results possible and with so many websites on the internet, they need to have quite a sophisticated filing system.

When a new website or page is published online, search engines send out clever little bots to crawl through it and figure out what it’s about. They’re looking for typical search terms, or keyword, in the content, so they can file the page away under that term.

When someone then searches for that phrase, the search engine consults its index and displays a list of all the relevant sites. Your website’s position on this list is referred to as ‘ranking’.

What is a keyword?

A keyword is the combination of words people type into search engines to find information e.g. “adidas running shoes” or “SEO specialist Cornwall”.

These special phrases are the basis of all organic (unpaid) traffic via search engines and, with Google alone processing over 40,000 search queries every second, it’s critical you’re on the list for the right keyword.

Defining the phrases you want to rank for is known as keyword research, which is an in-depth, vital part of any SEO strategy.

What does keyword research involve?

Keyword research is hugely valuable and can provide significant returns if done correctly. It’s much more comprehensive than simply guessing what your target customers might search for.

Keyword research involves analysing and carefully selecting a set of optimum phrases to ensure your site ranks well, and appears in front of the right people.

Keyword selection can make or break even a state-of-the-art website, so it’s critical you do your research.

Using specialist tools, each keyword is analysed based on the following metrics:

1. Search volume: How many times the keyword is typed into search engines per month.
2. Difficulty: How plausible it is to rank for this term. If the first page is dominated by multinationals and news sites, it’s going to be very difficult to compete.
3. Relevance: If a term is relevant to your site, company or product offering. For example, “running shoes junior” might be a highly searched phrase, but if your company only sells adult running shoes, it’s not relevant to your business.
4. Intent: What are people actually looking for when they use this phrase? Going back to our example, “trainers” is a highly searched phrase, but people could be looking for running shoes, personal trainers, fitness equipment, dog trainers to name just a few. If you’re selling running shoes, there is little value in ranking for this term as, even if it brings traffic to your site, the conversion will be low as a percentage of your visitors weren’t looking for running shoes in the first place.

Another reason it’s important to analyse user intent is to capture traffic at different stages of the buying cycle. Someone searching for “women’s tops” is probably just researching, whereas someone looking for “’women’s black tops size 10” is ready to buy. Content can be developed to capture traffic from both these routes.

Choosing the right keyword

To create that all-important list of keyword you want to rank for, you need a holistic approach.

Firstly, you need to understand your current position. What do you rank for and what’s the search volumes of these terms? Are these the most relevant keyword? It’s important to understand whether you need to improve your rank or change the keyword focus of your content.

You also need to look at your competitors to understand what they rank for. If they rank for the same phrases as you but higher, you can benchmark their content to decide if yours could be improved. If they’re ranking for different phrases, you need to understand the search volume, relevance and intent associated with those phrases as they might represent new sources of traffic for your site.

Above all, you need to get inside the head of your target consumer, trying to anticipate what they might look for and what language they could use.

At each stage of the buying cycle, people will be searching for different things. If you put yourself in their shoes, preempting what they’re looking for, you can use these keyword to open up new traffic streams to your site.

You also need to analyse the language people use. Your keyword should cover related words and synonyms e.g. running shoes, trainers and sneakers even, so that you capture all of that relevant traffic.

It’s also important to understand if search trends have changed over time. What’s the current way of referring to something? For example, people don’t just search for “holidays” nowadays. They look for “getaways”, “mini-breaks” and “babymoons”.

Short tail keyword

Short tail keywords, also known as “broad” or “generic” keywords, are short phrases that consist of one or two words. They are typically more general and less specific than long tail keywords, which are longer and more specific phrases.

For example, a short tail keyword might be “dog toys,” while a long tail keyword might be “indestructible rubber dog toys for aggressive chewers.”

Short tail keywords are often searched for more frequently than long tail keywords, as they are more general and therefore attract a wider audience. However, they are also more competitive, as more websites are likely to be targeting them.

1. They are easier to rank for: Because short tail keywords are less specific, it is generally easier to rank for them in search engine results pages (SERPs).

2. They can drive more traffic: Short tail keywords are typically searched for more frequently, so targeting them can lead to more traffic to your website.

3. They are more cost-effective: Short tail keywords are generally less expensive to bid on in paid search campaigns, as they are less specific and therefore less in demand.

Despite these advantages, it is important to use short tail keywords carefully. If you rely too heavily on them, you risk attracting a large volume of irrelevant traffic to your website. It is often more effective to use a combination of short tail and long tail keywords to attract a targeted and qualified audience

Long tail keyword

The highest volume keyword online are generally 1-2 word terms like “trainers”, “running shoes” or “SEO”. It’s easy to be seduced by the volume of searches, but these broad, generic terms are highly competitive and have a relatively low conversion rate. The good news is, they actually only make up about 30% of the searches performed online.

The other 70% of searches are for more specific terms like “ladies hoodies size 12”, and there’s a lot more value in focussing on these keyword as they capture people further into the buying cycle when they are preparing to buy. The more specific the keyword, the more likely you are to convert, although the search volume will be lower.

What’s more, as these keyword are more specific, there’s less competition in the SERP and it’s much easier to rank.

Research suggests that click-through rates are higher for long tail keyword too, as they allow search engines to show more relevant results.

Keyword Intent

Keyword intent refers to the purpose or goal of a particular keyword search. Understanding keyword intent can be crucial for businesses and organizations, as it can help them create content that is more relevant and valuable to their audience.

Informational Keywords

These keywords are used by people who are looking for information or answers to a question. For example, someone searching for “how to train a dog” is likely looking for informational content.

Navigational Keywords

Individuals who use keywords to search for a specific website or webpage, like “BBC News,” are probably attempting to navigate to that site.

Transactional Keywords

Keywords used by people with the intention of making a purchase, such as “order pizza delivery,” often indicate a desire to transact.

Commercial Keywords

Keywords that are used by individuals who are considering making a purchase but still want to gather more information, like “compare car insurance quotes,” typically suggest that the user is conducting commercial research

Identify relevant keywords

Identifying relevant keywords is a crucial step in the process of search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing. By choosing the right keywords, you can increase the chances that your website will rank highly in search engine results pages (SERPs) and attract qualified traffic. There are a variety of tools and strategies that you can use to identify relevant keywords, including keyword research tools, analyzing search data, looking at your competitors’ keywords, and using customer feedback. It is important to choose keywords that are both relevant to your business or organization and that have a sufficient search volume to attract a meaningful amount of traffic. By carefully selecting and targeting relevant keywords, you can effectively drive traffic to your website and attract qualified leads.

Keyword Search Data Analysis

Analyzing search data is a useful way to determine the relevance of a particular keyword. One way to do this is to look at the number of searches for the keyword. Keywords with high search volume are typically more competitive, but they may also be more valuable if they attract a large audience. On the other hand, keywords with low search volume may be less competitive, but they may also be less valuable if they attract a smaller audience. In addition to looking at search volume, it is also important to consider the relevance of the keyword to your business or organization. A keyword may have high search volume, but if it is not relevant to your products or services, it may not be worth targeting. By carefully analyzing search data, you can identify keywords that are both relevant and have a sufficient search volume to be worth targeting.

Step-by-step: how to Analysing search data

1. Identify the keyword or phrase that you want to analyze. This could be a keyword that you are already targeting, or one that you are considering targeting in the future.

2. Use a keyword research tool to retrieve search data for the keyword. Some popular tools include the Google Keyword Planner and Ahrefs.

3. Look at the search volume for the keyword. This will give you an idea of how frequently the keyword is being searched for. Keywords with high search volume are typically more competitive, but they may also be more valuable if they attract a large audience.

4. Consider the relevance of the keyword to your business or organization. A keyword may have high search volume, but if it is not relevant to your products or services, it may not be worth targeting.

5. Look at the level of competition for the keyword. This will give you an idea of how difficult it will be to rank for the keyword in search engine results pages (SERPs).

6. Use this information to determine whether the keyword is worth targeting. If the keyword has a high search volume, is relevant to your business, and has a manageable level of competition, it may be worth including in your SEO and content marketing efforts.

Competitor Keyword Analysis

Analyzing your competitors’ keywords can be a valuable strategy in the process of identifying relevant keywords for your business or organization. By looking at the keywords that your competitors are targeting, you can get a sense of what is working for them and identify opportunities to differentiate yourself. There are several ways to analyze your competitors’ keywords, including using keyword research tools, analyzing their website and content, and looking at their paid search campaigns. By understanding the keywords that your competitors are targeting, you can get a sense of the language and phrases that are most important to your industry and use that information to inform your own keyword selection. It is important to keep in mind, however, that your competitors’ keywords may not always be relevant to your business, so it is important to also consider the relevance and value of any keywords that you identify.

1. Keyword research tools: Many keyword research tools, such as the Google Keyword Planner and Ahrefs, allow you to enter a competitor’s website and see the keywords that they are ranking for. This can give you a sense of the language and phrases that are most important to your industry.

2. Website and content analysis tools: Tools like SEMrush and Moz allow you to analyze a competitor’s website and content to see which keywords they are using. These tools can also provide insights into a competitor’s organic traffic and search engine rankings.

3. Paid search analysis tools: If your competitors are running paid search campaigns, you can use tools like SpyFu and AdWords Performance Grader to see which keywords they are targeting. This can give you a sense of the keywords that are driving traffic and conversions for them.

The importance of keyword research

Keyword should be at the core of all your digital marketing. That’s how people look for businesses, products and information at all stages of the buying cycle, so if you’re not using them correctly you can’t drive traffic, online sales or return on investment.

