On a daily bases, consumers perform billions of searches for products, services, and information. Getting your business noticed in the vast ocean of results starts with keyword research — understanding what your prospective buyers are looking for so that you can be there when they need you.
Researching keywords for your website is a crucial step in effective search engine optimization (SEO). It helps you understand what terms people are searching for and to optimize your content accordingly. Crafting content that aligns with what users are searching for can make the difference between a hidden website and one that attracts a steady stream of targeted traffic.
In this comprehensive beginner’s guide, we’ll delve into the art of keyword research, utilizing both free and paid tools to uncover valuable insights to develop a winning SEO strategy.
Why is keyword research important?
Keyword research is vital for your business because it’s an essential component in connecting your content to user intent, driving organic search traffic, and enhancing your website’s visibility in search engine results. All of these things help your business grow and remain competitive within your industry.
Let’s break down the process step by step:
- Understanding user intent: User intent refers to a person’s underlying purpose or goal when searching. Effective keyword research involves identifying the user intent behind various search queries. There are four primary reasons people perform searches:
- Informational (seeking information)
- Navigational (looking for a specific website)
- Transactional (intent to purchase)
- Commercial (researching products/services)
- Selecting relevant keywords: When you choose keywords for your content, you’re essentially selecting the words or phrases that mirror what users are searching for. These keywords should reflect the language and terms users use when seeking information related to your industry, products, or services. By aligning your keywords with user intent, you increase the likelihood of your content showing up in search results when users type in those specific queries.
- Matching content to intent: Crafting content that addresses user intent is crucial. When users search for specific keywords, they’re seeking answers or solutions related to those keywords. Your content should provide relevant, high-quality information that satisfies their needs. If your content effectively addresses user intent, users are more likely to spend time on your website, increasing engagement metrics and indicating to search engines that your content is valuable.
- Enhancing organic search traffic: As your content ranks higher in search engine results for specific keywords, you’ll attract organic traffic from users actively searching for those terms. When users find your content aligned with their queries, they’re more likely to click through to your website. This organic traffic is valuable because it’s driven by genuine interest and intent, increasing the likelihood of conversions, whether that’s signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, or taking another desired action.
- Improving website visibility: Search engines aim to deliver the most relevant and valuable results to users. By optimizing your content with the right keywords, you’re effectively signaling to search engines that your content is relevant to specific search queries. Over time, as your content gains authority and demonstrates its usefulness, search engines will rank it higher in search results. This improved ranking enhances your website’s visibility, making it more likely for users to discover your content when searching for related topics.
- Long-term benefits: Strategically using keywords doesn’t just provide short-term gains. As your content accumulates backlinks and engagement, it establishes itself as an authoritative source in your field. This can lead to higher rankings for broader and more competitive keywords, driving even more organic traffic to your website. And you can always use more organic traffic since any customer earned from organic traffic means more profit for you in the long-run.
In essence, keywords serve as the bridge that connects what users are looking for with the content you provide. By aligning your content with user intent through well-researched and strategically placed keywords, you can attract organic search traffic and enhance your website’s visibility in a way that provides value to both users and search engines.
How to utilize free keyword research tools
Free keyword research tools are valuable resources that can be used at various stages of your SEO strategy. They’re a great resource if you’re just starting out or have a limited budget. You can use free keyword research tools to help plan your content for the upcoming month or year, test new content ideas, and supplement paid keyword research tools.
Google’s Keyword Planner, Google Trends, and Autocomplete are a few of the most prevalent free tools for keyword research. By leveraging these free tools, you can gain valuable insights into user search behavior, keyword popularity, and related terms. When combined, the insights from these tools can help you create a comprehensive keyword strategy that aligns with user intent and boosts your website’s visibility in search engine results.
Google Ads Keyword Planner
Google Ads Keyword Planner is designed primarily for advertisers, but it provides valuable insights for SEO keyword research. It helps you discover keyword ideas and assess their search volume and competition.
- Step 1: Access Google’s Keyword Planner by signing in to your Google Ads account (or creating one if you don’t have it).
- Step 2: Click on “Tools & Settings” in the top menu, then select “Keyword Planner.”
