How to Do Keyword Research for SEO

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Google constantly keeps us wrapped up with algorithm updates they have added to our search engine. One thing, however, has not changed quite a bit for digital marketers seeking to improve their sites for search engine keyword research.

This is a process of finding and analyzing search terms that people enter in search engines to use that data for a particular purpose, often for online advertising purposes (SEO) or general marketing. Keyword research can reveal search terms to target, the attractiveness of these search terms, their threshold difficulty, and more.

Why is keyword research important?

Keyword research is a fantastic way to delineate your audience’s actual interests through the online searches they are making. These insights can help you better understand your client base and improve upcoming content strategies.

People use keywords to locate the solution to a problem when doing research online. So if your online content were to consistently succeed in getting in front of our target audience as they conduct searches, you stand to gain more traffic. Thus, you should be targeting their relevant searches.

In the inbound process, we don’t create content for the sake of what people want to learn; instead, we create content around what audiences want to find. In other words, our audience is seeking out us.

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Conducting keyword research has many advantages, the primary ones being this.

Marketing Trend Insight

Relevant keywords and industry trends can both be determined by effective keyword research. You can use this information to center your content and achieve your marketing goals.

Traffic Growth

The better you identify the most relevant keywords for the content you produce, the more relevant your will rank in search engine results, and the more traffic you’ll bring to your site.

Also Read: SEO Site Checkup: Your FREE SEO Site Checkup Tool From WebFX

Customer Acquisition

If your company has content that other business professionals are searching for, you can find their needs and invite them to enter the buyer journey by providing them with a call to action that will lead them toward that phase.

By examining the popularity, search volume, and general intent of keywords, you can discover the questions most people in your audience are attempting to answer. However, as Google evolves, keywords themselves are no longer the only metrics of relevance.

Keywords vs. Topics

More and more, people express how much SEO has evolved within just the last decade, and how irrelevant keywords are to improving our search engine rankings. And to some extent, this is the case, however, an adept SEO professional sees it differently.

That doesn’t mean keyword research is obsolete. Let me explain.

Keyword research tells you what subjects your audience finds interesting and interesting, assuming you employ the appropriate SEO tool, and how popular those subjects are among your audience.

What you get from this functioning here is by researching sought-after keywords, you can ascertain and sort your content material into subjects that you want to publish on. Subsequently, you may use these subjects to direct you on which search terms you should look for and target.

Elements of Keyword Research

There are three main elements to pay attention to when conducting keyword research.

1. Relevance

Relevance is something that Google considers when it’s ranking content for search results. Search intent is what comes into play, which explains the relevance of your materials for a given keyword. Additionally, your content must be the best resource for a given keyword for it to rank highly. Why don’t Google rank your content higher if it’s less valuable than other content?

Also Read: What is an SEO Analysis?

2. Authority

Google will offer more weight to sources until it sees are extremely authoritative. Thus, you need to go out of your way to become an authoritative source by making your site a hub for helpful, informative content and promoting that material to gather social signals and backlinks.

If you do not have exposure in the area of interest or a keyword’s SERPs are high in authority-based sources, then your entire ranking is reduced unless your content is outstanding.

3. Volume

By ranking on the first page for a specific keyword, you may drive traffic to your site. It’s equivalent to setting up a shop in a virtual ghost town. MSV is based on the number of searches per month that occur across all audience members.

How to Research Keywords for Your SEO Strategy

Following a keyword research process will assist you to establish and carry out a keyword strategy that helps you draw closer to your desired overwhelmed key phrases.

Step 1: Make a list of important, relevant topics based on what you know about your business.

Determine the topics you want to rank by in terms of their generic subcategories. Then, you’ll produce about 5-10 topic buckets that you believe are important for your firm, and then you’ll use those topic buckets to help create some more specific keywords later on.

If you’re a frequent writer, these are probably the topics you blog about most frequently. Perhaps they are the most popular topics in sales discussions, too.

