Do you really want to get started with SEO? I mean, it sounds complicated, right? There are lots of things involved.
For example, you’ll need to be able to identify keywords and phrases that consumers might use to find information or services related to your brand. If you don’t have enough time to figure out where to start, you might end up spending hours or even days researching and analyzing data before you’ve even begun.
Keywords are crucial to search engine optimization (SEO). They play a huge role in helping businesses gain visibility on Google and other search engines.
In addition to being aware of what keywords are being searched for, you also need to know how those words are connected together. This type of research helps you create effective keyword strategies and determine which ones to target.
Here’s a quick overview of some basic steps to take when conducting keyword research.
What is keyword research?
Keyword research is an analytical tool used to find and analyze words that people use when searching online. It is often used for SEO purposes but can be applied to any type of content creation.
Keywords are the words and phrases typed into a search bar to find what you want online. They are the building blocks of your digital strategy.
The most important thing about keywords is that they help determine how well your site ranks for certain searches. If your site isn’t showing up in relevant searches, it could mean that your potential customers aren’t looking for you. You might even be missing out on sales because your competitors are getting those leads.
You can use keyword research tools to identify popular keywords and learn more about them. This way, you can make sure you’re targeting the right audience and that your ads show up where searchers are likely to see them.
Why is keyword research important?
Keyword research helps you find out which keywords are most effective for driving traffic to your site. You can use it to determine whether certain phrases are worth investing in or whether they’re just noise. This information can help you make better decisions about how to spend your budget.
You’ll also learn where your competitors rank for similar keywords and how they’re doing. If you see that one competitor ranks #1 for a particular term, you might consider trying something different.
In addition, you can use keyword research to identify opportunities for growth. For example, if you notice that a lot of people are searching for “how to do X,” you might decide to write an article about it. Or perhaps you could start a blog post series on the topic.
Elements of Keyword Research
Keywords are one of the most important aspects of digital marketing. If you don’t know what keywords to use, you’re missing out on opportunities to improve your site’s visibility and increase conversions. But how do you find the best ones? Here’s everything you need to know about keyword research.
1. Know Your Audience
The first step to finding good keywords is knowing who you want to reach. You’ll start by identifying your audience. Who are they? What are their interests? Where do they live? How old are they? What devices do they use? Once you’ve got some idea of who you’re targeting, it’s time to think about what people are actually searching for. This is where things get tricky because there’s no single answer to “What words should I include in my ad?”
2. Do Some Research
Once you know who you’re trying to target, it’s time to do some research. Start by looking up popular terms related to your product or service. For example, if you sell shoes, look up “shoe repair.” Then, take those keywords and see how many different sites rank for each term. You can also check out the competition—how well-known are these terms? Are there a lot of ads competing for the same keywords? And finally, ask yourself why someone might type in these terms into a search box. Why did they choose that particular phrase over another?
3. Find Similar Terms
Now that you know what kinds of keywords you want to target, it’s important to make sure you aren’t just repeating yourself. After all, if you’re selling shoes, you probably don’t want to advertise “shoes,” right? Instead, try to come up with phrases that describe your products or services in a unique way. These could be variations on common themes (“best shoe for running”) or completely unrelated terms (“running shoes”).
4. Relevance
Google ranks content for relevance. This is where the concept of “search intent” comes into play. If you are looking for information about a specific topic, such as how to build a deck, you probably want something that is relevant to what you’re searching for. For example, if someone types “how do I build a deck,” they likely don’t want to see a bunch of articles about building decks for boats. They want to know how to build a deck for themselves.
If your content doesn’t meet the searchers’ needs, it won’t rank well.
You’ll never rank for a keyword if your site doesn’t provide enough value to the searcher. And you won’t rank for a keyword if another site already has the answer.
5. Authority
Google announced in January 2018 that it would begin giving more weight to sources it deemed “authoritative.” This change affects how Google ranks sites and what appears in search results. As part of this update, Google is now putting greater emphasis on the quality of the content found on a given site. In addition, Google is placing less importance on the number of times a site is linked to.
The goal here is to help people find high-quality resources that answer their questions. To accomplish this, Google is focusing on making sure that sites that offer trustworthy, useful information rank highly. So, if you want to improve your chances of being included in the rankings, make sure your site offers reliable, informative content.
6. Volume
The most important factor in determining how well you rank for a particular keyword is volume. What does that mean exactly? Well, let me explain…
Volume is measured by MSV – monthly search volume. This is the number of times the term is searched each month across all audiences. So, if you’re looking for a way to improve your rankings, start by focusing on increasing your monthly search volume.
For example, say I’m searching for “best dog food.” If my monthly search volume is 10,000, that means that every month, someone searches for “best dog food” 10,000 times. Now, if there are 50 people searching for “best dog foods,” then we’d call that a medium-sized market. But if there are only 5 people searching for “best pet food,” that’s a small market.
So what does this mean for you? Well, if you want to increase your rankings, focus on growing your audience size. In other words, make sure you’re reaching a larger percentage of your target audience.
This doesn’t just apply to keywords. When optimizing your site, look at the overall performance of your site. Is it performing well enough to reach your goals? Are you getting enough visitors to convert into leads? Do you have enough social shares? These questions are all about finding out whether or not you’re reaching your audience.
If you aren’t, try changing things around. Maybe you’ve been targeting too narrow of a niche. Or maybe you haven’t optimized your site properly. Either way, you’ll know once you start testing different approaches.
What is SEO keyword research?
Keyword research is one of the most important practices in search engine optimization (also known as SEO), because it helps determine what words are being searched for by potential customers online. This information is used to help optimize web pages and blog posts for those specific keywords.
