How To Do Keyword Research For SEO: A Beginners Guide

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There is no wonder that content marketers are spending so much time, money and resources on content marketing. But those content won’t help if you don’t target keywords in it. 

To boost your organic traffic and to get content marketing ROI you should focus on SEO keywords. You should do keyword research, understand them and use them in your website content.  

 

What Is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is a process of identifying the phrases which are used on search engines when people are looking for any information. It includes both the search volume and competitiveness of the term. 

Keyword research is the first in SEO. Before you write content for your website, you should know the terms which are looking at by the audience. So you should find the SEO keywords and research them. After analyzing them you should target keywords in your content. 

Keywords can contain multiple words. We use the word “keyword” all the time, but this would not be necessary to mean it’s only one word. Usually, keywords contain multiple words. 

Types Of Keywords

There are many different kinds of keywords in search engine optimizations. Among them, the most common are discussed below. 

1. Broad Match Keywords

Broad match keywords enable you to reach the widest audience. With the broad nature of these keywords, they are searched by a large number of people. Broad match keywords are a great way to drive lots of clicks for your site. 

Most people are not specific when they are using search engines to get any information. So they end up with broad match keywords. It will provide them a wide range of results. 

The good thing about these keywords is that the search engines also look for relevant variations of the phrases. Similar phrases or misspelling phrases are lead to the same results. Hence it will enable you to target a large number of searches.     

When you are using broad match keywords, identifying the best long-tail keywords became easy. Thus you can drive great traffic to your website.   

2. Exact Match Keywords

Exact match keywords are the contrary opposite of broad match keywords. As the name suggests, these keywords are based on the exact search queries. To direct users to your website, the search query has to match the keyword exactly. 

This makes this the most difficult keyword match to conquer. However, traffic generated from the exact match keyword is easier to convert. The probability of exact match keywords is low. So the traffic you get for your website is lower than the other types of keyword match.

3. Phrase Match Keywords

Phrase match keyword is in between broad match and exact match keywords. This keyword is more focused than the broad match and less focus than exact match. Phrase match keywords provide great flexibility to drive visitors for your site.

With phrase match keyword, you don’t have to rely on an exact match. As well as you can also benefit from a wide audience with a broader keyword. Though traffic you would generate would be lower than broad match keywords and higher than exact match keywords. 

How To Find The Best SEO Keywords

To find the best SEO keywords there are several steps you need to take care of. Follow this step by step guide to perform proper keyword research.

1. Study Your Niche 

Before doing keyword analysis for your page, do deep diving in your niche and learn more about it. It can give various ideas and angles for your SEO strategy. 

To study your niche, talk with your existing customers. Find out the terms which they use to describe your product, services or company. Try to think from your potential customer perspective. You can also involved with online communities. Read the discussion, forums and engage on social media network.

2. Establish Your Goals

Anything would be started with defining the end goal. Ask important questions like who are you? what is your company about? What makes you special? What promise do you make on your site?

Once you answer these questions you have to define your brand mission. As do you have sales target by any certain date or you just want to increase the number of subscribers.

Defining goals will provide a direction to your SEO strategy or plan. Write down your goals and document them. This will give a framework and direction to your content marketing.

3. Make a List of Relevant Topics

Based on your brand and goals break it down a smaller topic bucket. Make a list of related topics of your brand which you want to rank to search engines. 

Think about what types of topics will target your potential customers on the search engine. Later on, these topic buckets are broken into your targeted keywords.  

4. Make a List of Seed Keywords

As you have broken down your main category into different buckets of sub-topic, you can prepare a list of seed keywords. These once should be related to your topic. More importantly, these would be used by your target audience on search engines.        

Seed or focus keywords are important as they became the foundation of your keyword research. If you are wondering how to define seed keyword, then it is a way easier. All you have to do is describe your offering and think how other people search for it on search engines.

5. Use Keyword Research Tools

After identifying goals, topics and seed keywords, now it’s time to use keyword research tools. It avoids you getting trap down the keywords. It helps you to get a wider perspective of your SEO strategy. 

There are many keyword research tools are available but here are some of the best to get you started. These tools can give you information like keyword search volumes, ranking difficulty, keyword value, competition and more. 

1. Google AdWords Keyword Planner

Google AdWords Keyword Planner evaluate keywords and gives monthly global and local search volumes. As well as you can also find competition levels and estimated cost per click. To get ideas login and go to Tools >> Keyword planner. After that choose one of the options under Find new keywords and search volume. 

2. Ahref

Ahref is a complete package to identify keyword volume, keyword difficulty, SEO and content. 

3. Answer The Public

Answer The Public helps you to find questions, prepositions, comparisons and related searches. So you can target keywords which provide answers. 

4. SEMrush

SEMrush helps to find related keywords to your main search term. The paid tool of SEMrush has many other options. However, you can try free keyword research on this and get ideas.   

5. Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere is a free add-on for google chrome and firefox. You can add the extension and get keyword search volume, CPC and competition data for any region. 

6. Identify Long-tail Keywords

Generally, seed keywords are shorter search terms. They are closely related to your brand’s topic and category. On the other hand, long-tail keywords are more descriptive. Matching your audience’s search intent with long-tail keywords are far easier.  

Usually, long-tail keywords get fewer clicks, but as they are focused on a specific topic they get a higher conversion rate. For example, if your site has content about graphics t-shirts then targeting “best graphics t-shirts for women” or any other related search intent are more useful.  

7. Learn About Your Competitors

Doing keyword analysis is not only enough. You should also aware of what your competitors are doing. The better you understand your keywords, content, and niche, the better your SEO will be.  

Understanding the competitiveness of different keywords will help you to identify search terms that might be difficult to rank. Most importantly, you will be able to find keyword opportunity gaps. These opportunities occur when your related keywords have low to medium competition level.

To Find keyword opportunities, you can do a keyword search on your competitors. Also, there are many keyword research tools available with their paid versions who provide you complete competitor analysis.   

Conclusion 

Keyword research can be a tedious and time-consuming task. But it will pay off very well in the long run. Keep these steps in mind and do your keyword analysis to kick-start your business.