Why is keyword research important?
Finding relevant keywords is important for search engine optimization as it is a great way to have your blog post reach the top of search engine results pages of your target audience.
Specific keywords can get high search volume, and keywords closely related show up in the search queries.
The keyword research process can be difficult, as getting keyword ideas to match with search intent is not that easy. Today we'll be looking at 20 effective keyword research techniques to help you find the best keywords and search phrases to get a decent search volume.
20 keyword research techniques for great traffic results
1. Brainstorm a List of Topics/Write down topic ideas and create topic buckets
The keyword research process begins with making a list of keywords.
It is a good idea to start by coming up with a list of subjects that are pertinent to the goods or services offered by your company. This will give you a general direction to start with and help you narrow down the kinds of keyword strategy you should be looking for to raise the monthly search volume.
Perform your brainstorming and jot down any ideas you have regarding your market, profession, or products.
Consider yourself a Google user and try to come up with possible search terms for Google.
Look more closely at the page titles on the websites you visited if you need to. This can provide you with additional suggestions for niche-related topics that you may not have considered.
To create topic buckets, group your ideas. The related concepts should be divided into topic buckets.
General Information Bucket - Concerning general inquiries about digital marketing, there are some ideas in this category.
Small Business Bucket - Search terms that a small business owner might enter into Google to look for digital marketing agencies are included in this category.
Services Bucket - This category includes keywords related to particular marketing services, such as SEO and social media marketing.
When conducting keyword research for your website for the first time, you might end up with a lot of topic buckets. It's okay to do this.
You don't have to finish this the first time; keep in mind that it's a process.
Even though these subjects aren't keywords, they make a good place to start if you want to learn more about the keyword research procedure.
2. Target a Specific Funnel Stage & Search Intent
When doing keyword research and creating content that is Google-optimized, it is crucial to comprehend the sales funnel. Awareness, consideration, and decision-making are the three stages of the sales funnel that should be prioritized. You can optimize content for each stage of the funnel by being aware of the kinds of keywords searchers are using at that stage.
The objective is to offer educational content that will aid in developing a relationship with the searcher during the awareness stage when prospects are unfamiliar with your company.
The prospect wants to learn more about their options while in the consideration stage. To convince them that your product or service might be a good fit for their needs, you must first introduce them to it.
The prospect wants to locate and buy the best service or product possible at the decision stage, to sum up. Your objective is to convince the potential customer that you are the better option than your rivals and should be their first choice for a product or service.
Keep in mind that every business is unique, so learn about the search intent in your sector at various points in the sales funnel.
3. Use Keyword Research Tools
It's time to turn your list of ideas into SEO keywords now that they have been divided up into topic buckets.
The actual search terms that people enter into search engines are known as SEO keywords, and they are crucial for your website.
Keyword research tools are necessary for us to accomplish that.
There are numerous tools available that are made with the sole purpose of assisting you with the keyword research procedure. Even though we won't be able to cover all of them, we will discuss a few of the most well-liked and practical platforms.
Google's Keyword Planner.
The most trustworthy option is this one because all of the keyword information is obtained directly from Google and is therefore fairly accurate (you can read more about the nuances of keyword search volume and sampling here). This tool's two main purposes are to assist you in finding targeted keywords and to provide search volume and forecast metrics.
4. Use Creative Research Methods
Although there are many sophisticated keyword research tools available, there are some other techniques you can employ to find keyword ideas.
One solution is to use the Wikipedia search bar and enter a general keyword. From there, you can access a page on that subject and view the table of contents, which frequently includes a lengthy list of the subtopics that are addressed on the page. You can find subtopics like resorts, luxury hotels, boutique hotels, cave hotels, cliff hotels, and igloo hotels on Wikipedia, for instance, if you search for "Hotels.". These subtopics can be used as unique keywords that you might not find elsewhere.
Utilizing Reddit's search feature is an additional suggestion. Find a topic relating to your business on Reddit by searching. Once you've identified a subreddit where your target market is probably active, look through the comments to see if any common terms that aren't currently part of your strategy can be discovered.
