Table of Contents
How to do keyword research for your SEO strategy
A Beginner’s Guide to SEO Keyword Research. Here You Can Learn How To Do Keyword Research & Analysis Of Your Website Using These Helpful Tips And Tools.
Best Articles For how to find the right keywords for SEO?
Keyword research creates a list of words for which you want to rank first in search engines. You’re just planning, not doing anything. Just as an architect creates a project to ensure that the building is designed for the people who use it, researching keywords will ensure that the right people find and use your website.
Contents
- 1 How do I research keywords?
- 2 Step 1 Think
- 2.1 Create Categories
- 3 Step 2 Investigation
- 3.1 Make a list of seed words
- 3.2 Type the phrase Google
- 3.3 Investigate your competitors
- 3.4 Create a keyword list
- 4 Free tools for researching more specific keywords:
- 5 How do you use keyword research tools?
- 5.1 Why group keywords for learning vs. buying keywords?
- 5.2 How large a list of keywords should I build?
- 5.3 Should I add similar keywords to my list?
- 5.4 Should I add only the short keywords that everyone is looking for?
- 6 Conclusion
How to research keywords?
It takes 1-2 hours to complete the 2 steps below – think & research
Step 1 Think
In my ten years of experience, business owners who miss this step not only waste thousands of dollars a year trying to rank for the wrong keywords, but their website traffic never increases. Try this exercise using a pen & paper. No computer. Write the answers to these questions:
- What do I want to know?
- How would I describe what I do to someone?
- What are my brands ??
- What are the names of my products / services ??
- What do my competitors call their products / services?
- What makes my product / service different?
- What are similar services / products that are NOT competitors?
- What are my most profitable services / products?
Why do this exercise? This will help you focus on what your business is actually doing, not just the “keyword list.” This will allow you to build a list of relevant keywords later. The end result is that you spend more time on what makes you money and avoid unnecessary proud pursuits.
For example, if you sell organic honey, you want to find out about a local family business that sells raw juice that has a lot of health benefits. Not just honey No. 1 in the rankings.
Create categories
Group your answers into categories. This is not your last keyword list. In fact, don’t even focus on writing “keywords.” Just group together what you wrote. Try shortening your answers to phrases and shorter words. For example, if you have a local beekeeping farm in Alabama that sells honey, it might look like this:
- Our family: surname, surname names, our story, sustainable agriculture, local
- Our bees: Surname Bees, by breeding a better bee, we breed bees from Russia instead of It
alian bees, a natural way to breed bees, beeswax - Our dear: 100% natural pure honey, our honey is organic, unpasteurized, no colors added, no flavor added, all honey comes locally from Alabama, we offer raw honey, our honey comes from all over Alabama, so it tastes different, we don’t add never anything to our gold
- Health benefits: raw honey increases your glycogen levels, raw honey helps regulate blood sugar levels, large amounts of good bacteria such as lactobacilli
Step 2 Investigation
Next is to research and turn the words / phrases you write into so-called seed words. Just as a small seed can produce thousands of twigs, twigs, leaves, fruits, and a large strong trunk, there can be 1,000 similar keywords in one word.
Make a list of seed words
This step involves turning words / phrases that describe our business into a list of seed words. According to the example above, one of the categories was “Our dear”. We have grouped the words / phrases into this list:
- 100% natural pure honey
- our honey is organic
- color not added
- no taste added
- all honey comes from alabama
- we offer raw honey
- our honey comes from all over alabama, so it tastes different
- we never add anything to honey
The end result is to convert the list above to the keywords below:
- kallis
- natural honey
- pure honey
- organic honey
- raw honey
- kallis alabama
- mettalu
You can, of course, use your common sense to achieve this end result. As an example, it is easy to shorten the word “our honey is organic” to the seed word “organic honey”. In addition, use the following 3 suggestions to create seed words:
Type the phrase Google
In the example above, one business phrase was “100% natural pure honey”. See the screenshot above for this phrase. What words does a website ranked first on Google use? Natural honey, pure honey, raw honey. This will help you create your own seed keywords.
Investigate your competitors
In our example, Alabama has one competitor, Hewett’s Honey. See the screenshot. Note that Hewett’s Honey uses these keywords: raw, organic, pure local honey. Again, this will help you build your seed keywords very quickly.
Discover related keywords
When you search for a keyword on Google at the bottom of the page, the “Related searches” section is searched. This list will also help you find keywords. In our example, there was one phrase that described the company: “all the honey comes locally from Alabama.” Most suggested search terms use one keyword: local honey.
Quick Tip: Use a free tool called Want to quickly research related keywords in all search engines at once.
If you follow these steps, you will find 80% of your seed words; at least the most important. You didn’t need keyword research tools to accomplish this. You didn’t have to hire an SEO company. In fact, if you stopped here, you would have enough keyword research to create a very SEO-friendly website.