With the right keyword research, you can optimise your content to ensure you rank highly in the SERP and have a better chance of getting a click-through. It also highlights areas for content development in the form of new pages on your website or blog posts so that your site can rank for a wider range of keyword and capture more traffic.

It also means the traffic you get is better quality and more relevant. Giving you the best possible chance of conversion.

Moreover, keyword research is actually market research. In order to do it well, you need to extensively examine your own position, your competitors’, the market and your target consumer. This level of analysis can quite often highlight opportunities for development and give you an insight into consumer demands. For example, you can see who is the most searched for brand and benchmark yourself against them. Or if you notice you don’t sell the top searched for product, you could adapt your offering.

Knowing the top ranking players in the SERP can also spark ideas for collaboration and highlight backlinks providers, which are also critical SEO strategies.

Keyword research shouldn’t be underestimated. It’s actually one of the most important steps to any online marketing, particularly SEO, and it’s not as simple as it first seems. To do it well takes a combination of specialist tools, industry experience and tested methods.

Solve-ing your SEO through keyword research

At Solve, we want our clients to succeed, and the success of any SEO strategy depends on the quality of the keyword research. Our specialist team of geeks and geekesses use a combination of market-leading tools, proven experience and a little Solve magic to ensure all of our activities are based on thorough keyword research. And our methods really work – we’ve improved the ranking for hundreds of businesses, some by as much as 25,000%! But don’t just take our word for it, check out what our previous clients say on Google.

If you need help to solve your SEO, get in touch to see how we can help. 

What do you do when you have a question or want to find something? Quickly.

If you’re like most, you open your laptop or unlock your phone, pull up a web browser, and head for the search bar. Once you say or type a few words and hit “enter,” you browse the results until you click on a page that looks promising. After the page loads, lo and behold: the answer you need.

The words you type into search engines play a role in how easily you find a blog or web page- and the same goes for the way people find your website. If you want people to find your website, you must understand what keywords are, why they matter, and best practices for how to find them. In this post, you will learn how to do so successfully and strengthen your content strategy on your own (search) terms.

Navigate to what you need to know first about keywords:

What are keywords?

Why are keywords important?

What are good keywords?

Considerations for Choosing a Keyword

How many keywords should I use?

How to Find Keywords the Right Way

How to Create Unique Content Through Niche Keywords

For instance, if you were to type “bikes” into a search engine, the results would show a variety of results that correlate with those keywords:

Here, the term “bikes” is an example of a short keyword; you can count on keyword lengths to fall into two categories:

1. Short keywords that contain one or two terms
2. Long-tail keywords that contain typically three or more terms

As a result, short keywords are generally on broad topics, while long-tail keywords are all about specificity. Take a look at what a long-tail version of “bikes” would look like if you search “mountain bikes for beginners”:

Therefore, understanding which type of keywords to use on your website or blog requires performing some investigation. As you begin your keyword research, you will start to discern the difference between picking a related keyword and writing for a user’s intent.

The 3 Common Types of Search Intent

Behind every keyword is the reason the user makes the search query in the first place. This is known as search intent which falls into 3 categories: informational, navigational, and transactional.

Take a look at your keyword and think about what the user is really asking by making their query:

• If they were to search, “what are nfts” they are feasibly looking for informational content that will explain this topic in detail.
• If they look up “nft marketplace” they are likely searching for navigational content to take them to NFT platforms.
• If they type “best nfts to buy now” they are probably trying to find transactional content that will help them complete a purchase decision.

By speaking to the “why” of the search query, you can tailor each content page to fully provide value to the user and deliver the best possible experience. But to fully grasp how to provide this value, you need to know the impact of keywords and why they matter to your website in the first place.

Now, while keywords are still useful tools for conceptualizing and planning your content strategy, their effectiveness is entirely rooted in context.

For instance, say you’ve written SEO blogs about the various aspects of software. If you have been fleshing out a topic cluster to demonstrate your content authority, Google will have the context it needs when ranking websites like yours.

The keywords you include on your pillar and cluster pages will guide you to produce content on a range of user interests. But with the paradox of choice, how do you choose a good keyword? Your decision will depend on the marketing channel you’re writing for and your short or long-term goals.

Let’s dive into how to define good keywords across SEO and PPC channels to put you in the best position to benefit from your content.

What are good keywords?

What qualifies as a good keyword in SEO is different from what makes for the right target in PPC. But how do SEO keywords differ from keywords for PPC on the SERP?

Understanding this difference takes learning how to use SEO and PPC keywords to your website’s advantage.

Using Keywords in SEO

A good SEO keyword strikes the ideal balance between keyword volume, competition, relevance, and intent based on your website’s authority. Therefore, adding keywords that encompass these factors, will allow you to rank and drive traffic long-term.

Plus, because SEO keywords are free- to rank for and when users click on your content- you can receive high value from the content you produce.

While the roster ranges both on and off the page, SEO content includes:

• Blogs
• Articles
• Website copy
• Metadata like title tags or meta descriptions

Unlike the other forms, the keywords in metadata aren’t ranking factors. But best practices are to include your targeted keyword in the title tag and description. Take a look at how metadata appears on the SERP with the title tags outlined in red and descriptions in blue below: What’s special about finding the right keywords, is that it allows you to write rich content around what people are interested in and satisfy Google’s E.A.T. principle — a major Google core update from 2019. Your keywords will be your guide to writing a piece that meets a search engine like Google’s expectations of:

• Expertise
• Authoritativeness
• Trustworthiness

So before you dive into finding keywords, start by thinking about the topics that matter to your website. What are some things your audience may be searching for that would lead them to you? Have some ideas in mind? Start there.

Using Keywords in PPC

On the other side of Search are PPC keywords. PPC keywords are terms you choose to rank for in order to increase brand visibility and foster website growth. You can bid on your keyword choices, and when you win your bids, you will rank at the top of the SERP like these businesses below:

So, you can use keywords to create PPC ads promoting your products or services through platforms like Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. Then, when users select your ad, you pay for every click you receive.

Now, there are two main types of PPC keywords:

• Branded keywords are words and phrases that include your brand’s name. Their purpose is to attract customers in your audience that are near a purchase decision.
• Non-branded keywords are words or phrases that do not include your brand name. They help you gain new customers who may be searching for what you offer but do not know it yet.

Essentially, pay-per-click advertising generates immediate traffic that can convert into leads or sales. Subsequently, these conversions deliver a faster return on investment for the money and time you put into your ads. You will use PPC keywords to tailor your content to the audiences you decide to target.

When it comes down to when to apply SEO versus PPC advertising, it depends on your business goals. Will your business benefit from the long-term impact of Organic Search or the short-term results of Paid Search? While you contemplate this, remember SEO content concentrates on providing value to the reader, while PPC content focuses on promoting your products or services.

Still, the tricky part is that the internet is a busy place — making it virtually impossible to be the only person writing about any given topic. So even if you create rich content with keywords and provide the context for search engines to understand it, how do you stand out from the crowd?

Well, this is where the following keyword considerations come into play.

Considerations for Choosing a Keyword

Monthly Search Volume

Monthly search volume (MSV) is the number of times people search for a particular keyword in a month. By considering the popularity of a keyword, you can tailor your content strategy and write about new content opportunities.

To find out how many people are searching for a particular keyword, you can use keyword research tools like the one below from Ahrefs. For instance, when you type in the word “insurance” the tool provides the following MSV estimate outlined in red:

Oftentimes, competitive keywords with higher difficulties are the ones in which everyone in an industry wants to rank. For example, broad keywords like «insurance,» «marketing,» or «technology» are all going to be highly competitive because they have a high volume of monthly searches. There is also a bevy of written content on these topics vying for a keyword ranking.

The market for these and similar broad search terms is completely saturated. So getting a foothold for a search term like «marketing» would be like constructing a generic coffee shop between a Starbucks and a Dunkin’ Donuts — you may get a bit of business if a customer notices you in your area, but they’re more likely going to go to one of the established businesses they know.

For your business to truly gain SEO ranking, it’s important to consider less competitive keywords. Focusing on less keyword competition lets you demonstrate what makes you different and reach the best audience for your business.

If we return to our coffee shop example, concentrating on less competitive keywords is like branding yourself as the only ‘specialty cat cafe’ in the city. In this situation, it’s easier to stand out because you’re focusing on what makes you unique to your target buyer persona.

After all, the person looking for a cat cafe to sit in and relax is probably not the same person wanting a quick cup of coffee on their way to work — just like someone searching for «technology» is not the same person searching for «small business technology setup service.»

Intent & Relevance

We’ve established that search intent is the «why» behind the terms users search, but did you know that search engines use this intent to rank content? This relationship is called keyword relevance: how closely related a keyword or phrase is to a piece of content.

For example, say you own a website about baking and you want to target the keyword “easy cake recipes” in your content. But instead of writing a thorough article on these recipes, you write more about the history of cake. Even though this article may be intriguing, it’s not relevant to your primary keyword— and you’re unlikely to rank for your target. So be sure to keep keyword intent and relevance top of mind as you research.

How many keywords should I use?

It’s a question that has withstood the tests of time (spent on digital marketing): what are the optimal number of keywords for SEO content?

Well, for a long time digital marketers organized their entire content calendar around specific keywords — and the number of times to include these keywords on the page. They’d work with their teams to brainstorm focus keywords relevant to their products or services using keyword research tools. Then analyze all the variations of that keyword most likely to be a source of website traffic.

Unfortunately, as time went on, publications began keyword stuffing; publishing irrelevant, poorly-written content with specific keywords just to drive traffic. Eventually, search engines — largely led by Google, and the constantly-changing Google search algorithm — became more advanced. Instead, a more contextual-based approach to digital content was favored over simply keyword count.So as the power of keywords continues to shift, so does the importance of how often you use them. Yet, deciding how many keywords you should use is

still worth the consideration because it is a matter of keyword density: the ratio of keywords on your page versus the overall word count of the piece.

