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How to Do Keyword Research for SEO
By jack123 | SEO | 1 Comments
Keywords Basics
Keywords, what are they and How to Do Keyword Research for SEO.
A keyword is a word or phrase that people use when searching for information on the internet through search engines.
Keyword research means understanding the language which your target audience uses when searching on the internet for information, products or any type of content.
Is keyword research important?.
Yes, keyword research is the best way you could form an idea on what people are typing in search engines when they are looking for content. In order to avoid creating content that is not relevant and not desired , keyword research is a must.
How to find keyword ideas
Think about what visitors would search for.
You can start by thinking about revelant words about the topic around which your content is made, then use keyword research tools to find more relevant words for your chosen subject.
There are four simple guidelines to help you find relevant keywords for your page.
- Think about “seed” keywords.
Seed keywords are the main, most important word you are going to use to help you describe your content and identify your competition. Research tools also use seed keywords to generate a list of other relevant words.
- Identify the keywords your competition uses.
First, you need to identify that competition by using the keywords you chose. You can do so by googling those seed keywords and see who ranks on the first page. If you do not find any top ranking sites that are similar to yours, you should try “autosuggest” queries instead.
Once you’ve identified these competitors you can use tools sites like Ahrefs Site explorer to see their top pages report. In this report you will find top keywords for each page.
- Use keyword research tools.
Keyword research tools are straightforward, you put in a keyword and they generate a list of more keywords that are relevant to yours.
- Research and study your chosen subject.
You can start by browsing all matter of forums, Q&A sites and communities. In doing so you might find all sorts of problems and topics your targeted audience might be interested in, and maybe your competitor did not bother to cover.
How to analyze keywords
It is good to have tons of ideas and keywords, but how do you know which are the best?
Use SEO metrics, to narrow the list down and refine your keyword pool. An example of keyword metric is Search volume. You can use search volume to find the average nr. of times a keyword gets searcher per month. But keep in mind that this number is not the number of users who searched but the number of searches. Also it doesn’t tell you how much traffic you will get by ranking and it’s an annual average.
How to target keywords
Each time you’re creating content using keywords, you need to make sure you choose the right page and content for that specific keyword. To do so you can follow two simple guidelines:
- Identify the parent topic
If you have a bunch of keywords on your list and you are wondering how to insert them in your text, should you put them all in one page or should you build a different page for every keyword? Well, it depends. It all depends on how google sees these words. Are they part of the same topic or are they individual topic keywords? You can determine this by searching your words and see how they rank. If two of your similar keywords are ranked on the same page after your search , that means they are similar topics, and you can insert them in the same page. You can also use Keyword explorer to identify a parent topic for every keyword. Write your words in Keyword explore and it will list the keywords which bring the most traffic to the site, and those are your “Parent Topic” keywords.
- Identify search intent
Let’s say you have this keyword in mind, “best football balls”, and you want to sell your ball collection, that won’t work. When people search for “best football balls” they usually want to see a list with best balls for football not a site that sells balls, but of course that is not always necessarily true. In any case google knows search intent best, so if you want to create content suitable for users and to match your desired keywords, then you should, again, google those keywords and see what type of pages rank on the first page of the results. If your words give you blogs or lists as results, then you should either change your keywords a little bit, or adapt and build the same type of content. Take your time to familiarize yourself with this concept because it is very important to align with the search intent if you want your page to rank high in the results page.
How to prioritize keywords
While you go through the steps above, finding your keywords, analyzing and grouping them, also think about prioritizing them. You should pick the ones that are most suitable for you after all. Ask yourself, do you already have the content for those topics, or what will it take to create content for the said topic, how much traffic will it bring and how tough is the competition.
Tool for keyword research
If you read through all the steps above, you are one step closer to create content for the first page of google, but of course, practice makes perfect, so don’t expect results without work.
To wrap this up I have some bonus goodies for you, some useful links with research tools, useful for researching keywords.
More than targeting what your competitors are already targeting. It helps to look for keywords that they forgot to target in their campaigns. As long as these keywords have considerable traffic, you can still win.