Manually conducting this kind of topic-based research can be time-consuming, so why not check out our topic research tools, which use natural language processing to delve deeply into your niche and produce an enormous number of associated keywords, organizing them into concepts for fresh content and queries your searchers are posing.
5. Use Google and YouTube Suggestions
Using the suggestion features of Google and YouTube is a simple way to generate some keyword ideas. In the Google or YouTube search box, a list of search suggestions will appear as soon as you start typing a keyword. Given that Google and YouTube are recommending them, these keywords are sure to be well-liked.
Another approach is to enter the keyword into Google and scroll to the bottom of the page to access the "Searches related to" section. The most common search terms that are pertinent to your subject and may generate fresh ideas will be displayed in this.
6. Analyze Multiple Metrics
You should not only analyze keywords, as it is crucial to take a variety of aspects into account when selecting the keywords you want to use and to conduct continuous analysis of various metrics. Here are a few that you ought to take seriously.
The range of monthly searches for a given keyword is known as the search volume. Although choosing a keyword with a higher search volume is obvious if you want to increase traffic to your website, each industry has its standards for what high and low search volume is. Make sure to conduct your research before assuming that 100–1k searches per month are average or, in some cases, excessively high.
An indicator of how difficult it is to rank for a specific keyword is the keyword difficulty metric. Targeting terms with a lower difficulty score will increase your chances of ranking if your website is new or has a low domain authority. Each vendor determines difficulty using a different proprietary metric, and the accuracy can change. Although these numbers should be treated with caution, they can be helpful as a general guide.
A searcher's likelihood to click on an organic search result for a given keyword is indicated by the organic click-through rate (CTR). Google occasionally places featured snippets at the top of search results pages and frequently places a large number of paid advertisements before the organic results. It may not be likely in these situations that a specific keyword will generate a lot of organic traffic. To target keywords with a high Organic CTR and increase your chances of success, it is crucial to comprehend this.
8. Keyword Length and Difficulty
Three categories—head terms, body terms, and long-tail keywords—are typically used to classify keywords. Each type has a different level of ranking difficulty and a different amount of traffic.
Head terms typically consist of one or two words and are highly competitive and popular. With these keywords, the searcher's intent is frequently ambiguous, making conversion unlikely.
Long-tail keywords are specialized versions of popular keywords that are also less well-known than the head terms. Many have 3 or more words. These are specific search terms that, while they don't receive a lot of searches on their own, have much lower levels of competition and clearly expressed searcher intent, which increases the likelihood that the searcher will convert. Long-tail keywords are used most frequently in online searches.
Using long-tail keywords will help your new business get off the ground and increase website traffic. To be successful, your strategy must take into account all keyword lengths as your company expands. Making longer-form articles that can immediately capture several long-tail phrases is an intelligent way to plan your content creation strategy. You can start to rise in the rankings for the head terms as well over time as your site's authority increases and you gain links to your content.
9. Seasonality/Keep checking for trending keywords
Certain businesses experience significant seasonal sales fluctuations. For instance, a provider of outdoor services might offer summer lawn care services and winter snow removal services. Given this circumstance, they will want to ensure that the keywords they target in the summer are different from those they target in the winter.
The sales of specific goods or services probably fluctuate a little bit throughout the year, even though your business might not change in such a significant way. Take note of this and determine the seasons of the year when you should focus more on a specific keyword.
10. Trending Topics
Breaking news, pop culture, and the general public's interests are constantly shifting. Your website will receive more traffic if you target keywords and subjects that are currently popular. If you want to know whether a search is getting more or less popular, Google Trends can be a great resource.
Exploding Topics is one resource you can use to find out more about these popular topics. This tool searches the internet for terms that are currently trending and tells you what they are. To find popular search terms that are pertinent to your business, you can even browse by category.
11. On-Site Search
It's a good idea to monitor and analyze visitor search patterns if your website has an internal search function that enables users to find content on it quickly. You can do this by going to Google Analytics and selecting the "Site Search Settings" tab, then turning on the "Site Search Tracking" option.