Create a keyword list
Now it’s time to build your keyword list. There are many free & paid tools for this. The two-step process for each tool is as follows:
- Enter a keyword (e.g. Alabama Honey)
- See what other words / phrases people are typing into Google using this keyword (i.e. where to buy pure Alabama honey?)
I recommend using Mozi’s Keyword Explorer. You can do two free searches a day or just sign up for a free 30-day trial. It shows you how many times a month people search for each keyword.
Quick Tip: Use Google’s free Keyword Planner as an alternative research tool. Just by signing up and pretending to create an ad, Google will allow you to use the tool for free.
Free tools for researching more specific keywords:
Here’s a list of the best keyword research tools:
- Get keyword ideas : Google Keyword Planner , Bing Keyword Tool , Bing Intelligence Tool , io (50% free), ubersuggest.io
- Find keywords that are already generating traffic to your site: Google Search Console (very good juicy data), Bing Webmaster Tools
- Related keywords: Wish , Google correlation (enter individual words)
- Questions people write to Google: AnswerAudience (awesome tool)
- Seasonal keyword trends: Google Trends
Continuing the list, here are some more advanced paid tools:
- Get keyword ideas : Mozi Keyword Explorer (30-day trial), SEMRush (free 14-day trial), WordTracker (7-day free trial), LongTailPro (free 7-day trial), Ahrefs Keyword Explorer (free 14-day trial) , kwfinder (cheaper alternative with free version), Ferzy (limited free version also available)
- Research competitors : SpyFu (30-day money back guarantee)
- Explorer article titles: BuzzSumo (14-day trial)
How do you use keyword research tools ??
Let’s say you want to know which search terms people type into Google that contain the words ” Alabama darling . Entering this keyword into your Keyword Research Tool will show you more than 1,000 related keywords that people type into Google and how many times they search for it. Now you can really build a large keyword list of all the search terms related to your business (i.e. every internal word).
I like to start grouping keywords related to my business. For example:
- Learning keywords: alabama honey prices, alabama honeybees, pure alabama honey, local alabama honey, alabama bee farms, alabama beekeepers directory, alabama honeybee law, Birmingham local honey, pure alabama honey odenville
- Keywords (honey): buy organic honey alabama, organic honey suppliers, alabama honey producers, where to buy alabama honey, bulk honey for sale alabama, where to buy pure alabama honey, local honey huntsville al, where to buy local honey Birmingham al, local honey yearlyden alabama
- Buying Keywords (Bees): Alabama bees for sale
Why group keywords for learning vs. buying keywords?
When someone searches for ‘alabama male prices,’ they want information. They are not ready to buy yet. Why is this important? If you plan each page of your website, you want to use keywords to buy keywords from other keyword sales pages to buy keywords; like in a blog post. This is a very important concept if you want to be ranked first and actually sell your product / service.
For example, you can write a blog post about “2017. honey prices in Alabama “. In this blog post, you answer their question by showing them all the honey prices in Alabama; including your business with just the cheapest price in Alabama.
How large a list of keywords should I build?
Include all keywords related to your business. In principle, a keyword list can be unrestricted. However, if you are a small business or a local business, this list usually includes 50-200 keywords.
Should I add similar keywords to my list?
I do not. For example, do you need to add “bees for sale alabama” and “bees for sale in the sub-family”. No. Why? It doesn’t matter. Google usually understands the same phrases. If you rank for one keyword, it’s likely for another.
Quick tip: Keywords are important, but don’t forget to write your page content for people, not search engines.
Should I add only the short keywords that everyone is looking for?
No. Your list should include short, medium, and long keywords. Short keywords are 1-3 words long. Long (marketers call them long tail keywords) are usually older than 5 years. Why? First, short keywords are very difficult to rank, long tail keywords are much easier to rank on the first page of Google. Secondly, people are not just looking for the word ‘local honey’. See the picture below of what more people are looking for when you type the word “local honey”.
In fact, it is said that 70% of searches are long tail keywords according to SEOMOZ . Doesn’t that just make sense? I recently bought a used car. Volkswagen Polo. I never wrote to Google, “buy a used Volkswagen Polo.” But I entered 100 questions I had about supermini cars.
The idea? No matter what you sell, you want to have a website that answers hundreds of questions people ask about your product / service. You also want to rank for the keywords that people enter when they’re ready to make a purchase. Usually, you can’t compile a ranking for competing “keyword purchases” unless you count hundreds of “keyword learning”.
So the example of our local beekeeping. When a company researches a keyword, the keyword phrase ‘the difference between organic honey and pure honey’ is as important as ‘organic honey’ or ‘pure honey’.
Conclusion
Lastly, creating keywords for your website or blog isn’t very difficult. When you stop and think first, it only takes a few hours. If you remember one point in this article, you should stop and think before researching keywords. Planning is the key word here.