How to Do Keyword Research for SEO: A Beginner Guide

How to Do Keyword Research for SEO

Posted by Gurjeet, 3rd June 2023

While Google keeps us at its fingertips with all the algorithm updates that keep Rollin out, there's one thing to keep in mind to make your websites more searchable for inbound marketers: keyword research.

Well, the need for keyword research remains the same. This is not how you do it.

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is the process of finding the valuable keywords for business according to some parameters like search volume, and competition with the goal to rank the web page of the search engine. Keyword research can address targeted queries, the popularity of these queries, their ranking difficulties, and more.

Why is Keyword Research Important?

Keyword research provides important insights into the queries that your target audience is actually searching on Google. The insights you can put into these actual search terms can help inform your content strategy as well as your larger marketing strategy. However, keywords themselves may not be as important to SEO as you might think.

More and more, we hear about how SEO has evolved over the last 10 years, and how many keywords in itself have become eligible for our search that people are searching for every day. And that's true; using exact match keywords in content not anymore help to rank on Google. Instead, it's the intent behind the keyword, and whether or not the piece of content suits that intent (we'll talk more about the intent in a minute).

But that doesn't mean that keyword research is an old process. Tell me:

Keyword research tells you what topics people care about and how popular those topics really are with your audience by assuming you use the right SEO tools. The operative term is the topic here - by searching for keywords that are getting a high volume of searches each month, you can identify and sort your content by the topics on which you want to create content. Then, you can use these topics to determine which keywords you find and target.

By searching for their popularity, search volume, and general-purpose keywords, you can tackle the questions most people in your audience want to be answered.

How to Search Keywords for Your SEO Strategy

I'm going to suggest a keyword research process that you can follow to come up with a list of keywords that you should target. This way, you'll be able to establish and implement a strong keyword strategy that helps you search for the search terms you actually see.

Step 1: Make a list of important, relevant topics based on which you know about your business.

To end this process, think about the topics you want to categorize as general buckets. You will bring buckets of about 5-10 topics that you think are important to your business, and then you will use buckets of those topics to come up with some specific words after the process.

"Inbound Marketing" (21K)
"Blogging" (19K)
"Email Marketing" (30K)
"Lead Generation" (17K)
"SEO" (214K)
"Social Media Marketing" (71K)
"Marketing Analysis" (6.2K)
"Marketing Automation" (8.5K)

If you're a regular blogger, these are probably the topics you often blog about. Or maybe it's the topic that comes up most in sales conversations. Put yourself in the shoes of your buyers - what kind of topics will your target audience find that you want your business to find? If you are a company like Hubspot, for example - selling marketing software (which has some SEO tools ... but I graduate), you may have buckets of common topics such as:

See those numbers in brackets to the right of each keyword? This is their monthly search volume. This data allows you to know how important these topics are to your audience, and how many different subtopics you may need to create content to succeed with that keyword. To learn more about these sub-topics, we moved on to Step 2 ...

Step 2: Fill buckets of those topics with keywords.

Now that you have some topic buckets that you want to focus on, it's time to identify some of the keywords that fall into those buckets. These are keywords or phrases that might be important for your business to target and rank in the SERPs (search engine results pages), because your customer searches for your services with those specific terms. For example, if I were to take that external topic bucket to an incoming marketing software company - "marketing automation" - I would be badly affected by some keyword phrases that I think people would type related to that topic. They may include:

Marketing automation tools
How to use marketing automation software
What is marketing automation?
How do I tell if I need marketing automation software?
Lead nurturing
Email Marketing Automation
Top automation equipment

And, it means that you have to spend on these processes. You just want to end up brainstorming phrases that you think potential customers can use to search for content related to that topic bucket. We'll narrow down the lists later in the process so you don't have too many non-essentials.

In spite of the fact Google is scrambling more keywords every day, another brilliant method is to discover keywords that your site is already looking for. To do this, you will need website analytics software such as Google Analytics or Hubspot's Resource Report, available in Traffic Analysis Tool. Drill down to your website's traffic sources and take a look at your organic search traffic bucket to identify the keywords people are using to reach your site.

Repeat this exercise for as many subject buckets as possible. And remember, if you're having a hard time finding the right search terms, you can always go ahead and find your customers who are facing sales or service and ask them about their prospects and What are the customer's terms? Use, or common questions they have. They are often the best starting point for keyword research.

Step 3: Understand how Google Intent affects keyword research and research accordingly.

As I said in the previous section, user intent is now the most important factor in your ability to rank well on search engines like Google. Today, it is more important than your web page address a problem that the researcher intends to solve rather than include the keywords used by the researcher. So, how does this affect your keyword research?

It's easy to get keywords for face value, and unfortunately, keywords can have many different meanings below the surface. Because the purpose behind the search is so important to your ranking ability, you need to be more careful about how you interpret the keywords you are targeting.

Let's say, for example, you want to create an article for which you are looking for a keyword, how to start a blog. "Blog" can mean a blog post or a blog website itself, and what a researcher intends behind that keyword will affect the direction of your article. Do researchers want to learn how to start a personal blog post? Or do they just want to know how to launch a website domain for blogging purposes? If your content strategy is only interested in the latter, you will need to determine the purpose of the keyword before committing.

To verify a user's intent in a keyword, it's a good idea to insert that keyword into a search engine itself, and see what kind of results it produces. Make sure the type of content Google relates to the keywords you want to generate.

Step 4: Search related search terms.

This is a creative step that you may have thought of before doing keyword research. If you didn't like it here's a new product for you!