- Step 3: Choose the “Discover new keywords” option.
- Step 4: Enter your seed keywords or your website’s URL.
- Step 5: Customize your targeting options (geography, language, etc.).
- Step 6: Click “Get results” to view keyword ideas.
- Step 7: Browse through the keyword suggestions. You’ll see information about average monthly searches and competition levels.
- Step 8: Sort and filter the results based on relevance, search volume, and competition.
- Step 9: Select keywords that are relevant to your content and have a balanced search volume and competition.
Google Trends
Explore Google Trends as a tool to understand how the popularity of a keyword has changed over time and compare the interest in different keywords. It also provides related queries and geographical data.
- Step 1: Visit Google Trends at https://trends.google.com/.
- Step 2: Enter your keyword(s) or topic in the search bar.
- Step 3: Explore the “Interest over time” graph to see how the keyword’s popularity has evolved.
- Step 4: Scroll down to find related queries, related topics, and regional interest.
- Step 5: Adjust the time range, location, and category to get more specific insights.
- Step 6: Use the information to identify trends and seasonal fluctuations for your chosen keywords.
For more in-depth information, read How to Use Google Trends Effectively for Content Creation.
Google Autocomplete and Related Searches
Google Autocomplete and Related Searches are an often-overlooked goldmine for keyword ideas. Google autocomplete provides real-time suggestions as you start typing a search query based on what people commonly search for. It can help spark fresh content ideas and help expand your keyword list. Use suggestions from Google’s autocomplete to gain valuable insights into popular search terms and long-tail keyword ideas.
- Step 1: Open your web browser and go to https://www.google.com/.
- Step 2: Begin typing a keyword related to your content.
- Step 3: Observe the autocomplete suggestions that appear in the dropdown menu.
- Step 4: Note down relevant and popular autocomplete suggestions.
- Step 5: Scroll to the bottom of the search results page to find “Searches related to [your keyword].” These are additional keyword ideas.
- Step 6: Incorporate the autocomplete and related search terms into your keyword list.
When to use paid keyword research tools
While free tools offer valuable insights, they might provide less extensive and less accurate data than paid tools. As your website grows and your SEO efforts become more sophisticated, you might find it beneficial to invest in premium tools for more in-depth analysis and a broader range of features.
Advanced paid tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz provide comprehensive insights and features beyond what free tools offer. With these paid tools, you’ll gain in-depth insights, data visualization, and advanced analysis that can significantly refine your SEO strategy. They empower you to identify growth opportunities, understand your competitors, monitor your website’s performance, and make informed decisions to improve your online presence.
SEMrush
SEMrush is an all-in-one marketing toolkit that offers a range of tools for SEO, content marketing, competitive analysis, and more. It’s known for its extensive keyword research capabilities, site audit features, and competitor analysis.
- Keyword Research: SEMrush provides detailed data on search volume, keyword difficulty, and related keywords. It also offers competitive keyword analysis, allowing you to see what keywords your competitors are ranking for.
- Site Audit: SEMrush can perform comprehensive site audits to identify technical SEO issues, crawl errors, and other on-page optimizations.
- Backlink Analysis: SEMrush offers backlink analysis tools that help you understand your backlink profile, identify toxic links, and discover your competitors’ backlinks.
- Competitor Research: You can analyze your competitors’ websites to uncover their top keywords, traffic sources, and backlink strategies.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a powerful SEO toolset known for its backlink analysis and content research capabilities. It’s often used to explore the link profiles of websites, track rankings, and perform in-depth competitor analysis.
- Backlink Analysis: Ahrefs offers one of the most comprehensive backlink databases, allowing you to analyze your backlinks, understand referring domains, and evaluate your link-building efforts.
- Keyword Research: Ahrefs provides insights into search volume, keyword difficulty, and clicks for specific keywords. You can also discover keyword ideas and related terms.
- Competitor Analysis: Ahrefs’ competitive analysis features help you dissect your competitors’ SEO strategies, including their top-ranking pages, backlinks, and content performance.
