Having a blog/website is not a big deal if we are not able to drive traffic, and to drive more traffic we should always focus to rank on Google or other popular search engines.
Huuuh ! Everybody does that.
Yes, it’s a very common understanding to be there on the top of the SERP. But, How do we plan to execute the right keyword in your content?
There comes the basic theory. Are you focusing on what people are searching or expecting from google, indirectly from our bog? Of course, we call them Keywords….
And Right keywords can be game changers for your blog, whether its an old or new blog.
Some keywords get hundreds or thousands of unique searches a day while others get a couple of hundred. At the same time, some high trafficked keywords are very competitive online because many businesses are trying to get referrals and traffic from users when they search for those keywords while others are not.
Well a proper keyword research will provide you a good list of right keywords.
The power of keyword research lies in better understanding your target market and how they are searching for your content, services, or products.
Keyword research provides you with specific search data that can help you answer questions like:
- What are people searching for?
- How many people are searching for it?
- In what format do they want that information?
Now let’s quickly jump to our main article to know the whole keyword research process.
5 QUICK STEPS TO FOLLOW WHILE DOING KEYWORD RESEARCH
Step 1: Craft a list of strong niche topics (Seed Keywords)
Seed keywords are the foundation of your keyword research. They define your niche and help you identify your competitors.
To kick off this process, think about the topics you want to rank for in terms of generic buckets. You’ll come up with about 5-10 topic buckets you think are important to your interests or your business, and then you’ll use those topic buckets to help come up with some specific keywords later in the process.
Whatever you write should be engaging, have a unifying theme, and a decent length. There are two ways that will help you to get your seed keywords:
- GET GOOGLE SUGGESTIONS
Google compiles frequently asked questions on topics as well as other searches conducted by users around specific topics.
Firstly, look at the Google auto suggestions for the keywords to your blogpost. For example, if you are writing a post on cricket stumps, look at google suggestions :
Secondly, to find more ideas and instant contextual keyword data, scroll to the bottom of the search results page.
These would be your seed keywords, broad topic ideas. Next, you will have to find more specific keywords that offer attractive opportunities.
- FOCUS ON LONG TAIL KEYWORDS
Long-tail keywords are keywords or key phrases are more specific – and usually longer – than more commonly searched for keywords.
Long-tail keywords get less search traffic, but will usually have a higher conversion value, as they are more specific. They allow you gradually to get more traffic and to be found by new and motivated audiences.
Don’t underestimate these less popular keywords. Long tail keywords with lower search volume often convert better, because searchers are more specific and intentional in their searches. So, focus on these keywords before writing a blog.
These long tail keywords can be found through google suggestions and or through keyword research tools.
Step 2: Find what keywords your competitors rank for
The chances are, your competitors have already performed all the tedious keyword research work for you. So you can research the keywords that they rank for and cherry-pick the best ones.
It could be a good idea to prioritize high-volume keywords that your competitors are not currently ranking for. On the flip side, you could also see which keywords from your list your competitors are already ranking for and prioritize those.
There are some quick ways to get a sense of the types of terms your competitors are ranking for :
- Use Paid Tools
Aside from manually searching for keywords in an incognito browser and seeing what positions your competitors are in, you can use paid tools such as Ahrefs site explorer and Semrush for the top keywords for the domain you enter.
- Stalk into your Competitor keywords on SERP
Put the keyword on google search to check the competitors are ranking for. Look into their titles and get the variations they have used. This trick will help you to get more alternative keywords for your topic.
- Explore Q/As on Quora
Ask questions or give answers related to terms you want to write a blog/article for. This will help you to know what people really want to know about your chosen topic. Thus you can have more ideas or keywords for your topic.
Step 3: Discover core keywords ideas by keyword research tools
Good competitor research is often enough to fill your spreadsheet with a ton of relevant keyword ideas.
But if you’re one of the leaders in your niche, that strategy is not quite feasible for you. You have to be looking for some unique keywords that none of your competitors are targeting yet.
And the best way to do it is by using a decent keyword research tool. You have a lot of tools at your disposal to do this, such as Soovle, Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, Ubersuggest, Answer The Public, Moz Keyword Explorer etc.
But the easiest and free keyword research tools are Google AdWords Keyword Planner and GoogleTrends. I personally use these two tools for my keyword research activity. Google Keyword Planner helps to find keywords and get search volume and forecasts for your keywords.
Let’s explore some keywords for the above seed keywords “Cricket Stumps” in Google Keyword Planner.
For each suggestion, you’ll see:
- Avg. monthly searches;
- Competition;
- Top of page bid (low range);
- Top of page bid (high range)
You can also download all these keywords and add it to the list. I personally believe that by using Google Keyword Planner, you can get a list of keyword ideas that would be more than enough to explore. For better ideas of keywords, you have to understand the keyword metrics.
Step 4: Understand the keyword metrics
While executing the aforementioned strategies, you’ll find yourself sifting through thousands of keyword ideas and trying to decide which of them deserve to be shortlisted.
And to help you separate the wheat from the chaff, there’s a bunch of cool keyword metrics to consider.
- Search volume
This metric shows you the overall search demand of a given keyword, i.e., how many times people around the world (or in a specific country) put this keyword into Google.
The higher the search volume for a given keyword or keyword phrase, the more work is typically required to achieve higher rankings. Go too low, though, and you risk not drawing any searchers to your site.Another thing to always keep in mind is the dynamic nature of Search volume. You want to see if your keyword is growing fast… or dying slow. And the best way to do that is Google Trends. For example, let’s explore our keywords for the past 90 days.
As you can see, this shows the interest over time for keywords “Cricket Stumps” is average. So it’s better to optimize it before writing your blog.
2. Keyword Difficulty:
Keyword difficulty in SEO is largely a measure of the number and quality of backlinks to the top ten pages in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for that keyword—or how competitive those pages are based on how strong their backlinks are. SEO keyword tools gauge the “competitiveness” of a SERP by looking at the domain authorities (or domain ratings) and page authorities (or URL ratings) of the indexed pages.
Each keyword research tool has their own methods of calculating ranking difficulty score.
Step 5: Group your list of keywords / Prioritize your keywords
Prioritization is not really the “final step” in your keyword research process, but rather something you do naturally as you move through the aforementioned steps.
- Target Competitor Keywords
Prioritize your keywords by targeting your competitors keywords. Watch for how tough the competition is and what would it take to rank for it.
- Go with google suggested keywords
The best way of deciphering keywords behind the search query is to google it and see what comes up first. Google is getting better and better in identifying the keywords behind each search query, so the search results usually talk for themselves.
- Go with trending keywords
Discover the most popular and recently trending keywords related to your topic. You can find these keywords on certain platforms such as reddit, twitter, buzzfeed, google, etc.
- Go with Brand keywords
You need to figure out what all keywords drive the best traffic for your business.
If you’re mainly looking for traffic and brand awareness, you might focus on keywords that will bring tons of visitors but won’t necessarily convert into leads or sales.
- Go with futuristic keywords
Explore and promote those keywords that will help you in future. This may help in the future growth of your business or get huge traffic to your blog.
Once you’ve done all of the things mentioned above, you can set your Right Keyword strategy in motion, but this doesn’t mean that your work ends there. A good keyword strategy requires an adequate follow-up, which includes monitoring and tweaking things constantly.
Always remember, it’s not the “easiest to rank for” keywords that you should be looking for. It’s the ones with the best ROI (raw organic traffic).
Have you ever done keyword research for any topic? If yes, please share your experience or tips that you didn’t see me mention in this blog. I would love to learn from you.
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