If you're struggling to figure out more keywords than people might be searching for on a particular topic, take a look at the relevant search terms that appear when you add a keyword to Google. As you type your idioms and scroll down Google's results, you'll see some suggestions for searches related to your actual input. These keywords can spark ideas for other keywords you may want to consider.

Want a bonus? Write some of the related search terms and look up the search terms related to them.

Step 5: Use keyword research tools for your advantage.

Keyword research and SEO tools such as ahref, SEOmrush, and UberGuest can help you find more keyword ideas and phrases that match the keywords you've created up to this point. This exercise can give you options that you may not have considered.

How to Find and Select Keywords for Your Website

Once you have an idea of the keywords you want to rank for, now is the time to refine your list based on the best for your strategy. Here's how:

Step 1. Understand the three main factors in choosing a good keyword.

Before choosing keywords and hoping to rank your content for them, you must enter keywords for three things:

1. Relevance

Google ranks content for relevance. This is where the concept of research intent comes in. Your content will only rank for a keyword if it meets the needs of searchers. In addition, your content should be a good source for inquiries here. After all, why would Google rank your content higher if it offered a lower value than other content on the web?

2. Authority

Google will give more weight to the resources that it considers official. This means that you should do your best to become an authentic resource by enriching your site with helpful, informative content and encouraging that content to earn social signals and backlinks. If you are not seen as authoritative in space, or if a keyword's SERPs are loaded with heavy resources that you can't compete with (such as Forbes or The Mayo Clinic), you are less likely to be ranked unless Your content is not unusual.

3. Sugar

You can eliminate the first page ranking for a particular keyword, but if someone never finds it, it will not result in traffic to your site. Kind of like setting up shop in a ghost town.

Volume is measured by MSV (Monthly Search Volume), which means that keywords are searched in each audience every month.

Step 2: Check the head conditions and the mix of long-tail keywords in each bucket.

If you don't know the difference between head terms and long-tail keywords, let me tell you. Keywords are keyword phrases that are usually shorter and more common - depending on who you're talking to. Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, are long keyword sentences that often contain three or more words.

It's important to know that you have a mix of head bets and long-tail bets as this will give you a keyword strategy that is balanced with long-term goals and short-term wins. This is because head conditions are usually more frequently sought after, making it harder to rank (often, but not always) than the more competitive and long-tail terms. Think about it: without looking at the amount of research or the difficulty, can you find the following words difficult to understand?

How To Write A Great Blog Post

Blogging

If you answered # 2, you are absolutely right. But do not despair. While keywords generally boast the highest search volume (meaning you're more likely to send traffic), obviously, the traffic you get from the "how to write a good blog post" period Will.

Why?

Because the person who is looking for something special is probably a more qualified searcher for your product or service (perhaps assuming you are in the blogging space) looking for someone really generic. And because long-term keywords are more specific, it's usually easier to tell what people who are searching for those keywords are actually looking for. On the other hand, anyone looking for the keyword "blogging" can search it for all the reasons related to your business.

So check the keyword lists to make sure you have a healthy mix of keywords and long tail keywords. You definitely want some quick wins that long-tail keywords will tolerate you, but you should also try to overcome the long.

Step 3: Analyze your competitors how they are ranking for these keywords.

Just because your competition is doing something doesn't mean you need to. The same goes for keywords. Just because a keyword is important to your competitors doesn't mean it's important to you. However, understanding that your competitors are trying to rank keywords is a good way to help you make a further assessment of the keyword list.

Even if your competition is ranking for certain keywords that are on your list, it certainly makes sense for them to work to improve your ranking. However, don't ignore those that your competitors don't care about. It can also be a great opportunity for market share on important terms for you.

Understanding the balance of terms that may be a little more difficult due to competition, compared to terms that are a little more realistic, will help you maintain a uniform balance that allows a combination of long-tail and head conditions. Remember, the goal is to end up with a list of keywords that offer some quick wins but they also help you move more towards bigger, more targeted SEO goals.

How do you determine which keywords your competitors are ranking, you ask? In addition to manually searching for keywords in an anonymous browser and seeing what positions your competitors are in, Ahref allows you to run a number of free reports that show the top keywords in the domain you entered. This is a quick way to get a sense of the variety of types of terms in your word type rankings.

Step 4: Use Google's Keyword Planner to cut your keyword list.

Now that you have the right mix of keywords, it's time to shorten your listings with some more quantitative statistics. You have a lot of resources to do this, but let me share my favorite method.

I'd like to use a combination of Google's Keyword Planner (so you'll need to set up an advertising account, but you can close your example ad before paying any money), and Google Trends.

In Keyword Planner, you can get search volume and traffic estimates for the terms you are considering. Then, learn from the Keyword Planner and use Google Trends to fill in some blanks.

Use Keyword Planner to flag any terms in your list that have too little (or too much) search volume, and don't help you maintain a healthy mix as we talked about above. But before deleting anything, check their trends history and predictions in Google Trends. You can see what, say, some low-volume terms might actually be something you should invest in now - and reap the benefits later.

Or maybe you're looking at a list of terms that are too illegal, and you need to reduce it somehow ... Google Trends can help you determine which terms are trending upwards, And so your attention is more important.

Understand that there are no "best" keywords, there are just the keywords with high search volume that your audience search for with this in mind, you need to research keywords for your websites to target and rank on the search engine. You want to find the most searched keywords that you can reasonably compete with:

The level of competition you are up against.

Your ability to generate content that exceeds the current ranking quality.

And ... you're done!

Congratulations! You now have a list of keywords that will help you focus on the right topics for your business, and reap short-term and long-term benefits.

How to Do Keyword Research for SEO