After doing this, you will have a window into the thoughts of the people who are visiting your website. You can tell if they are seeking information you don't have or if they are having trouble locating the information you do have. With the aid of this data, you can easily choose new keywords to target and optimize your website to satisfy the needs of your visitors.
12. Find keywords your competitors are ranking
You compiled a list of websites that directly compete with you while conducting your keyword research. You've visited their websites and examined the content; now it's time to find out for which keywords they rank and how much traffic comes from the Google search console.
13. Find common customer questions.
Search the questions that your clients ask for keyword research advice.
Making content that addresses the common queries or issues raised by your target audience is one of the best ways to achieve higher SEO rankings.
By figuring out what queries are asked the most frequently and creating content that helps to answer them, you can increase your chances of connecting with customers who are using search engines to find answers.
There are a few different ways you can get started learning what inquiries people are making about your market or your company's goods and services.
Going directly to the source is one option. Find out what inquiries your best customers had when they first began looking into your type of brand.
What did they worry about, and what did they need to know before they bought?
Customer interviews or surveys are excellent ways to gather this data quickly.
Asking your sales department for information about customer inquiries is another option.
Your sales staff interacts directly with customers and frequently answers inquiries about your goods or services.
Find out from your sales team which inquiries new prospects are most likely to have.
It's time to use a keyword research tool that will broaden your keyword research even more after you've consulted your current customers and gleaned some information from sales.
14. Try using an SEO toolbar.
You can improve your SEO skills by utilizing one of the many toolbars and tools available. MozBar is preferred.
With the help of this market-leading SEO toolbar, you can instantly access and compare crucial keyword metrics across different website pages on the search engine results page.
You can even check out rankings for page authority and domain authority.
When viewing a site page or the results page, the SEO toolbar MozBar gives you instant access to metrics.
By assisting you in comprehending your customers and what they seek out when conducting keyword research online, MozBar makes SEO keyword research simple.
You can monitor both regional and global searches to find out more about what search engine users are finding when they enter particular terms.
Check out this article for more best tools for keyword research.
Make use of negative keywords. One of the many pieces of keyword research advice you can use to advance your SEO strategy is incorporating negative keywords into your targeting strategy.
You should avoid using negative keywords in your PPC campaign.
To more effectively reach people who are a good fit for your business, you can use this to focus your targeting of search engine users.
Say, for instance, that your business wants to increase the number of paid memberships or packages while still providing a service that is occasionally free.
The word "free" could be added as a descriptor.
This means that if you use the word "free" along with keywords that describe your good or service, your ad won't show up on the search engine results page.
Negative keywords can be added to Google Keyword Planner.
Select "Keywords and Targeting" before "Keywords, Negative."
Once you've chosen the ad group or campaign, click "Add a negative keyword."
Type the negative keyword into the edit panel.
And you can make sure that none of your ads will show up for search terms that contain the words you've listed here.
Do remember that you need a Google ads account to operate this function.
15. Check the website's domain authority
The next tip in our list of suggestions to perform keyword research is to comprehend domain authority and how it affects our efforts.
The website analytics software Moz pioneered the use of the competitive metric known as domain authority score to assess the likelihood that your website will rank higher on Google.
It describes your website's authority and reliability to search engines. Now, bear in mind that this metric is hypothetical and that there is debate among experts as to whether it has any real significance.
The truth is that it doesn't matter what the precise number is or how exactly it is. Understanding its true significance is what matters most.
As you can see, Google considers several factors when determining how authoritative and trustworthy your website is, in addition to the quality and relevance of your content, to determine where your website will appear in its final rankings.
Establishing your reputation as an authority on a subject takes time. Neither persuading Google that your website and content are trustworthy.
16. Check out the “People also ask” section on Google
Along with using other tools and conducting customer research to identify typical queries.
By browsing the "People also ask" section on the Google search results page, you can find out what other queries people have.
