The goal of this article is to make keyword research easy and accessible. There are lots of articles that dive deep into using Google tools for keyword research, and advanced keyword research techniques — this is not one of them.
This article goes back to basics to elaborate on six central pillars of keyword research, including:
The idea is to have extremely targeted keyword phrases that have a high search volume and low competition mix. In the most basic terms, this means — in a perfect world — your keyword phrases describes your content accurately, a lot of people are searching for the exact phrase, and there aren’t a lot of authoritative competitors who are also optimizing for that exact phrase.
Open a landing page on your website. Describe what it offers in three to five words.
If you are able to think of not one, but several dozen different three- to five-word combinations that work equally well to describe your landing page and are not sure which one is the best choice, you’re not alone.
1) Getting started with a brainstorm list
Start
your keyword research process with one of these lists. Don’t set any
limitations at this point. Think about how your consumers would ask for
your products, services, and content in search queries. What kind of
stems, like “How to” or “Where can I,” are appropriate?2) Acknowledging that you need a keyword research tool
In your keyword research process you’re going to analyze your brainstorm list of theoretical keyword phrases to determine which have the right mix of demand, attainability, and relevance to earn top SERP results.
3) Refining your list using suggested keyword phrases from an analysis tool
Nearly every keyword research tool will return suggested keyword phrases that are similar to your original phrase request. As mentioned, in the Google Keyword Planner these are called Keyword ideas. Since the first priority of the Keyword Planner is to support Google ads, the tool will return your results organized into two tabs: Ad group ideas, and Keyword ideas. Ad group ideas will automatically load first. To see a full list of keyword ideas organized by monthly average searches, click on the Keywords ideas tab.
4) Verifying keyword phrase relevanceWhen you start looking at keyword suggestions it can be easy to fall into a high-volume drunken haze and forget that relevance means directly descriptive of your content or product — not loosely related to the idea of the content or the general needs of the target demographic.
5) Looking at search volume to determine consumer demand
Looking at the Average Monthly Searches of a keyword phrase will tell you how many times per month an exact keyword phrase was entered into a Google search. Some tools like the Google Keyword Planner will only tell you how many times the term was searched in Google; other tools like the SEOToolSet will tell you how many times the term was searched in Google, Yahoo! and Bing.
6) Analyzing the Keywords
Analyzing the competitive space to make sure you and the searcher think the keywords mean the same things, and to decide if the space is too competitive.
Analyzing the competitive space to make sure you and the searcher think the keywords mean the same things, and to decide if the space is too competitive.