Aside from using a formula to calculate this ratio, you can also conduct a competitive analysis to examine the keyword density for specific keywords your competitors target.

There’s no magic trick to how to get on the first page of Google when it comes to SEO. To rank well on search engines, you need to consistently create rich SEO content and think about how it fits together in the long term. You must also be clear about your content strategy and the keywords you use to guide it.

Leveraging keywords to build your content foundation enriches your content marketing strategy and teaches you how to get traffic to your website — now, we’re going to tell you how to find them.

1. Clearly define your target buyer persona.

Having a clear understanding of your ideal audience is the key to any marketing endeavor. With keyword research, you must understand what questions you can answer or problems you can solve for this target buyer persona. At this point, it’s okay to think in broad search terms regarding what those problems or questions are.

For instance, if you’re a PR agency, you need to find leads who are interested in hiring a third party to help them run a PR campaign. To do this, perhaps you begin by writing digital content that answers the question «How to run a successful PR campaign».

A broader content topic is a good starting point for building a pillar page for your topic cluster.

2. Narrow your focus and investigate keyword competition.

Once you determine the overarching question or problem to address, it’s time to get more specific. Getting more specific allows you to cater your content to your target audience, and it helps you leverage less competitive keywords.

I like to narrow my focus keyword by using lsigraph.com. LSI, or latent semantic indexing, is a process of generating search query variations by determining how closely a given search term relates to other search terms. Think of latent semantic indexing tools as a way of brainstorming and generating a lot of keyword ideas quickly and easily.

From there, use keyword tools like Google’s Keyword Planner to analyze a competitive keyword. This analysis allows you to determine which keywords have the most potential for your business.

3. Collect data, analyze keyword research results, and repeat.

As you create content around specific keywords, keep in mind that a great content strategist doesn’t just throw content out randomly to see what sticks. Consider using a tool like Google Search Console to track how your website is performing for your keywords.

Google Search Console can also help you see whether your traffic is increasing from keywords you hadn’t planned on ranking for and this informs your future digital content strategy. Having this knowledge is crucial to further refining your keyword planning and identifying content gaps that have significant potential to bring you new customers.

How to Create Unique Content Through Niche Keywords

What’s great about leaning into less competitive keywords is that it will allow you to build your brand authority within a specific field through clearly defined niche content. Niche content is a specialized writing topic that engages a specific audience’s interests to make a viable impact in your industry’s content market.

If we reexamine our “marketing” example above, we see how difficult it is to make an impact by writing general content on “marketing” in such a saturated market. But what if your content targets a longer, more specific keyphrase like “marketing portfolio examples” and an audience of marketers trying to build or bolster their marketing portfolio?

As you can see, although the monthly search volume for this keyword is significantly lower, it would be easier for you to get a foothold in the market thanks to this phrase’s lower keyword difficulty. To become more authoritative in your space, you need to incorporate long-tail keywords into your content strategy.

Because these keywords have less SEO competition, it’s easier to establish yourself as a content authority on a given subject — which is invaluable in SEO.

Whether you’re just getting started with keyword planning or looking to amplify your current content efforts, keep your customer persona at the front of your mind, and don’t be afraid to recalibrate your content strategy as you collect more data. Great inbound marketing is about having the right content reach your ideal potential customers when they need it, and getting smart with your keyword approach is a fantastic way to do that.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

 

Keywords are the words and phrases that potential customers use when searching for services or products. They expose and give insight regarding important information about your targeted audience.

They impact your business, your content, and are used to boost search engine ranking and used with general content strategy.

In fact, 50% of the global population is consistently using the internet today. That means that if you use keywords and other SEO methods your business has the chance to reach over 3 billion people! 

Starting the SEO journey may seem like a giant undertaking. But with the right guidance, you can get your business ranking in SERPs using professional digital marketing techniques that actually work.

This step-by-step beginner’s guide will explore the right steps to take to master keyword research, explain why it’s important, and teach you everything else you need to know about keywords. Let’s jump in!

What Are the Steps to Perform Keyword Research?

Keyword research has two main goals; it helps target the right audience, and it improves ranking in SEO. Every part of your website needs keywords. This includes PPC, CPC, and Google Adwords advertising, blog posts, and any other content.  Understanding the steps can boost your traffic and your conversion rate. 

The number of users searching online for different products and services has grown substantially in the past few years. 

As a matter of fact, the traffic volume for the 1,000 most visited pages increased by 22%, and organic search results that ended up on the top of search results received about 28% of clicks. 

After learning those statistics, you can see how important ranking, keyword research, and website optimization is, and why your business needs a professional SEO content marketing strategy. So, let’s start with discussing the keyword research process with these helpful steps:

Step 1 – Start by brainstorming

Start by trying to think of keywords that people might use to find your business online. Try and put yourself in the shoes of your potential audience. If you were them, what words would you use to type into Google and what are the related searches? 

Here are some questions you might want to ask yourself to get your creativity flowing:

• What phrases would you type in if you were looking for your products?
• What categories do your products or services fit into?
• What problems do your products or services solve?
• What type of people do your products or services serve?
• What questions do your customers ask before they buy?

You can also get more ideas by typing your keywords into Google.

As you type, Google will suggest other possible keyword phrases that might be relevant.

After you complete the search, Google will also display related keywords at the bottom of the search results page. Make note of any keywords that might be relevant to your content.

Step 2 – Use competitor websites for ideas

Another great way to generate ideas is to take a look at your search competitors’ websites.

“Search competitors” are different than your normal competitors, because they are looking for websites that rank for your target key phrases. It would be best if you were to model them since they are already ranking well. Don’t plagiarize, just look at what is working for them, and then do it better yourself. 

You can find these sites by just typing in your main keyword to Google and finding the URLs of the top-ranking positions.

Then, you can use a tool like our own SEO rankings checker to see what your competitors are ranking for!

Analyze title tags and other metadata to see what keyword phrases they are intentionally targeting. Title tags will give you clues about what keywords your competitors think are important.

Step 3 – Use keyword research tools

Keyword research tools will help you decide which new keyword phrases to target by revealing keyword phrases that you may not have thought of as well as estimated search volume.

The HOTH Keyword Research Tool is a good place to start when doing keyword research! It’s free and it will show you everything you need to know and give the right keywords to help grow your target audience and your marketing strategy. 

Here is a list of the other best keyword research tools for SEO: 

• Ahrefs
• Ubersuggest
• SEMrush
• Google Keyword Planner
• Keywords Everywhere
• Moz
• Google Trends

Tools like Ahref’s Keyword Explorer, Moz, and SEMRush can provide additional keyword ideas and keyword volume numbers.

When performing a keyword search, type in a keyword phrase, then click the “View Keyword Research” button.

The results will display a list of keywords, a range for estimated traffic, and what people are paying on Google Ads to get paid traffic for those keywords.

If you want to get serious about keyword research, then you should consider investing in other keyword tools so that you can get more data on the best keywords.

By checking the monthly search volume of the terms you’ve chosen to use, you can then create an SEO strategy based on your keyword list.

Step 4 – Consider search intent

Before you create content, make sure you understand what content typically ranks in Google when searching for that keyword – you may be surprised!

Search intent or user intent is used to describe the reason for a search. When a user types a question or service into Google, they are looking for something. For example, 46% of searches are users with local intent.

Another thing you may notice is that Google prefers ranking long-form how-to guides, tools, or lists. SEO keyword research is so valuable when creating high-quality content. Your website, landing pages, and content need keywords so Google and other search engines can show it to its users. 

You’ll want to try to model the content that is ranking if you want to rank highly!

Step 5 – Consider trends and seasonality

When optimizing for SEO traffic, you also need to consider seasonality and trends.

Google Trends is a tool that you can use to view a keyword phrase’s popularity over time.

Trends

Google Trends is an effective tool. It uses the best data collected by Google’s user searches to show interest for a search term over time. You can use previous data from past years to predict future Google user trends. 

Some keywords or topics can trend up or down over time.

For example, “salsa dancing” seemed popular in 2004, but appears to be declining in popularity.

Seasonality

A seasonality index is a forecasting tool. It basically just determines the demand for services or products. It’s a fantastic tool to use when finding what products your audience is searching for. Search terms in any market over the course of a year is a good starting point for finding the metrics you need for your niche. 

Some keyword phrases can also experience seasonal fluctuations.

For example, “easter chocolate” sees a spike in search interest every Easter.

Before investing in SEO, you should consider trends and seasonality to determine if your marketing efforts will be worthwhile over the long term.

Step 6 – Select your target keywords

Select a primary keyword phrase to target. This phrase will likely be the highest volume phrase that is most relevant to your web page.

You can use this as your primary keyword for creating and optimizing your content.

Additionally, you can create a list of long-tail keywords that you can add to your page content.

Although these keywords won’t drive a lot of traffic individually, the cumulative traffic that they send to your site can add up quickly.

Some super helpful tips include performing an on-page SEO audit to make sure that your on-page is up to par with your competitors. Try mapping your keywords, and lastly, avoid keyword stuffing.

Step 7 – Create your content and optimize it for SEO

Once you know what keywords you will be using, then you can create your content!

Keyword optimization is a way to make sure that your content and your keywords are driving the right kind of traffic to your website. Ranking high in your niche is also a major goal for any business. 

Keywords need to allow search engine algorithms such as Googlebot and Bingbot that your content is worthy of being a top result for search queries. 

