Your Complete Guide To Doing Keyword Research For SEO

Keywords act as the foundation stones in SEO. If you don’t understand your target audience and what they are looking for, you can not establish an online presence. And this is where keyword research becomes the most necessary first step you need to take. Keywords are the search terms or phrases that you want your website to rank for when people search for them on Google or other search engines. Google's search algorithm uses more than 200 factors to rank websites and without good keyword research, you cannot even expect any of your web pages to rank well. 

In order to make sure that your content reaches the right audience and fulfills their requirements, keyword research is very important. Before knowing the steps of keyword research, let us help you understand the basics:

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword Research is the process of finding search terms that you want your web pages to rank for. In simple words, it’s the process of identifying what most of your target audience is searching for on Google in order to create content around those search terms or keywords. You have to come up with a long list of keywords related to your niche that you want your website to rank for. In order to make your web pages appear in search results, it’s extremely important to optimize the content for relevant keywords. 

To identify relevant keywords, you first need to have a good understanding of your target audience and the search engines. Start by finding out what search terms they type in Google when looking for a particular product, service, or topic. Also, try to identify their search intent, i.e. what they expect to see in the results. It will help you create high-quality content for your website that actually attracts traffic. 

Importance of Keyword Research in SEO

Keywords are the base of an SEO strategy. Without knowing what to create content about, you will never be able to build the right content and SEO strategy. If your website cannot be found by your target audience, what’s even its significance? Many business owners use specific sets of words or phrases to describe their products or services while their target audience uses a completely different set of keywords to search on Google. In order to avoid this, you must do keyword research to ensure that your keywords align with your audience’s search intent. This way, you can identify what your target audience is looking for and create high-quality content accordingly.

Keyword Research Basics: Terms and Concepts

Here are a few terminologies and concepts related to keyword research that you must understand well:

1. Focus Keyword:

A focus keyword or a primary keyword is the basic word or phrase that you want a particular web page to rank for. By doing keyword research with the above-mentioned steps, you can create a list of keywords that you want to use as primary keywords in your web pages.

2. Secondary Keywords:

These are the keywords that are not directly related to your business, but are used to support the primary keyword. You can use these keywords to provide more detailed information about your primary keyword to your audience.

3. Long-tail keywords:

These are more specific keywords and are usually less searched for than the primary keywords. Long-tail keywords are usually less competitive and hence easier to rank for.

4. Search Volume:

Search volume refers to the average number of searches for a particular keyword in a particular time period. The higher the search volume for a keyword, the better ranking opportunity it has. Usually, monthly search volume is considered for keyword research. However, ranking opportunities cannot be decided solely based on the search volume.

5. Traffic Potential:

The traffic potential of a keyword tells you how likely that keyword is to drive high traffic to your website. The higher the TP, the better the keyword is.

6. Keyword Difficulty:

The keyword difficulty tells you how difficult it is to rank for a particular keyword. The lesser the keyword difficulty, the higher the chances of your content being ranked on Google. However, that doesn’t mean you have to overlook high KD (keyword difficulty) pages. It’s good to prioritize easy keywords, but focusing on high-difficulty keywords is also important and backlinking is an effective way to do it.

How To Perform Keyword Research? Your Step-by-Step Guide

Here is your step-by-step guide to performing keyword research for an effective content and SEO strategy:

1. Brainstorm broad topics related to your business

Start by thinking of topics or search terms that are relevant to your business and industry. These keywords are also known as seed keywords as this is where you can build the foundation of your keyword research strategy. You can think of it by having in mind the goal of your business. Think of what you are trying to achieve, Who are you trying to reach, and what are you providing them with? Any keyword research tool that you use will ask for a seed keyword first. If your business is product or service-based, it will be easy for you to decide the seed keyword. If it’s not, you can just think of the broad category that you want to target and take it as the seed keyword. 

2. Use Keyword Research Tools to Find Relevant Keywords

There are plenty of keyword research tools available online. If you cannot find out where to start and looking for a free tool, you can start with Google keyword planner. Even Google itself can be used for keyword research. You can just type your seed keyword in Google’s search bar and see what Google suggests. These are the search terms, phrases, or questions that people actually search for on Google. For example, if we type search engine optimization on Google, we can see the many suggestions that people have searched for. 