When you enter a question in the search bar, this section appears in the search engine results.
One of our top keyword research suggestions is to look for even more useful questions that potential leads and customers may be asking online.
You can work to reach new leads who might be searching online for the answers by creating content around these typical queries.
Once more, to determine which keyword phrases might be the most worthwhile to target, you should enter some of these inquiries into Google Keyword Planner.
17. Get to know your Niche
Learn as much as you can about your niche in the first step of the keyword research procedure.
Knowing your competitors will enable you to develop a realistic keyword list and an effective SEO strategy.
Go to Google and begin typing your niche's related search terms. Visit every website that appears on Google's first page and makes a note of things like:
- Their regularity of posting (how frequently they add fresh content to their website).
- Do they publish text, videos, or other types of content? ).
- Their website's layout (including the menus and content on the homepage, etc. ).
- Find out more about their social media presence, including the platforms they use, the number of followers they have, the content they post, etc. ).
- Find out their domain authority by using programs like SEMRUSH.
- Add them to your Feedly account and sign up for their newsletter (if they have one) to receive updates on new content.
This exercise's main goal is to help you identify your main rivals and come up with new ideas for subjects and key phrases to focus on.
Before conducting keyword research for SEO, it's crucial to realize that there is a big difference between the keywords for which you aim to rank highly on Google and those for which you can achieve these rankings.
It's important to know from the start that some keywords may be impossible to target for a newly launched website (typically these are extremely competitive keywords), so you can adjust your keyword strategy to focus on phrases where you have a better chance of ranking on Google's first page.
18. Find long-tail keywords
You will discover that the majority of your seed keywords are extremely competitive as you go through the list.
In other words, hundreds of websites are vying for one of the top 10 spots when you search for these keywords on Google.
If your website is already well-known, this might not be a major problem, but if you are just getting started, it is a major issue.
What should you do? Modify your keyword research approach and begin looking for less competitive keywords, i.e. Long-tail search terms.
Seventy percent of searches are for long-tail keywords, and this presents your only chance to start ranking highly on Google for terms that can, in a short period, drive highly targeted traffic to your website.
Long-tail keywords may have lower search volumes than short-tail keywords, which is true—but less is still better than nothing.
In other words, there is no point in putting forth the time and effort necessary to rank for competitive, highly searched-for keywords. It is preferable to start small and work your way up.
You also increase your chances of ranking for seed keywords once you achieve high rankings for several long-tail keywords.
Long-tail keywords can be found using a variety of techniques.
Searching manually on Google will allow you to find the "People also ask" or "related searches" section. Additionally, you can check out what people are searching for on Wikipedia and Amazon.
19. Convert keywords into content titles
The challenging part is over once you get to this point so that you can unwind. Write the page titles and content using those keywords as a guide now.
Why should I care about the page titles?
Each page or blog post on your website should, according to good SEO best practices, only target one particular keyword.
Google tries to select the top 10 pages for a given keyword because there is too much content on the Internet.
You must make sure that each page is focused on a particular keyword and that this is reflected in your page titles if you want to aid users in this process.
These straightforward guidelines can help you translate keywords into page titles.
- Google the term and look at the first 10-page titles that come up.
- Make a title that includes your target keyword while still being distinctive, i.e. Make sure that the title is distinct from any of the ones displayed on the first page. Google hardly ever displays pages with identical titles in the SERPS, so you must do this.
- Add strong words to your title to make it more intriguing (such as Amazing, Complete, Easy, etc.)
20. Find Semantically Related Keywords to use in your content
The next step is to produce excellent, SEO-friendly content once your titles are ready.
Semantically related keywords should be one of your considerations.
Keywords that are related to or share the same meaning as your target keywords are known as semantically related keywords (LSI keywords).
You can significantly improve your chances of ranking for your main keyword by including these keywords in your content. This makes the content more relevant to search engines.
As you create content for SEO, be sure to incorporate these keywords into the copy.
For more keyword research techniques, visit this article and check out this digital marketing service provider in Singapore.
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