Keyword optimization may also turn into a never-ending process where you are always updating and adjusting old content to meet the criteria for an ever-evolving SEO strategy. 

Here are a few ways to begin the process of keyword optimization: 

• Use keywords in title tags
• Use keywords in your links
• Use keywords in your content
• Use keywords in your alt text images
• Use keywords inside of your site structure

Your main targeted keywords should be included in your title tag. This is a really important part of your content and your website both off-page and on. 

Be sure to do on-page SEO (and possibly some link building) to optimize your web pages to rank in the search engines. Inbound links and internal links should have your target keywords optimized within them. 

After you have selected your keywords, add them to your web pages, and completed SEO marketing activities like link building. Checking your metrics is also a good practice to keep track of your progress. 

It may take several months or longer before you rank for the keywords that you are targeting, especially if they are competitive.

Ranking well and connecting with your key audience is vital for business and traffic. Not only do you need to create the best content for your niche, but you need to optimize keywords for every piece of content you create. 

Optimizing your meta descriptions, your alt text, image size and file name is a great way to start optimizing your images for SEO. It’s important to incorporate your target keywords into your images. That will allow search engine crawlers to do their job. 

Keyword optimization is important regarding how you structure your website. Not only do you need the best keywords for your niche, but you need to group by relevancy, and categorizing them into corresponding pages is a good place to start on website optimization structure for SEO.

Or get done fast and efficiently with web copy by using our product HOTH Web Copy.

Step 8 – Measure your results

Not only does Google Trends have a huge amount of information about search demand, but Google Search Console is a fantastic addition to your strategy. Combining the two and figuring out the data history and using it to your advantage can greatly increase your traffic. 

You can use tools these helpful tools to analyze your SEO results and improve them.

Here are the primary factors you should measure for SEO:

• Keyword ranking
• Organic Traffic
• SERPs
• Bounce back rate
• Click-through rate 
• Website authority
• Backlinks
• Website and page speed

The best way to track your targeted keyword ranking is to do a quick for your services or products. The results will give you an idea of where your website ranks for competitive keywords. The goal is to get on the first page and preferably as close to the first result as possible. 

Organic search traffic is important for your business because it is targeted. The user is specifically searching a solution your product or service can help them with. It’s also one of the best ways to get a new customer. By improving organic search results, your website can get more visibility. 

A good way to understand your keyword’s rank and find new relevant searches is to conduct a keyword analysis.

Search engine visibility is important because it measures how many potential customers can view your website in search results. To have authority in SERPs is the goal here. This metric gives you a huge insight into your SEO progress and your digital marketing strategy as a whole. 

A bounce-back rate is the percentage of people who view your website without actually buying or doing anything else on it. Google Analytics counts these as a visit and counts more than one click as an interaction.

The click-through rate is the percentage of people who click on your site that were guided there from the SERPs. You can use this metric to optimize your title tags are. Inserting targeted keywords into your website pages and URLs can boost this metric.

If your click-through rate is lower than expected then it’s a good idea to optimize your meta description and other on-page SEO. 

Your site’s authority score is basically just a prediction regarding how good a domain will rank. A lower number can cause traffic to decrease and ranking; whereas, a higher number can boost traffic and provide a better ranking. 

Look at your domain authority scores and compare your business to your competitors. This is a great place to adjust your strategy if your score is not as high as you would like it to be. 

Backlinks are a major factor in SEO and monitoring link-building is an important step in ranking. Another thing it would be best to keep an eye on is your web page speed. Optimizing images for mobile and desktop is a good place to begin. 

Pay attention to which keywords are driving traffic to your site, which keywords are driving sales and conversions, and make decisions based on the data if you decide to adjust which keywords to target!

Why is Keyword Research Important?

Keyword research is vital to search engine optimization efforts because it helps business owners discover valuable phrases, terms, and keywords that people are actively searching for. Without these keywords, you will miss out on opportunities for search traffic.

If you don’t do proper research, you’ll waste time on search terms that are either too competitive or have a low-volume search rate. And your rankings can suffer, meaning you’ll miss out on potential customers.

By performing relevant keyword research, you could definitely learn a lot about what topics people are interested in and care about. Using the right SEO and keyword researching tool is an important part of learning what keywords work for your niche, and which don’t.

By researching specific keywords that are getting high-volume searchers, you can figure out your content stream and deliver high-quality content for your targeted audience. 

You can then narrow down your topics, pick and choose the right keywords for your blogs, articles, and other related content. By doing so, your organic traffic will increase and so will your conversion rate.

What Are The Best Kinds of Keywords to Use?

Different kinds of keywords help you design an informed and strategic marketing method that best matches your business or niche. 

When you understand all of the available options to you, then you can find the best keyword to help you connect with your audience, boost traffic, and maximize your conversion rate. 

If you are experiencing keyword difficulty, it may be because you aren’t using the right keywords for your business. 

Here are some great places to start when finding the best kinds of keywords:

Short-tail keywords

Short-tail, head, or high-volume keywords are basically just generic keywords that are broad and usually popular such as “computers.” 

These keywords are only about one or two words and are extremely competitive, hard to rank, can boost traffic but likely won’t increase your qualified lead conversion rate. Head keywords should be used as a base, but not as the only keyword.

Medium-tail keywords

Mid-tail keywords waver somewhere in, between head keywords, and long-tail keywords. They are usually two to three words long. For example, “the best computers” would be considered a medium-tail keyword. 

They have smaller traffic that head keywords but more than long-tail. These keywords can be helpful when used in any content.

Long-tail keywords

Long-tail keywords are a fantastic SEO method. They’re keywords or phrases that are more specific to a topic and are usually much longer than head keywords and even medium-tail keywords. 

Long-tail keywords get less search traffic but have a much higher conversion rate because users are specifically searching for them. They let you gradually get more traffic to your site and be discovered by your targeted audience.

On-Site Keywords

On-site keywords are used for SEO optimization for a website or landing page. These keywords are used within your website and used inside your on-page content. This helps search engine crawlers understand the topic of your website and helps you rank better in search engines like Google or Bing. 

Primary keywords

A primary keyword is the main keyword of your content on your page. Each SEO page of content should have a primary keyword. 

The website or page should use optimization practices to send search engine crawlers clear signals that the page is about the main keyword. 

Relevant or LSI (latent semantic) keywords

LSI keywords are used as a support to primary keywords. Each piece of content or webpage should have the main keyword and three to four relevant keywords that give extra context. 

That often helps search engines rank a page and understand the information more.

Google Ads Keywords

Google Ad keywords are an important part of keyword research if you’re marketing PCP or CPC SEO or coming up with a great local SEO strategy. A keyword option allows your ad to show up when a user searches for that particular keyword. 

There are a few different types of Google Ad keywords such as broad, phrase, exact, and negative. The following sections will explore these types of keywords in more detail to help you understand how keywords affect your Google Ads and SEO in general. 

Broad match keywords

Broad match is the main match type and the one that reaches your targeted audience. When you use a broad match, your ad can appear whenever someone searches your key phrase in any order. For example, if you use the keyword “photography,” your ad might display variations of that keyword phrase such as, “photographer needed” or “best types of photography.” 

Google might also match up your ad to searches using related words such as, “picture artwork,” or “black and white photos.” Your broad keyword may not target these exact keywords, however, Google may think that users who search those related terms would like your ad.

Phrase match keywords

Phrase match keywords offer a bit more versatility than a broad match but with way more control over who sees your ad under what search query. Your ad will appear when a user searches for your key phrase using your keywords in the same order you choose them. However, there might be some other words before or after your chosen keyword. 

Exact match keywords

Exact match is the most restrictive keyword match type. More recently Google has changed the way exact match keywords work. In previous years, exact match keyword phrases would only match your exact keyword and that’s it. Thankfully, Google now shows a little more inclusive keywords in its exact match category. 

Negative keywords

Negative keywords sound like they may be bad for business; however, all they do is prevent your ad from being accidentally triggered by a certain phrase or keyword. You have control over where your ads show up and who they are shown to. This process is known as a negative match and they can help your control your audience through ads. 

Buyer Keywords

Buyer keywords are search phrases, terms, and keywords that people use when searching to buy a service or a product. When users use buyer keywords in search engines like Google, it signals that they are interested in buying a product or service. They indicate that they are definitely ready to make a purchase.

There are a few different types of buyer keywords that businesses can utilize when advertising a product or service. These include, informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional. 

Informational keywords

Informational keywords start with the how’s, the what’s, the why’s, and the where’s. They can also include guides, ideas, best, or tips. This indicates that the users are searching for information. 

These keywords have a low buyer intent because they are searching for how to do things. An example of this would be, “best art tutorials” or “how to build a landing page.” 

These keywords don’t get potential customers to buy, they only provide great content on how to make something or how to solve a problem.

Navigational keywords

Navigational keywords are used by users who are looking for a particular page or website. Customers will be using keywords that include product names, brands, or other specific services to find the exact page or content they are looking for. For example, “Sony earbuds” would be a navigational keyword. 

Transactional keywords

Transaction or “buy now” keywords are phrases that have the most intent to buy something. The customer is willing and ready to complete a purchase and are only trying to figure out from where. 

Your goal as a business owner is to find keywords matching each step of the buyer keyword process and then create the best content to incorporate these keywords into. By using this strategy you can bring in your targeted audience in all forms of the buying phase. 

Customers also like to buy from someone they know or a business that they feel they can trust. That is why reviews, answering potential customers‘ questions and concerns is an important part of this keyword research process. 

By adding intentional keyword buyer keywords into your product ads, you can guide them towards your service or product. 

Commercial Keywords

Commercial keywords are used by people who are looking to find products, services, or a specific brand name. These usually have an intent for action or intend to buy something now or in the near future. 