Moz
Moz is known for its suite of SEO tools and resources, including keyword research, link analysis, and site optimization tools. It also provides valuable educational content for SEO beginners.
- Keyword Research: Moz offers keyword research tools that provide insights into keyword difficulty, search volume, and opportunity. It also helps you track your keyword rankings over time.
- Link Analysis: Moz’s link explorer allows you to analyze your backlinks, track link metrics, and evaluate the quality of your link profile.
- Site Crawl: Moz’s site crawl feature helps you identify technical issues on your website, including broken links, duplicate content, and crawl errors.
- Competitor Research: Moz provides competitive analysis tools that allow you to compare your website’s performance with that of your competitors.
How to build your keyword research strategy
Building a comprehensive keyword research strategy involves several key steps, including competitor analysis, targeting long-tail keywords, and organizing and prioritizing your keyword list.
- Define your goals and audience:
Understand the purpose of your keyword research. Are you aiming to increase website traffic, boost conversions, or establish authority in a specific niche? Identify your target audience and their preferences, needs, and search behavior. - Competitor analysis:
- Identify competitors: Identify your main competitors in the online space. These are websites that target similar keywords and topics as yours.
- Analyze competitor keywords: Use tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs (even their free versions offer limited insights) to analyze which keywords your competitors are ranking for.
- Keyword gap analysis: Compare your keyword list with your competitors’ to identify keywords you might be missing. These gaps can reveal opportunities to target keywords your competitors haven’t fully covered.
- Long-tail keywords:
- Understand long-tail keywords: Long-tail keywords are longer and more specific phrases. While they have lower search volumes, they often indicate higher intent and can lead to more targeted traffic.
- Identify long-tail opportunities: Use tools like Google’s Autocomplete and “Searches related to” at the bottom of the search results page to identify long-tail keyword opportunities.
- Organize and prioritize keywords:
- Keyword categorization: Group your keywords into relevant categories or topics. This helps you organize your strategy and develop content themes.
- Use a keyword planner tool: Tools like Google’s Keyword Planner or free keyword research tools offer search volume and competition data. Input your keywords to get insights.
- Assess competition: Evaluate the competition for each keyword. Look for a balance between keywords that are highly competitive and those that are more attainable.
- Search volume vs. relevance: Prioritize keywords with a decent search volume and high relevance to your content. A keyword with high search volume but no relevance won’t bring the desired results.
- Consider intent: Different keywords reflect different user intents (informational, navigational, transactional, and commercial). Choose keywords that match the intent of your content.
- Content Planning:
- Map keywords to content: Assign keywords to specific pieces of content. Each page or post should target a primary keyword and related secondary keywords. If you need help developing content ideas, try using an AI tool like ChatGPT. You can provide the AI with a keyword and ask for suggestions on blog post topics. Refine the results by including details such as reader intent, the type of business you operate, and your goals for the content.
- Create high-quality content: Develop informative and engaging content around your selected keywords. Focus on solving the searcher’s problem or answering their question.
- Set a content schedule: Once you’ve come up with a list of topics to create, put them on a calendar. Make the plan as detailed as necessary for you to get them done. For example, you could schedule a “draft due date” and a “publish date” for each piece of content you create. Publishing content on regular intervals keeps your content fresh and gives search engines a reason to keep coming back. The more content you create, the more authority you build, and the higher your articles are likely to rank.
- Monitor and revise:
- Track rankings: Regularly monitor how your content ranks for the targeted keywords. Tools like Google Search Console can provide insights into your rankings.
- Analyze traffic: Keep an eye on how much organic traffic you’re receiving for each keyword. Adjust your strategy based on which keywords are driving the most valuable traffic.
- Stay updated: SEO and search trends evolve. Keep your keyword strategy up to date by regularly revisiting your research and adjusting based on new trends or changes in user behavior.
- User experience and engagement:
Remember that ranking for keywords is not the only goal. User experience and engagement are crucial. Ensure that your content satisfies user intent, offers value, and encourages visitors to stay on your site and take desired actions.
By following these steps and continually refining your keyword strategy, you can effectively target the right keywords, outperform competitors, and drive relevant organic traffic to your website.