Think about the personality traits of your buyer personas. What types of topics would your demographic search for that help your business get found? If you were like HubSpot, for example, you would develop topic buckets around marketing software.

“inbound marketing” (21K)
“blogging” (19K)
“email marketing” (30K)
“lead generation” (17K)
“SEO” (214K)
“social media marketing” (71K)
“marketing analytics” (6.2K)
“marketing automation” (8.5K)

See those numbers in parentheses to the right of each word? That’s their monthly search volume. This data lets you gauge how important these topics are to your audience, and what kinds of sub-topics you may need to create content on to be successful with that keyword. To learn more about these sub-topics, we continue to step 2.

Step 2: Fill in those topic buckets with keywords.

Now that you’ve got a few topic buckets you want to focus on, it is time to identify some keywords that fall into those buckets. These are keyword phrases you think are important to rank for in the SERPs (search engine results pages) because your target market is probably searching for those specific terms.

For instance, if I were to decide to take the last topic bucket for an inbound marketing software company “marketing automation”, I would brainstorm some keyword phrases that I think people would type in related to that topic. Those might include “examples,” “applications,” and “software.”

marketing automation tools
how to use marketing automation software
what is marketing automation?
how to tell if I need the marketing automation software
lead nurturing
email marketing automation
top automation tools

And so on and so on. The purpose of this step is not simply to create your final list of Keywords. You simply want to end up with an overview of keywords that you think your customers may use to search for content related to that topic category. We’ll narrow down the list later in the process so that you don’t have anything too unwieldy.

Although Google encrypts more keywords each day, there are multiple ways to discover new keyword ideas for your website. To do this, you can use website analytics software like Google Analytics or HubSpot’s Sources tool, provided you have it.

Examine your website’s traffic origins, and dissect your organic search traffic bucket to discover the key phrases users are employing to make their way to your website.

You can use this technique for as many topic buckets as you need, always keeping in mind that if you’re having trouble coming up with relevant search terms, you can always turn to your colleagues in sales or service, who are more informed on the topic.

These are often great starting points for keyword research.

Step 3: Understand How Intent Affects Keyword Research and Analyze Accordingly.

User intent is one of the most crucial factors when it comes to ranking well in search engines. Nowadays, it’s more important to concentrate on addressing an audience problem than simply including one’s targeted keyword. Therefore, how has this affected the way you perform keyword research?

Keywords can have different connotations from the one you’d initially assume. It is necessary that you know what the true meaning of the keywords you utilize is, as they definitely have a powerful influence on your ranking potential.

Let’s say, for example, you’re researching the keyword “how to start a blog” for an article you’d like to create. “Blog” can mean a blog post or the blog website itself, and what a searcher’s intent is behind that keyword will influence the direction of your article. Does the searcher want to learn how to start an individual blog post?

Or do they want to learn how to create an effective website domain for blogging? If your content strategy is only geared towards people interested in the latter, you will need to be certain of the keyword’s intent before making an investment.

To verify a user’s intent in a user query, you can simply enter that query into a search engine by yourself. Be sure the content on Google is closely related to the keyword you want to type.

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Step 4: Research related search terms.

You may have already thought of this section if you’re doing keyword research. If not, it’s a great way to fill out those lists.

If you are having trouble thinking of more keywords people might be searching for about a certain topic, consider researching the related search terms that appear when you control keywords in the search box of Google.

The suggestions at the bottom of the page of Google’s search results often illustrate relevant alternatives to your initial search. These potential keywords can consequently help spark additional ideas for further research.

Type in several of those related search terms to look for a bonus.

Step 5: Use keyword research tools to your advantage.

Keyword research and SEO tools can suggest more precise keyword possibilities for you by using keyword-based search strings and finding an exact match and phrase match keywords based on the keyword suggestions you’ve already come up with. Some of the most popular tools in this category include WordStream Keywords, Google Keyword Planner, and Google Trends.

Ahrefs
SEMrush
Ubersuggest
Google Keyword Planner
SECockpit
Keywords Everywhere
Moz
KeywordTool.io
KWFinder