What is Keyword Stuffing (and How to Avoid It)

Keyword stuffing is unnecessarily repeating keywords or phrases. That also includes adding words that aren’t relevant to the content of the page and repetitive keywords or phrases that don’t match the information.

The reason keyword stuffing isn’t good for your content is because it’s a bad experience for users and because Google crawlers understand that’s a tactic for ranking, and won’t bite the bait. 

Website content should try to serve and engage readers. Provide helpful information and help guide users towards a goal. Content stuffing your pages with keywords isn’t doing any of these things. 

It not only creates a poor experience and takes away from your audience, but it will send users away from your content and drive leads away from your business. It may also lead to a search engine penalty and your content may be banned from crawlers.

Here are some great tips to avoid keyword stuffing:

• Pick a primary keyword for each piece of content
• Write more than 300 words (preferably longer than 2,000 words based on SEO)
• Use the right primary keyword density 
• Add secondary keywords, related phrases, and long-tail keywords
• Double-check your on-page SEO for optimization

One of the most important steps is choosing one target keyword for your webpage or content. This primary phrase should connect your content with your audience. The phrase should be popular, yet low-competition. This improves your ranking and conversion rate. 

Search engines rank higher word count content more than lower word count pages. It’s best to write more than 2,000 words, but in order to avoid keyword-stuffed content, your page needs to have more than 300 words. In fact, a high rank is usually correlated with a higher word count.

Writing and webbing your target keyword throughout your content is important. Don’t overuse it though, put it where it feels natural and appropriate. Keyword density should be below 2% to stay within SEO guidelines. 

Having a great primary keyword is important for SEO success; however, choosing a good secondary keyword is a great idea. Search engine crawlers use other keywords and phrases to find relevant content for their users. 

Your content should use synonyms, long-tail keywords, secondary keywords along with your target term. That helps you rank and reinforces your content for crawlers. 

Ranking and keyword research have so many different factors, it can be a bit overwhelming. It’s not enough to pick the right keywords, it would be best to optimize your on-page keywords for SEO. You need to research strategy along with keywords and give your pages what crawlers want. That will help you compete with competitors and boost your business. 

Summing Up Keyword Research

Keyword research is such a big part of SEO optimization. It takes practice, and you may need to readjust your keywords many times before getting it right. 

SEO is an ever-evolving process, you might need to measure your traffic and other metrics for months before understanding what you can improve on and what you know works.

If you want to skip the hard stuff and work with a trained professional, don’t hesitate to reach out to one of our SEO experts and schedule a call now!

You can also sign up for free and take advantage of all of our free resources and guides! 

What Is Keyword Research and Why Is It Important?

Keyword research is the process of discovering which words and phrases your target audience is using to search for websites and answers to questions on search engines. A keyword can be one or two words, but it can also take the form of a complete phrase or a question.

Why is keyword research important?

Keyword research is important because it helps you understand your customers’ buying journey, your competitive landscape, and how to shape your content strategy.

As a website or marketing manager, SEO keyword research helps you to shape content decisions that are backed up by research and analytics. Keyword research is an important component of SEO.

SEO is a process by which you can make research-based decisions to create new content, optimize existing content, and run effective paid search campaigns.

If you choose the wrong keywords or don’t optimize for the right keywords, you could fail to drive potential customers to your website or experience higher bounce rates because of the wrong content.

When you get your keyword research and SEO right, you’ll win web traffic and leads with a combination of user-oriented content and data-driven insights.

What Do You Mean by Keyword Research?

Keyword research is a form of market research, but it’s more than that.

Each company begins with assumptions about its customers and their online behavior. SEO keyword research allows brands to check their assumptions against data to validate or challenge their strategy.

Keyword research with an SEO keyword research tool allows companies to evaluate:

• Keyword search volume. A good keyword tool provides precise monthly search volumes for each search term entered.
• Competitiveness/Difficulty. Learn how difficult it is to rank on a certain keyword based on the competitive landscape.
• Bidding cost. Keyword research tools should provide a range or average cost-per-click for brands to effectively budget for PPC campaigns.

In addition, a quality keyword research tool provides users with keyword suggestions, allowing them to explore related keyword phrases and questions that they may not have considered.

The best SEO tools will also allow global companies seeking localized data to return keyword data by country.

What Is the Keyword Research Process?

What is the best process for keyword research?

Basic keyword research can be completed in a few hours, but there should be an ongoing process to monitor keyword trends and create new lists as your business needs change.

Here are some basic steps to follow:

1. Brainstorm. Before you start outside research, your team should brainstorm what keywords and phrases are most relevant to your audience on their customer journey. Try to stay away from industry jargon and instead use phrases that your audience would use.
2. Select a keyword research tool. There are many SEO keyword tools on the market, from free to paid. For best keyword research results, look for a robust keyword tool. SEO tools like DemandJump (try it free)will give you precise search volumes, analyze competitive URLs, and analyze attribution insights.
3. Build keyword lists. Start with a keyword list that encompasses your broad keywords, topics, and brand name. Next, you may want to build secondary lists specific to a product or service line or a specific point in your marketing journey.
4. Establish your baseline and set goals. Save your lists and document your ranking position to be able to show progress later. Set goals around keywords for which you want to rank higher.

When you perform keyword research, it’s for a greater purpose than simply gathering information as a website or marketing manager. SEO keyword research is the process of using keyword research as a guidepost to set your content strategy.

SEO keyword research allows you to optimize your content and launch campaigns that will improve your rankings online and generate more traffic, conversions, and customers.

The Good News: DemandJump has automated the SEO keyword research process.

With one-click SEO content briefs for new content, recommendations for updating current content, and linking content to revenue generated with marketing attribution you are sure to see results.

Work smarter with automation tools designed to make content marketers look like rockstars.

Write content that ranks fast, and save time doing it — get started today!

Please Share:

Imagine getting over a quarter million visitors to your site every month. We did it thanks to keyword research:

That screenshot is from one of my sites called The Wandering RV. My wife and I grew this site from a brand new site to a quarter million monthly visits in just three years with less than 30 articles.

Yes, you also have to create great content and build links to that content, but those actions come AFTER you know the best keywords to target. Every successful SEO campaign begins with keyword research; skip this step at your peril.

Ready to get started?

In today’s guide, I share a step-by-step guide to keyword research that covers not just how to find hundreds of great keywords, but also how to tell which ones can move the needle for your business and which aren’t worth your time. Let’s dive in!

Keyword Research Fundamentals

Before I talk about the exact steps to find keywords for your SEO campaign, let’s briefly cover what keyword research is and why you should care.

What Is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is the act of finding and vetting keywords to target in an SEO campaign.

This is done using a number of free and/or paid tools that show you what people are searching for on Google and other search engines.

Suggested in-depth guides: Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

The Role of Keyword Research in Digital Marketing

As you’ll learn in the next section, the quality of your keywords is the difference between a successful marketing campaign and a waste of time. The keywords you pick will determine your SEO marketing strategy from beginning to end.

Let’s see how.

How Important is Keyword Research? (Don’t Skip This!)

SEO can be complex, but it boils down to three fundamentals:

1. Keyword Research
2. Content
3. Link building

Of those three, keyword research is the most important.

Why? Because you can create the best content and build incredible links that score you #1 Google rankings and still get zero benefits in terms of business growth or revenue if you target the wrong keywords.

For example, let’s say you want to write some content on your site’s blog so you can show up on Google’s first page. You have an idea of a blog post and think you have a good keyword to target. You make amazing content, build links to it through guest posting and email outreach (here’s how to find anyone’s email address), and end up on the first page of Google. You’re getting hundreds of visits every month…

But your income from that article remains a big fat $0.

That’s because you didn’t properly research your keyword ahead of time. You may have found a keyword, but finding a keyword and doing keyword research are very different things.

Properly researching a keyword means understanding it’s income potential, how competitive it is, and even the exact kind of content you need to create to be able to rank for it. You’ll see what I mean by the end of this guide.

In a nutshell: Proper keyword research can be the difference between a wildly successful SEO campaign that makes your business tons of money and an utter waste of time and money.

Search Volume and Long Tail Keywords

The first concept to understand about keywords is search volume.

This is what most people look at when they first start researching keywords, and also one of the worst metrics to look at.

A high search volume is very deceiving for two reasons:

1. The raw number of people searching for something has very little to do with how much you can actually earn from that traffic. For example, if you rank for a keyword that gets 10,000 searches per month, but if people are just looking for information and aren’t ready to buy (hint: you’d need to define the search intent. More below.), that does nothing for your bottom line.
2. Just because 10,000 people search for a keyword doesn’t mean all 10,000 people actually click on a result. Take a look at the keyword “How old is Trump”, for example—it gets 30,000 searches per month, but only 13% of those people actually click on anything. That’s because people get the answer right on Google and don’t need to click through to find it.

On the other hand, a low search volume doesn’t mean a keyword is bad or that the number you see is the number of visitors you’ll get. Virtually all pages that rank on Google for one keyword also rank for dozens, hundreds, and sometimes thousands of other keywords.

These other keywords are usually synonyms and long-tail variants. There are also Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords, which I get to in a section below.

For example, take a look at this post that my wife, Kayla, wrote for The Wandering RV. She was targeting the keyword “best camping gear”, which gets around 2,700 searches per month according to Ahrefs. But as you can see in the screenshot below, it also ranks for 1,912 other keywords and even ranks on page one for “camping gear” at 32,000 searches per month!

The point of the story? While search volume is an important metric, you shouldn’t base your target keywords solely on how many people are searching for it every month (unless you’re only focused on brand awareness and/or advertising revenue on a per-impression basis).

