Your Guide to Keyword Research for SEO

Keywords are the foundation of SEO. If you don’t have foundations in your house, your house will fall. Similarly, if you don’t have keywords, your SEO strategy will fall. 

If nobody searches for the content you write about, Google won’t give you traffic—regardless of how good your writing and content are. A successful SEO strategy will transform your business, and keywords research is one of the basics of SEO. 

That’s why we’ve written a guide to SEO keywords research and how to achieve ranking SEO at your business. 

What Is Keyword Research?

Keywords research is the process of knowing the language your target customers use when they search for your content, services, and products. You’ll then analyze the best keywords for your website to drive traffic.

Why is Keyword Research So Important? 

The only way to find out what people are searching for is through keywords research. You must avoid writing the same content as everyone else. Unfortunately, many websites make that mistake; that’s why 90.63% of pages get zero traffic from Google. 

What’s more, keyword research answers the following:

• How challenging will it be to rank for a specific keyword?
• What content should I create to rank for a keyword?
• Are the people searching for this keyword likely to become my customers?
• How much traffic will our website gain from this keyword? 

These are all fundamental questions determined from keywords research. 

The Key Elements of Keyword Research 

During this article, we will mention the importance of relevance, authority, and volume. When you learn the basics of SEO, you need to learn these key elements:

Relevance 

Google will rank content based on relevance. Search engine users must want the content; otherwise, Google won’t bother ranking you. Your content will only rank if the keyword meets the searcher’s needs. Also, your content must be the best resource for the query. Google wants to answer people’s queries, and your content must satisfy those queries. 

Authority 

Google will rank websites with authority. Therefore, you must become an authoritative source for the keywords you target. You can do that with useful content, strong social signals, and backlinks. It’s hard to compete with big brands, but you can compete if your content and SEO strategy is excellent. 

Volume 

What’s the point in ranking on the first page of a keyword with no search volume? That’s akin to setting up a new shop in a ghost town. In this article, we’ll show you how to measure the monthly search volume of keywords. 

What Are The Best Keywords For SEO? 

There are no best keywords for SEO. It depends on what your audience searches for the most. You’ll have to consider authority, relevance, and volume when choosing the best keywords. However, consider the level of competition you are up against and your ability to create high-quality content that beats your competition’s content. 

How To Conduct Keywords Research

Now you understand the importance of keyword research—it’s essential to know how to do it. Many website owners find themselves getting frustrated by keywords research. Yet, if you have a plan in place, you’ll quickly succeed through your keywords research. 

So here’s a step by step guide:

1. Make a List of Important Topics Based On Your Business 

To start your guide to keyword research, decide the topics you want to rank for. For example, if you’re selling marketing software, you may want to rank in the following topics: blogging, inbound marketing, lead generation, SEO, and marketing automation. These topics will often have a number beside them, such as “SEO (230k).” That’s their monthly search volume; it’s a very significant figure. 

1. Fill In Those Topics With Keywords 

Once you’ve decided which topics suit your business, it’s time to find those crucial keywords. First, find some keyword phrases related to these topics. For example, if you own a marketing software company, you may use the topic “marketing automation.” As a result, your phrases may include:

• How to use marketing automation 
• Top automation tools 
• Email marketing automation 
• Do I need marketing automation?

Of course, these aren’t your final keywords. You’ll narrow down these phrases later. 

1. Research Search Related Terms 

If you’re struggling to find keywords, you can find search-related terms on Google. When you plug a keyword phrase into Google, you’ll notice some search-related terms at the bottom. These terms may create ideas for other keywords you can consider. 

1. Use Keyword Research Tools To Help You 

If you’re still struggling with keyword ideas—or you want more ideas—you can use SEO tools to find extra keywords. Popular tools include SEMrush, SECockpit, Moz, Keywords Everywhere, Ubersuggest, and Google Keyword Planner. You have to purchase some of these tools, but they can provide excellent value. 

Choose the Right Keywords For Your Website

So now you have an idea of the keywords you want to rank for, it’s time to refine your list based on the best keywords for your strategy. Here’s how you do that:

1. Use Google Keyword Planner

It’s essential to have search volume traffic estimates for the keywords you’re considering, and Google Keyword Planner provides you with that. You’ll want to find keywords with relatively low to medium competition. 

These keywords are easier to rank for because fewer people are using them. However, you can rank high for popular keywords if your content is excellent, properly SEO-optimized, and you’re already an authority figure on Google. 

That said, you should use the Google Keyword Planner to find keywords with too little or too much search volume. But before you delete any keywords, head over to Google Trends to see whether low-volume search terms are worth investing in currently and reaping the benefits later on. Sometimes, keywords that seem inappropriate now are perfect in 12 months. 

1. Prioritize Keywords Based On Your Website’s Authority 

You should target keywords you have a chance of ranking for based on your website’s authority. Big brands often target high competition keywords because they’re an already established brand with high authority on Google. Subsequently, Google rewards them with a high ranking on their content. 

However, your website won’t have a high authority if you’re new to Google and not a big brand. So target keywords with little competition. If keywords don’t have numerous articles fighting for the top ranking, you can take the spot by default because they’re low competition. 

1. Check The Monthly Search Volume 

Monthly search volume is the number of times users enter a keyword into search engines. You can use Google Trends to find this information for free. After all, you don’t want to write content on keywords nobody is searching for.

1. Consider SERP Features When You Choose Your Keywords 

Google has several SERP feature snippets they will highlight. You can use these SERP features to build a ranking SEO strategy. Here’s a summary of the SERP features:

• Featured Snippets - Featured snippets—often called paragraph snippets—are short text snippets at the top of Google’s search results. If you can answer this snippet well, you could win the top spot on the page. 
• List Snippets - List snippets give users a simple breakdown of how to achieve something from start to finish. If you create content with clear and direct instructions, you could win the top spot. 
• Image packs - If you find an image pack (a horizontal row of images) at the top of the page, you should write an image-heavy post to win the top spot. 
• Video snippets - You may see a video at the top of the page for a certain keyword. If so, you can maximize your ranking by creating a YouTube video with your content and placing it on your website. 

These are all things you can consider when researching keywords for SEO. 

1. See How Your Competitors Rank For These Keywords 

You shouldn’t always follow what your competition does. If a keyword is important to a competitor, it doesn’t mean it’s important to you. Nonetheless, understanding which keywords your competition has successfully ranked on can help you evaluate your list of keywords. 

For instance, if your competitors are ranking for specific keywords on your list, you should improve your ranking for those keywords. However, don’t disregard the keywords your competition is ignoring. Overlooked keywords are a golden opportunity for you. 

You can find out which keywords your competition ranks for by manually searching the keywords in an incognito browser. From there, you’ll see the position of your competitors based on their keywords. You can then decide how to improve your content and outrank them. 

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