Another way is to enter your seed keyword in the search bar and go to search results. To find more relevant keywords on Google, you can scroll down and see ‘related searches.’ Here is what it looks like. All the related searches will help you find more secondary keywords around your primary or seed keyword. 

Apart from this, you can use popular keyword research tools like SEMrush, Ahref, Google Keyword Planner, and more. These tools provide you with a long list of all the keywords along with their search volumes, keyword difficulty, traffic potential, and other metrics that you can use to prioritize keywords with high-ranking potential. 

3. Check Competitor Keywords

Looking at your competitors’ strategies will also help you in this process. You can enter your target keywords in Google’s search bar and see which websites are ranking on top. If the top-ranking sites do not resemble your business or don’t seem to be your competitors, try to search for more specific keywords related to your business. 

Once you have identified your top competitors, you can use competitor research tools or competitive intelligence tools like Ahref’s SiteExplorer. It helps you see the top-ranking pages of your competitors and the keywords for which they are ranking. You can repeat the process with a few competitors to get a list of some most relevant keywords. Some of these tools even show you sites that are relevant to the competitor website you have entered.

Additional Tips to Strengthen Your SEO Strategy with Keyword Research

• Here are a few additional tips that will help you build a more powerful SEO strategy with keyword research:

• Identify the parent topic first and start creating content around it. Decide whether you want a single page to rank for the top keywords or you want to target different keywords with different web pages.

• Use both short-tail as well as long-tail keywords in your content. While short-tail or primary keywords help you keep up with the competition, long-tail keywords improve ranking opportunities for more specific queries.

• Analyze the search intent of your audience and decide what type of content you will be creating for different keywords. Some keywords can be targeted with information content while others with product pages or landing pages. Categorize your target keywords based on this and create content accordingly. If you cannot understand the search intent of users for very basic keywords, search for those

• keywords on Google and look at what type of content you see on top-ranking pages.

• Prioritize keywords with high traffic potential and low keyword difficulty, but do not completely ignore the keywords with high difficulty. You can improve ranking opportunities for difficult keywords by building backlinks around those keywords and creating high-quality content. 

• Along with Google Keyword Planner and other keyword research tools, use Google keywords to strengthen your keyword strategy.

• Google itself acts as a keyword research tool as you can see what people are actually searching for on Google. 

Enhance Your SEO Using Advanced Keyword Strategies With MadHawks

If you still feel lost in the world of keywords and get overwhelmed with thousands of keywords that you see in keyword research tools, the SEO team of MadHawks is here to help you. With years of experience and expertise in SEO, our professionals have proper knowledge of keyword research strategies and tools. By analyzing your business objectives and the search intent of your target audience, our SEO experts can come up with the most relevant keywords for your business and help you reshape your SEO strategy for the best results. For any further information, contact us today!

FAQs

1. How do I get good at keyword research?

Ans. For good keyword research, all you need is a good understanding of your target audience, their search intent, and the strategies your competitors are using. Once you know your audience and have decided on the seed keyword, you can use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner for further research. 

2. How can I do free keyword research?

Ans. One way to do free keyword research is to use free keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner. Another way is to use Google itself. You can simply enter the topic or word that relates to your business and see what Google suggests. All these suggestions are the keywords that people actually searched for on Google. Apart from this, you can use the ‘related searches’ section of SERPs to find relevant keywords.

3. How can I maintain keyword rankings?

Ans. To maintain keyword rankings, make sure that the target keyword is there is the title, meta description, headings, and image alt texts of your web page. Also, update your content from time to time.

4. How do I target my website with keywords?

Ans. To make your website rank for particular keywords, you will have to create high-quality content around those keywords. Make sure to incorporate these keywords in prominent places on your webpage like the title tag, meta description, subheadings, image alt text, etc. 

5. How many keywords can I use for my website?

Ans. You can use any number of keywords for your website as far as the keywords are relevant. But for a particular webpage, it’s ideal to use one primary keyword and a few secondary keywords.