Search Intent

Search intent is exactly what it sounds like—the intent of the person searching for a given keyword. It’s similar to the marketing concept “buyer intent”.

In other words: What is the user looking for?

Are they searching for an item they are ready to buy right now? Are they doing research before they make a purchase decision? Or are they just looking for information that has nothing to do with buying anything, but rather with a problem they may need a solution to?

Let’s look at an example of each.

High Buying Intent: A high buying intent keyword may be a product name, such as “RV rental las vegas”. If you type that into Google and look at the results, you see a bunch of ads for RV rentals and a map showing Las Vegas RV rental companies. Someone searching this is likely ready to buy, or very close.

Research Intent: These are keywords where people are still doing research on solutions, but will likely buy soon. “Best” and “Review” keywords often fall into this category, such as “best RV rental companies”.

Informational Intent: These keywords are for people strictly looking for information and aren’t ready or even thinking about buying anything. The “how old is Trump” example falls under this category. Another example that fits with RV rentals might be something like “how to travel the country with a pet”.

However, don’t think that you should only go after buying intent keywords. Informational keywords can help you build your email list and get people into your marketing funnel to eventually buy from you.

Search intent is also important to know because it affects what content ranks on Google. If you try to create a landing page to rank for an informational keyword when Google is ranking long-form blog content, you probably won’t rank even with perfect on-page SEO and plenty of backlinks because it’s simply not what the user is searching for.

For example, let’s say you want to rank for “small campers”. So you create a guide to owning small campers. However, when we look at Google, we can see that people aren’t looking for a guide, but rather, they’re looking for a list of small campers to buy.

That’s why even after you find good keyword ideas, you should always manually type them into Google and see what’s currently ranking to get an idea of what you need to create. Don’t write a massive guide when people just want a quick answer and don’t try to rank a blog post when people are looking to buy a product.

The Role of LSI and Synonyms

Earlier, I mentioned LSI keywords. This stands for Latent Semantic Indexing, and it’s a fancy way for Google to say “synonyms and related keywords”. They’re words that are commonly found together within a single topic and are semantically related to each other.

They’re important to tell the search engines what your content is about since there can be multiple meanings to the same keywords.

For example, let’s say you’re writing an article about cars. There are five different potential “cars” you could be talking about:

1. Cars, the vehicles
2. Cars, the animated Disney movie
3. CARS, the Canadian Association for Rally Sports
4. CARs, the Canadian Aviation Regulations
5. (The) Cars, the American 1970s music band

How does Google know which version of “cars” you’re talking about? By LSI keywords! Take a look:

1. Using the words “vehicle”, “used”, “new”, “buy”, “sell”, etc.
2. Using the words “film”, “movie”, “Disney”, etc.
3. Using the words “association”, “rally”, “sports”, etc.
4. Using the words “aviation”, “regulation”, “administration”, etc.

While LSI keywords don’t necessarily matter during your keyword research, they are important when developing your actual content. You should include various LSI keywords naturally in your content without stuffing them, including in headings and image alt text.

You can find LSI keywords (and learn more about them) with a tool like LSI Graph.

How Do You Do Keyword Research? (Step-by-Step Guide)

Alright, now that you have a firm understanding of the important metrics behind keyword research, it’s time to actually find your very own keywords! There are three steps I follow when I’m doing keyword research for a new site, with an optional, more advanced fourth step:

1. Find keyword ideas
2. Check the TRUE keyword difficulty and search volume
3. Determine their search intent
4. (Optional) Find & utilize keyword silos

Let’s dive in!

Step 1: Find Keyword Ideas

Finding keyword ideas is the easy part. There are loads of tools that will spit out hundreds of ideas at the click of a button. It’s vetting them that takes effort, but we’ll get to that.

For now, go take a look at the “Best Keyword Research Tool” section below and pick your poison. I’ll be using Ahrefs in the examples because it’s my favorite tool and has all the bells and whistles, but the other tools can work as well.

My favorite way to find great keyword opportunities is spying on my competition. You can do this by plugging their site into any keyword tool and look at their keywords. Ahrefs has a nifty tool called the Content Gap Analysis.

Here’s how it works:

1. Plug your site into Ahrefs, then click the Content Gap link in the left-hand menu.

2. Plug in 1-10 competitors who are ranking on Google for keywords you want to rank for. You can find them by Googling those keywords and grabbing the URLs off of Google or by using Ahrefs’ Competing domains tool right above the Content gap link. Run the tool.

3. From here, you can export the list to an excel spreadsheet if you want. I like to comb through the list right in Ahrefs. If I see a keyword I might want to target, I open it in a new tab and add it to a keyword list using the + Add to button in the top right.

If you don’t have access to Ahrefs or another keyword tool that allows you to see competitor’s keywords, you can also use a tool like Keyword Shitter to give you a ton of ideas, then vet them using other free tools such as Uber Suggest.

Step 2: Check The TRUE Keyword Difficulty and Search Volume

Once you have a list of keyword ideas you’re comfortable working with (I aim for 50-100 at a time but you can do far more), it’s time to see which are even worth pursuing based on keyword difficulty (KD) and search volume.

There’s just one caveat… the search volume and KD you see in most keyword research tools are usually way off. KD in Ahrefs is solely based off the number of linking domains to the top results, which isn’t a 100% accurate depiction of the true difficulty to rank for a keyword.

This is because SEO is a complex beast, and things like domain rating (which I’ll cover shortly) and internal linking can have a massive impact on rankings. Backlinks are only part of the picture.

And the search volume? That’s not including LSI and long-tail keywords!

Remember that camping gear example I showed you at the beginning of this article that ranks for over 1,900 keywords? The main keyword only had 2,700 searches per month, yet the article gets over 5,000 visits per month. That’s because it’s ranking for other keywords besides the main keyword.

So if you see a keyword with 200 searches per month, chances are it’s really more like 500 or 1,000 if you include the related keywords that you’ll rank for.

To determine true search volume, grab the #1 result on Google for the keyword and plug it into Ahrefs or Uber Suggest to see how much traffic that page actually gets. That should give you a more accurate picture of the search volume for a given keyword.

Here’s the traffic for the #1 ranking page for “tiny campers”, a keyword that gets ~3,400 searches per month:

See how the page gets over 10k traffic, despite the main keyword getting a third of that? That’s true search volume potential.

The other metric, keyword difficulty, is also not 100% accurate. But figuring out true difficulty is usually as easy as looking at the top pages domain authority (DA), or domain rating (DR) if you’re using Ahrefs. Let me explain.

If a keyword has a difficulty score of 8, but the top ranking pages are all DR 80+, ranking your site for those keywords may be difficult if you have a low DR, despite the low difficulty score.

My advice is to aim for keywords with a 30 KD or lower if you’re under a 40 DR, then branch up as you build more links and gain a higher authority. As your DR climbs, your internal links are worth more “link juice” (or pass more “page authority” depending on what source you listen to).

But this isn’t an article on technical SEO, so I’ll leave it at that for now!

Step 3: Determine Search Intent

At this point, you should have a pretty decent list of keywords with a difficulty you’re comfortable tackling and a search volume potential you’d be happy to capture. Now it’s time to figure out what people actually want when they search for these terms and whether or not it fits in with your marketing and revenue goals.

This part is as simple as Googling each keyword on your list and looking at the top 3-5 results. Review their meta title and description, click on them to view the page, and check out the angle they took on the page.

• Are they mainly listicle posts? How-tos? Ultimate guides? A landing page? Something else?
• How do they seem to be monetizing the page? Are they using display ads? Selling products as a solution to the problem? Affiliate marketing? Just capturing emails and not actually selling anything?
• Take a look at the comments. Are people asking questions that weren’t answered in the article? Do they seem happy, angry, or neutral?

All of these questions will help you dial in on the type of post/page you need to create, how you can monetize it (or use it to capture emails/push notification subscribers/social followers), and what you can do to improve it.

As you’re going through each keyword, keep your answers to these questions in a spreadsheet or word document to keep track of which ones you’re interested in pursuing. Your final list is the list you can start pursuing!

To give you a better idea of how to determine search intent, here are a few examples courtesy of this Moz post:

Informational Intent:

• [product name]
• what is [product name]
• how does [product name] work
• how do I use [product name]

Commercial Intent (AKA Research Intent):

• best [product name]
• [product name] reviews
• compare [product name]
• what is the top [product name]
• [colour/style/size] [product name]

Transactional Intent (AKA Buying Intent):

• how much does [product name] cost
• [product name] in [location]
• order [product name] online
• [product name] near me
• affordable [brand name] [product name]

This graph from Ahrefs may also help:

Now take your list and go crank out some content! Or, you can follow one last step.

Step 4: (Advanced) Find & Utilize Keyword Silos

If you really want to do well, you can optionally take it one step further and look for keyword silos to create corresponding content silos on your site.

A keyword silo is a list of highly related keywords that you can create content around to interlink between on your site (also called the “hub and spoke” method). Here’s a visual I created to help you understand:

Essentially, you create a hub page targeting the primary head term you want to rank for, then create “spoke” pages based on related and long-tail keywords.

For example, while doing keyword research for my wife Kayla’s vegan food blog, I found a series of related keywords asking “Is ___ vegan”. People wanted to know if common foods, such as bagels, donuts, or Oreos are vegan.

To rank for these keywords, we created this hub page which links to all of her “Is ___ vegan” articles. These articles all link to one another, as well as back to the main hub page.

This inter-linking is called content siloing, and it works so well for two reasons:

1. Because all the pages interlink to one another, if you build links to any of the pages, it improves page authority across all of the other pages.
2. Google uses relevancy in its algorithm, and since these topics are all highly relevant to one another, it can improve your rankings further.

