Fundamentals of Keyword Research
Before we talk about the exact steps for finding the keywords for your SEO campaign, we’ll briefly cover what keyword research is and why you should care.
What is keyword research?
Keyword research is the act of finding and verifying which 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 looking for on Google and other Search engines.
How to do keyword research? (Step by step guide)
Alright, now that you have a good understanding of the important metrics behind keyword research, it’s time to find your own keywords! There are three steps I take when doing keyword research for a new site, with an optional, more advanced, fourth step:
1. Find keyword ideas
2. Check the REAL keyword difficulty and search volume
3. Determine the search intent
4. (Optional) Find and use keyword silos
Let’s dive deep!
Step 1: Come up with keyword ideas
Generating keyword ideas is a simple and easy process. For example, if I want to rank for the Keyword Web designing in Dubai There are plenty of tools that will give you hundreds of ideas at the click of a mouse. It is the scrutiny that takes effort, but we will get it.
I’ll be using Ahrefs in the examples because it’s my favorite tool and has all the frills, but the other tools can work just as well.
My favorite way to find great keyword opportunities is to spy on my competition. You can do this by plugging their site into any keyword tool and looking at their keywords. Ahrefs has an ingenious tool called Content Gap Analysis.
Here is how it works:
1. First you have to put your website into Ahrefs, then click on the Content Gap link in the left menu.
2. Connect 1 to 10 competitors who rank on Google on the keywords for which you want to rank. You can find them by searching for these keywords on Google or by using Ahrefs’ Competing Domains tool just above the Content Gap link. Run the tool.
3. Here you can also export the list to an Excel spreadsheet. I like to comb through the list in Ahrefs. If I see a keyword that I want to target, I open it in a new tab and add it to a keyword list using the Add button at the top right. if you don’t have access to Ahrefs or some other keyword tool that lets you see your competitors’ keywords, you can also use a tool like Keyword Shitter to give you a ton of ideas, then check them using other free tools such as Uber Suggest.
Step 2: Now Verify the REAL keyword difficulty and estimated search volume
Once you have a list of keyword ideas that you’re comfortable with (I’m aiming for 50-100 at a time, but you can do a lot more), it’s time to see which ones are even worth checking out. Worth continuing depending on keyword difficulty (KD) and search volume.
There is just one caveat…. the search quantity and also KD that you see in the majority of keyword study tools are generally extremely much apart. KD in Ahrefs is based solely on the number of top-performing linking domains, which is not a 100% accurate representation of the true difficulty of positioning a keyword.
This is because SEO is a complex thing, and things like domain scoring (which I’ll cover soon) and internal linking can have a massive impact on ranking. The backlinks are only part of the picture.
And the search volume? This does not include LSI and long tail keywords!
So if you see a keyword with 200 searches per month, chances are it’s more like 500 or 1000 if you include the related keywords that you are going to rank for.
To determine the true search volume, enter result # 1 on Google for the keyword and plug it into Ahrefs or Uber Suggest to see how much traffic this page is actually getting. This should give you a more accurate picture of the search volume for a given keyword.
The other measure, keyword difficulty, is also not 100% accurate. But figuring out the real difficulty is usually as easy as looking at the top Domain Authority (DA) pages, or the Domain Rating (DR) if you’re using Ahrefs. Let me explain.
If a keyword has a difficulty score of 8, but all of the top-ranking pages are DR 80+, your site’s ranking for those keywords can be difficult if you. have a low DR, in spite of the reduced difficulty score.
My advice is to aim for keywords with a 30 KD or less if you are below a 40 DR then plug upwards as you build more links and gain higher authority. As your DR climbs, your internal links are worth more “link juice” (or pass more “page authority” depending on which source you’re listening to).
But this is not a technical SEO article, so I’ll leave it there for now!
Step 3: Determine the search intent
At this point, you should have a pretty decent list of keywords with a difficulty you’re comfortable tackling and potential for search volume that you’d be happy to capture. Now is the time to figure out what people really want when they search for these terms and whether or not they meet your marketing and revenue goals.
This part is as easy as Google searching for each keyword on your list and looking at the top 3-5 results. Review their title and description Meta, click on it to view the page, and check the angle they took on the page.
• Are these mostly list items? How to do ? Ultimate Guides ? A landing page? Something else ?
• How do they seem to monetize the page? Do they use advertisements? Are they selling products as a solution to the problem? Affiliate Marketing? They just capture emails and sell nothing at all?
• Take a look at the comments. Are people asking questions that the article did not answer? Do they look happy, angry, or neutral?
All of these questions will help you determine what type of post or page you need to build, how you can monetize it (or use it to capture emails, push notifications, or social followers), and what you can do to improve it.
As you go through each keyword, keep your answers to these questions in a spreadsheet or Word document to keep track of which ones you are interested in pursuing. Your final list is the list you can start to pursue!
Informational intent:
• [Product Name]
• What is [product name]?
• How does [product name] work?
• How to use [product name]?
Commercial intent (also known as research intent):
• Best [product name]
• Reviews on [product name]
• Comparison of [product name]
• What is the best [product name]?
• [color / style / size] [product name]
Transactional intention (also known as purchase intention):
• How much does [product name] cost?
• [product name] in [location].
• Order [product name] online
• [product name] near me
• [brand name] [product name] affordable
Step 4: (Advanced) Find and Use Keyword Silos
If you really want to do it right, you can optionally take it a step further and search for keyword silos to create corresponding content silos on your site.
A keyword silo is a list of closely related keywords that you can create content around by interconnecting them on your site (also called the “hub and spoke” method). Essentially, you create a pivot page targeting the primary term you want to rank for, and then you create “spoke” pages based on similar, long-tail keywords.
This interconnection is called content silo, and it works so well for two reasons:
1. Because all the pages are linked to each other if you link to one of the pages, it improves the authority of the page on all the other pages.
2. Google uses relevance in its algorithm, and since these topics are all very relevant to each other, it can further improve your ranking.
Once you’ve found a potential silo, be sure to get the keywords through steps 2 and 3 before committing to it! Just because you’ve found a silo doesn’t mean you should pursue it. Think logically about how all of this content will fit into your business and how you can enrich it in the future.
What is the best keyword research tool?
There are a lot of keyword research tools in the market today. Some are extremely unique, but most are just a slightly different take on the same idea. So which is better? Let’s break this down with free and paid ones.
Free Keyword Research Tools
Recommended two free keyword research tools:
1. Ubersuggest
2. Keyword Shitter
Paid Keyword Research Tools
Now we enter the big boy (or big girl) tool! If you are serious about SEO and have the budget, these are the tools you want to use.
1. Ahrefs
2. SEMrush
3. Keywords Everywhere