Keywords play a pivotal role in determining the success of your SEO. It impacts almost every SEO task you carry out. SEO without proper keyword research is like a movie without a proper plot. It is pointless, and you don’t know what you’re serving, what your audience is looking for and no longer engage them!
Search Engine- How it works
Keyword Research is the process of exploring terms (keyword) your audience enters into the search box while looking for services/products related to your business. These keywords should be optimized in your content and other SEO tasks to increase your site’s relevance and ranking for such terms on search engines.
In earlier days, keyword research was just performed to discover high traffic rendering keywords and stuff them into the content. Over the years, search engines are sophisticated and strictly banned sites employing such practices.
Consider Google’s advanced ranking component- RankBrian. Leveraged by AI & ML technologies, RankBrian understands the intention behind search queries and delivers relevant answers. So, finding the right keyword is the prime job. Let’s see how to do keyword research properly.
Discover keyword ideas
To come up with a variety of keywords, first, you need to identify your Seed Keyword. Seed keywords are the base words that help you develop more keyword suggestions & ideas.
If you own a bakery, then phrases like Bakery Shop, Bakery Items, Cakes, and Cookies will be a great start.
The ideal places to look for keyword ideas.
Google Suggestions
Google Suggestion is the most reliable platform that provides you with keyword suggestions from the SERP. Google’s Features like Autocomplete, People Also Ask, Related Searches, and Q&A are a goldmine for SEO professionals to discover the right keywords. Google provides these suggestions based on the user’s search queries.
Google Autocomplete
While entering your seed keyword, you can see the suggestions that appear in the drop-down.
People Also Ask
You can build keyword ideas from this section.
Searches Related To
Here’s another way Google offers professionals to identify the relevant keywords.
Google Keyword Planner (GKP)
There are lots of free tools that help you generate tons of keyword ideas. The popular one is GKP. It’s designed to generate keyword ideas for Google Ads.
- SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool
- Ahref Keywords Explorer
- KwFinder By Mangools
- Long Tail Pro
- Majestic Keyword Checker
- Keyword Tool
- Serpstat
- Moz Keyword Explorer
- SpyFu
#2 Analyze Keyword Metrics
Once you discover the keyword ideas, analyze the keywords based on these crucial metrics.
Search Volume
Once you discover the keyword ideas, analyze the keywords based on these crucial metrics.
ProTip: Use Google Trends to analyze which keyword is getting traction among users and which is losing the traction.
Keyword Difficulty
It lets you know how hard it is to rank for a particular keyword. It is calculated on a scale from 0 to 100. The higher the score, the harder to rank for it.
Note: In GKP, it’s common among users to get confused with ‘Competition Score’ as ‘Keyword Difficulty Score.’ The score, here, refers to the competition levels in Google Ads, not the ranking difficulty of a keyword.
Search Intent
It refers to the intention behind the users’ queries. Analyzing the SERP results of a particular keyword is crucial. It gives more significant insights on,
- Top ranking sites for that keyword.
- Identifying the user’s intention.
- Probability of ranking your site on the 1st of SERP.
Example: You own a cake shop. Optimizing keywords like ‘Homemade Cake Recipes’ won’t help you as they’re not intended to buy. Know your users’ intentions behind the keywords. Don’t waste your efforts on optimizing the wrong keywords. Search intent is categorized into 4 types.
- Navigational- Intends to find a particular brand/site (Gmail.com).
- Informational- Intends to find information (Best places to visit in Chennai).
- Transactional- Intends to buy or make a transaction online (Airtel Recharge)
- Commercial- Intends to research before making a purchase (Redmi Note 7 Review).
#3 Long Tail Keywords
Niche-related keywords with high search volume and low ranking difficulty can make up the right combination. Still, ideally, it’s not easy to strike a balance between these metrics.
Focus on long-tail & middle tail keywords. Search volume for long-tail keywords is low. They’re specific, easy to rank and drive more conversions.
- Broad Keyword- Cake
- Middle Tail Keyword- Eggless Cake
- Long-tail Keyword- Best Eggless Cake for celebration
LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) Keywords
LSI is another option to aim for a particular keyword. It’s a technique to find the related words of your keyword and use it in your content to instruct Search engines that your page is associated with this particular search.
Once you find the ideal keyword, include it properly in these sections of your page.
- Page Heading
- Title Tag & Meta description
- Within the First 100 words
- Subheadings