So how do you find keyword silos? There is no silver bullet solution — you have to be good at picking up on patterns and noticing relevancy. However, there is one trick you can use to try and find them: books.

Look for books on your topic on Amazon and browse the table of contents. Oftentimes, books are full of keyword silos: that’s what makes them a book! Think of the binding as the hub page and the chapters as the spoke pages.

Of course, as you can see in the example above, these keywords aren’t exactly what people are searching for on Google. People aren’t typing “vegan out in the world”, but rather “how to eat vegan at restaurants” or “how to eat vegan at family gatherings”. So you may have to do some sleuthing to figure out the keyword that corresponds with the chapter title in the books you find.

Once you find a potential silo, be sure to run the keywords through steps 2 and 3 before you commit to it! Just because you found a silo, doesn’t mean you should pursue it. Think logically about how all that content will fit into your business and how you can expand on it in the future.

There are dozens, if not hundreds of keyword research tools on the market today. Some are extremely unique, but most are just slightly different takes on the same idea. So what’s the best one? Let’s break it down by free and paid tools.

Free Keyword Research Tools

There are two free keyword research tools I’ve used and recommend:

1. Ubersuggest
2. Keyword Shitter

Ubersuggest

Let’s put on hold all the conversions about Neil Patel for a second. This tool does its job and, if you’re on a budget, it can work to get you started with SEO.

Ubersuggest is basically a free, scaled-down version of Ahrefs or Moz. It lets you spy on competitor’s backlinks, see what keywords they’re ranking for, and do some decent keyword research. If you’re doing SEO on a budget, it can get the job done.

Keyword Shitter

Keyword Shitter is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. You type in a keyword and get hundreds of keyword suggestions. It’s great if you just need tons of ideas, but it mostly only spits out related keywords to the one you typed in, not unique, separate ideas.

Paid Keyword Research Tools

Now we’re getting into the big-boy (or girl) tools! If you’re serious about SEO and you have the budget, these are the tools you want to use.

1. Ahrefs
2. SEMrush
3. Keyword Insights
4. Keywords Everywhere

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is hands-down my favorite SEO tool; not just for keyword research, but also for link-building, rank tracking, coming up with content ideas, and more. It has all the bells and whistles and is easily the best all-around SEO tool on the market. However, it comes at a steep price, with just the basic tool being $99 per month.

SEMrush

SEMrush is another great keyword research tool. It’s more affordable than Ahrefs, but it doesn’t have quite as many features. It’s more geared towards search engine marketing and PPC (thus the SEM in SEMrush). However, if you want a great paid tool but don’t want to pay the premium on Ahrefs, it’s a valid option. It even lets you try out the product for free!

Keyword Insights

Keyword Insights claims to be “the smartest way to group keywords and classify search intent at scale”… and with good reason. The tool utilizes geo-specific, live search engine result page data to cluster keywords into similar groups whilst also working out the search intent behind them.

A user simply uploads a list of keywords (as many as you’d like) and the tool will spit out a preformatted Google sheets document with the clustered keywords and the intent pulled through. Its most recent update also sorts the grouped keywords into “top-level themes” so you can see what their content hubs should be and what their spoke content might look like. The insights will also tell you which keywords you can target a single page with, or which need to be broken into multiple pages.

Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere is an awesome tool that used to be free and now is credit-based. The tool shows you search volume, competition, and average CPC right on Google whenever you type something in. It also shows you stats on related keywords and the “people also search” keywords. Regardless of which other tools you use, I highly recommend grabbing this one.

Want more SEO tools? Check out Kinsta’s list of must-have SEO plugins for WordPress.

Suggested Stack

So what keyword research tools should you get? My suggested stack is Ahrefs and Keywords Everywhere. Ahrefs is a complete SEO software that will help you rank your site, not just find keywords. And Keywords Everywhere lets you see search volume and keyword ideas any time you’re searching something on Google. Plus it’s free, so what’s not to like?

SEO without keyword research is useless. Learn how to do it once and for all to unleash a flood of organic traffic towards your site! 🌊🏄Click to Tweet

Summary

Here’s a quick recap of everything we’ve covered:

1. Keyword research is extremely important to any SEO campaign and should not be skipped or taken lightly.
2. Search volume and keyword difficulty can be deceiving. Do some deeper research by typing the keyword into Google and reviewing the results before you make a decision.
3. Don’t be fooled by low search volume. Check the true search volume by reviewing the top pages search traffic using Ubersuggest or Ahrefs.
4. Search intent is king. Make sure the content you’re creating matches the content people want to see (and what Google is already showing).
5. Look for keyword silos. They’re can be a shortcut to ranking your pages faster.

And that’s all there is to it! If you have any questions, feel free to drop a comment below or shoot me an email. For more help with SEO, click here to read my step-by-step guide and this awesome in-depth guide on how to drive more traffic to your website.

Good luck!

Keyword research sounds like such a daunting task. What’s the point of researching a keyword anyway? Shouldn’t your natural marketing instincts tell you which keywords are most relevant to your business?

Not quite. In this easy guide to keyword research, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know to find the best keywords for your business, including:

• What keyword research is and why it’s essential.
• The steps and tools to perform easy and effective keyword research.
• How to find competitor keywords, question keywords, related keywords, and more.

Use these recommendations and tips so you can show up for exactly where your potential customers are looking!

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of finding the terms people use to search for information on a topic, as well as how often those keywords are used in search engines like Google and Bing. Keyword research is the best way to find new, relevant keywords to expand your paid and organic search marketing campaigns.

Keyword research can be conducted through a variety of tools that we’ll discuss in more detail below, but the main goal is to find the right search terms that have intent aligned with your business’s content and offerings, along with decent search volume.

In addition to search volume, other keyword metrics may be helpful when conducting research and prioritizing which keywords to target, such as

• • Cost-per-click (CPC)
  • Competition (how difficult it is to rank for that keyword)
  • Your own site authority.

Why is keyword research important?

Keywords are the building blocks of not only your online presence, but your business growth. Businesses that cannot be found online will not succeed! But Google processes over 5.5 billion search queries each day. That’s a lot of keywords! But you can’t just target any keyword. You need to do your research to find the most fruitful ones for your business.

If your content isn’t targeting the terms and topics your audience is interested in, it’s essentially useless. But there’s an art and science to it.

If your keyword search volume is too low, leads won’t be able to discover your ads or organic listings, visit your website, and turn into paying customers.  But if the keywords you’re trying to rank for or bid on are too popular, you might not get on the SERP at all or end up overpaying for your ad clicks.

Without the right balance of quality keywords, your search marketing campaigns (paid and organic) will be completely misguided.

When do you need keyword research?

For digital marketers, these are the three areas where keyword research is most critical:

#1: For SEO

The first and most obvious reason we need keyword research is to optimize for organic search. Search engine optimization (SEO) helps Google bots crawl and index our websites to rank organically on the search engine results pages (SERPs). One of the primary ways that search engines decide what to rank is by crawling for keywords that show relevance between the user’s search query and the content on your website.

While Google is frequently changing their algorithms, keywords are likely never going to lose importance.

#2: To fuel your content strategy

We all know that SEO and content go hand-in-hand. Without content on your website, strong SEO will not follow.

“Effective content strategies start with keyword research,” says Search Engine Land columnist Nate Dame. “Modern keyword research provides significant insight into what audiences want and need.”

Every single piece of content on your site, whether it be a 300-word blog post or 5,000-word guide, should be written with SEO in mind. That is, focused around a keyword that strikes the right balance between high search volume and competition.

#3: For paid campaigns

Marketers often think about SEO and content when referring to keyword research, but all of your paid campaigns should also be keyword-focused. Whether it be your paid search ads, display ads, remarketing, or social media campaigns, all of these strategies need to be keyword-focused.

For example, with paid search you’re literally bidding on individual keywords. Keywords make up your ad groups, which make up your campaigns. If these keywords have low search volume, then your ads are going to get little or no traction. Also, if your keywords do not pertain to your target audience, you’re going to get the wrong people clicking on your ads, which wastes your precious budget.

The bottom line is that keyword research is key in all search marketing campaigns!

How to do keyword research: focus on INTENT!

Before we get into the logistics of how to conduct keyword research, it’s critical to mention the importance of keyword intent. WordStream’s Content Manager, Elisa Gabbert, recently wrote a thorough post on intent marketing, which she defined as “any kind of marketing that aims to meet an end-user or prospect’s intent – that is, what they really want or need in the moment.”

You can see why this would be important for keyword research, right? If you’re unable to understand the true intent of your keywords or if the keywords you’re targeting have the wrong intent that isn’t aligned with your business goals, then they are essentially useless.

Let’s take paid search as an example. The keywords “wedding cake” or “wedding cake ideas” show very different intent than “buy wedding cake in Boston” or even “wedding cake shops near me.” These two latter options have much higher commercial intent, meaning they indicate that the goal is to find a store and purchase a cake.

People searching those keywords are closer to the bottom of the funnel, the point of purchase.

So while it makes sense to target commercial keywords with shopping ads, conversion-optimized landing pages, and other content that makes it easy to buy—the intent of higher-funnel, less commercial keywords might be better met with a blog post full of wedding cake ideas.

Being able to truly understand your prospects’ intent is critical to being successful at keyword research and search marketing in general.

How to do keyword research: getting started

Now that you understand the importance of keyword research, where do you start? Here are two easy steps to get you off to a productive start!

Step #1: Brainstorm a list of broad topics related to your business

Start thinking of the different categories and topics that pertain to your business. Start broad, and don’t worry about getting too specific right away.