The process for how to do keyword research for SEO involves choosing topics for your content that are focused on a set of target keywords that you want your articles to rank for. You can use tools such as Google Trends to find out what people are searching for, and use that data to inform your writing.
The importance of keyword research in SEO
Keyword research is an essential part of SEO. Without it, you won’t know what terms are relevant to your brand, products, or services. You’ll also miss out on opportunities to rank well for specific queries.
So how do you find the right keywords? There are many ways to go about it, including manually analyzing competitor sites, conducting web analytics, or even asking customers directly. But there’s another way to find the perfect keywords for your website.
You can use keyword research tools like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer tool to generate lists of potential keywords based on your current content and competitors’ content. These lists are great starting points for further research.
Once you’ve identified some promising keywords, you can start building content around them. Optimizing your existing content for the right keywords is a good place to start.
If you’re just getting started with SEO, it might seem overwhelming to try and optimize everything yourself. Fortunately, there are plenty of free resources online to help you learn the ropes.
Choose the right keywords
Google Ads Keyword Planner helps you find the best keywords to target. You can use it to find out what people are searching for, how many searches there are per month, and where those searches happen.
Keywords are the words or phrases that people type into Google when looking for something online. For example, if someone types “bathing suit,” Google might display ads about bathing suits. If someone types “sandals,” Google might show ads about sandals.
You can use Keyword Planner to see how often people search for specific terms, like “best beach hotels.” This information lets you decide whether to bid on that term or focus on different ones.
If you’re just getting started with keyword research, start with broad-match keywords. These are keywords that describe your product or service well, and they tend to bring in lots of traffic. Broad match keywords include “beach hotel” and “beach vacation.”
Next, choose long-tail keywords. Long tail keywords are narrower and more targeted. They usually attract fewer visitors, but they convert better because searchers are more likely to buy once they’ve found you. Examples include “tropical island vacation” and “vacation rentals.”
How to Find and Select Keywords for Your Website
The most important part of keyword research isn’t finding good keywords; it’s choosing the right ones. You’ll find plenty of tools out there that help you do just that, like the free Keyword Tool from Moz. But even though those tools are great for getting ideas, you still need to take into account what makes sense for your site and audience. In this guide, we’re going to show you some ways to narrow down your list of potential keywords and make sure you choose the right ones for your strategy.
Step 1. Use the google keyword planner to narrow down your keyword list
In Google’s Keyword Planner tool, you can find out how many people are searching for particular phrases. This helps you determine what words are worth pursuing.
Then, you’ll want to look up those keywords in Google Trends. If there’s no data showing searches for that term, you know it’s probably not worth investing in.
You can also use Google Trends to figure out where your target audience lives. For example, if you sell products to women, you might choose to focus on “women’s fashion,” rather than “fashion.”
Step 2: Prioritize low-hanging fruit
Google wants to make sure that searchers find what they’re looking for quickly. So, it makes sense that it prioritizes keywords that people are searching for. But how do you know where to start?
The answer lies in understanding how Google ranks web pages. If you want to optimize for certain keywords, you’ll want to focus on keywords that have less competition. This way, you’ll have a better shot at claiming those spots.
To figure out which keywords to target, you’ll want to look at the ones that are most likely to bring traffic to your site. These are called “low-hanging fruit,” because they’re easy to grab. For example, if you sell shoes online, you might choose to target shoe keywords like “shoes” or “buy shoes online.”
You can also look at keyword research tools like Moz Pro, Ahrefs, SEMrush, and others to help identify keywords that aren’t already being targeted. Once you’ve identified some potential keywords, you’ll want to check out the number of searches each term gets. Then, you’ll want to see how much competition each keyword has.
Once you’ve narrowed down your list, use our free tool to determine which keywords are best suited for your brand. We’ll show you which keywords are most likely to lead to conversions.
Step 3: Check the monthly search volume (MSV) for keywords you’ve chosen
The third step in creating a successful blog post is to check the monthly search volume (also known as MSV). This is the number of searches performed per month for specific keywords. If you are writing about a topic that isn’t very popular, it might take some digging to find enough data to make a compelling case. However, if you’re writing about something that already has lots of interest, you’ll likely find plenty of data to work with.
For example, let’s say you wanted to write a blog post about how to start a blog. There are many ways to go about doing this, including starting a blog yourself, hiring someone else to set up a site for you, or buying a pre-made template. But whichever route you choose, there’s no doubt that starting a blog is one of the most popular topics online today. So let’s see what we can learn about this topic by looking at the MSVs for different keywords associated with blogging.
Let’s begin with the term “blogging,” which has been consistently among the top 10 terms for months now. We can use the tool Search Volume History to see how much traffic certain keywords receive every month. For example, here’s the chart for the keyword “blogging”:
As you can see, the average monthly search volumes for “blogging” range from approximately 2 million to 4.5 million queries. These numbers aren’t huge, but they’re still pretty high. And because the phrase is so common, it makes sense that it receives a lot of attention.
Now let’s look at another popular keyword cluster: “how to start a blog.” Here’s the same information for that keyword:
Again, the average monthly search volume for “how to start a blogger” ranges from roughly 5.8 million to 9.1 million queries. While those numbers aren’t quite as large as the previous keyword, they’re still fairly significant. Plus, the fact that the keyword appears in the top 10 suggests that it’s a topic that people care about.
Conclusion
Keywords are the most important part of SEO. They determine whether or not you will rank well in the SERP.
There are many different ways to find keywords, but the two most popular methods are competitive research and keyword tools.
When choosing between these two options, choose the method that works best for your business.