For example, if you’re a bakery you might break down your topics by the types of baked goods you sell, like cakes, quiches, croissants, cupcakes, brownies, cookies, etc. It can help to use a Google document or excel spreadsheet and create tabs for each of these main topics you’ve brainstormed.

Step #2: Use keyword tools to find specific keywords within each topic

Alright, this is where the fun begins! You really need to put yourself in the shoes of your customer, and think how you would go about discovering your business if you were them. If you’re a marketer with little customer-facing interaction it can help to speak with your sales team to see the language that new leads typically use.

You can start with a simple brainstorm. Let’s go back to our bakery example for this one, focusing in on the “cakes” category. Since you make cakes for special occasions you might write down some keywords like “wedding cakes,” “affordable wedding cakes,” “stylish wedding cakes,” “summer wedding cakes,” etc. Then you may focus in on other occasions that you sell cakes for like birthdays or anniversaries. You’ll then recall that people often search for specific flavors like “red velvet” and “marble.” Oh, and location is important! You should add the keyword “near me” to the end of these searches to help you show up in local results, like “affordable wedding cakes near me.” (Learn more about how to do local keyword research here!)

Should you stop there? NO! Instinct will only get you so far – it’s easy to miss whole pockets of relevant keywords that you should be targeting, or you may find that the keywords you think would drive traffic are so low-volume that they won’t get you anywhere. You need to use keyword tools to make sure you’re surfacing all the relevant keywords that should be in your content plan and search campaigns.

Type each of your main topics (“cakes,” “cookies,” etc.) into a keyword tool to get a list of related keywords, their associated search volume, and other data. You can also type in any specific keywords from your brainstorm session to see what kind of volume they get.

Remember, if they’re far-fetched or too specific, keyword research tools will reveal that your keywords are not worth focusing on. On the other end of the spectrum, your keywords might be too broad, and result in super high search volume or a high level of competition. If you’re a small, local bakery, you wouldn’t want to compete with a global cookie company. Rather, your keywords should be more targeted around your location.

Keyword research tools will help you discover which keywords are worth investing in. The list of the top tools below will help you determine which ones to try first.

Our 5 favorite keyword research tools

You may want to check out our latest list of the 18 Best Keyword Research Tools for Every Need (Paid and Free!), but here are our favorites:

#1: WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool

WordStream’s new and improved keyword research tool not only provides keyword ideas and search volume, it gives you the ability to filter by industry and country to get more targeted data.

Results will show you search volume, CPC, and competition for both Google and Bing on one page. You can then get the results emailed to you for free.

#2: Google’s Keyword Planner

If you’ve got a Google Ads account, then you’ve got access to Google’s free Keyword Planner. To navigate to this tool, log in to your Google Ads account and click the “Tools” bar on the right.

There are lots of ways to use Keyword Planner for keyword research. You can:

• Enter a broad topic to get specific keyword ideas
• Upload an existing list of keywords to check their search volume, seasonal trends and other data
• Enter a website URL (your own, or someone else’s) to see what keywords they are bidding on and ranking for

Here are more tips to help you make the most of Keyword Planner.

#3: Moz’s Keyword Explorer

If you’re looking to go down more of a premium route for your keyword research, I’d recommend exploring Moz’s Keyword Explorer. You can explore their free version here or start a free trial of the paid tool to see if it’s worth the investment.

Check out Larry Kim’s review of Keyword Explorer here.

#4: SEMrush

SEMrush is another great tool that allows for extensive keyword research with both a premium paid and free version to try. The free version still provides very useful information, from organic search volume and CPC to competitive info and a list of organic search results for each keyword.

For more in-depth analysis with 10,000 results per report, you can upgrade to the paid version, but depending upon your goals the free version just may do the trick.

#5: Google!

Google itself is an underrated keyword research tool. You can start typing a keyword into Google to get more helpful suggestions. For example, see some of the keywords that appear when I type “wedding cakes” into Google.

“Wedding cake toppers” and “wedding cake ideas” could not only be keywords worth bidding on, but they could also be keywords worth creating additional content on. For instance, a blog post on “wedding cake ideas” or a comparison chart of “wedding cake prices.”

When you’re considering keywords to target, you can also use Google to see what’s already ranking. Get a sense of the competitive landscape. Ask yourself questions like:

• Is the SERP highly commercial – i.e., are there lots of ads? Does it make more sense to enter the ad auction with an ad than try to rank organically?
• Are the top-ranking sites much larger than you? (It’s hard to compete with the likes of the New York Times and Buzzfeed.)
• Do the current results meet the intent of the keyword? If not, you could swoop in and beat them with a better answer to the question!

You should also look for SERP features like the “People also ask” box and related searches at the bottom of the SERP. Including these additional related keywords in your content can help you meet the searcher’s intent and help your content rank!

How to do keyword research for competitor keywords

Don’t forget to put your spy gear on when conducting keyword research! It’s important not to forget about the competition when pursuing keywords found through keyword research.

For instance, when a keyword has very high search volume, it can often be seen as much more competitive. But how can you be sure your competitors are ranking for such terms? Well, as mentioned, one of the easiest ways is Google! Simply Googling the keywords you’re looking to target to see what is currently ranking is a great approach.

What about your paid search competitors? You can use the Google Ads Auction Insights report to see how your main competitors are doing compared to you, in terms of impression share, average position and more.

Once you know who you’re competing with, you can use a tool like WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool or SEMRush to see what keywords they’re ranking for. Just drop in their URL instead of a keyword or topic.

To gain background from your competitors in paid search, think about how you can be more compelling. For instance, you can add extensions to your ad or try writing more emotional, intriguing ad copy, which may entice searchers to choose your wedding cakes over the not-so-tasty cake shop down the street.

Here are some more tips on how to write ads that get high CTR (which in turn raises your Quality Score, and saves you money!).

Several of the tools covered above also include competitive analysis and insight into what keywords your competitors are ranking for, so take advantage of these competitive insight features when doing your keyword research.

How to do keyword research for question keywords

One of the best ways to build brand trust and affinity is to provide great answers to your prospects’ burning questions.

Targeting questions allows you to get right at the problems your customers are having, in turn leading them to discover your business and engage with your content. Question keywords can also benefit you greatly in the organic search results. If your provide the highest quality answers to difficult questions, your credibility will rise, allowing you to rank higher on the SERPs.

So how do you find these ideal questions? What questions are your searchers asking? If you can figure this out, then you’ll have a long list of informative keyword phrases to incorporate into your SEO, paid search, and content strategy.

If you’re at a standstill when it comes to brainstorming questions, there are some really great keyword tools out there like Answer the Public. This awesome free tool, with a super weird homepage, works like so: Type in a keyword, and behold the beautiful visual that appears, with a circular display of questions grouped by the word they start with (where, which, who, how, why, etc.):

If my intent was to sell wedding cakes, I could target some high-intent questions from this list, like “who sells wedding cakes” or “where to buy wedding cake.” You’ll also find higher-funnel questions that people in the market for a wedding cake need help with, like “what size wedding cake to feed 200.”

The next step would then be using one of your keyword research tools to get search volume data for these questions, as well as other helpful metrics to ensure the keywords are worth pursuing. One strategy would be to target as many of these keywords as possible in a single “ultimate guide” type resource to planning your wedding cake.

Learn more about how and why to target question keywords here, and find some other cool keyword tools to try in this post.

Let’s take a moment to review some of the specific considerations related to keyword research for PPC, or paid search marketing. Keyword research for paid search can be a bit more daunting, since your budget is on the line. In order to spend it wisely, and actually see an ROI from the keywords you bid on, keep these four tips in mind when conducting keyword research for paid campaigns.

#1: Research the associated costs for each keyword

All of the keyword tools outlined in this post typically include metrics around the cost-per-click (CPC) associated with each word. Keeping cost in mind will help you determine if certain keywords are in or out of budget for your upcoming campaigns.

You want to ensure you’re able to bid high enough to rank in the first 0-3 slots on Google, but not so high that you’re paying an absurd amount for one single click. Pay attention to these metrics when researching and deciding on keywords for your ad groups.

#2: Make sure to do negative keyword research

Conducting negative keyword research is just as important as regular keyword research when it comes to PPC, because if you’re not excluding irrelevant words you could be wasting money on irrelevant clicks. You’d be amazed how much money you can waste this way. This is especially important when using broad or even phrase match types.

Also, just typing your keyword into Google and seeing what appears as suggestions to search for can help you identify negative keyword terms. For instance, if you’re selling cakes, you’re probably not interested in showing up for any “recipe” queries, since I’d have to pay for those low-intent clicks.

#3: Bid highest on commercial intent keywords

Your goal in advertising on Google is likely not just to drive clicks. If it is, well then ignore this tip!

However, if you’re actually looking to target the most interested and qualified searchers, driving more conversions and sales, you should focus most of your budget on commercial intent keywords – such as those containing words like “buy now,” “discount,” “free shipping,” brand names, and any other terms that demonstrate the searcher is ready to make a purchase.

While you may still need to target keywords outside of this bucket, I’d recommend allocating a higher budget to keywords with high commercial intent since they’re the most likely to have the highest return.

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Find more tips on how to allocate your Google Ads budget to different keyword types here.

#4: Group your keywords properly

Once you’ve identified your high-intent, commercial, appropriately priced keywords, you need to group them in order to configure your campaign. Small groupings of tightly related keywords are how you should approach structuring your ad groups. If you have a long list of keywords, and this task seems daunting, check out our resource on keyword grouping.

Never again be lost for (key)words

Keyword research might seem like a daunting task, but it’s a critical one, and with an organized method and the right tools, you’ll be finding the perfect keywords in no time!