Keyword research is one of the major pillars of SEO, if not, the most important factor, in ranking a website. If you’re a beginner, KW research is the ONLY thing you need to focus on before you can even think about on-page optimization or backlinks, etc. Because without proper topic and direction, you would be working tirelessly for nothing.
If you want to rank any site, this would be the first bridge to cross. Now, since I got many requests of helping some of you with finding the right keywords, I figured that I should write down how to get this task completed without making much mess.
So, what I’ll do is, I’ll put down some of the best ways you can do keyword research. I will try to be very straightforward and simple. Many successful figures in SEO industry follow this strategy and since we already have the wheel, why bother to invent it again, right?
Alright, without spending any more time, let us get to it. One assumption that I’m making here, though, is that you will need to have some paid tools for an efficient keyword research. These paid tools have proved their worth time and again, in my personal experience and as far as I can tell in my circle of colleagues who are making six figures with SEO. With this plan, all you have to do is just follow the following steps that I will be discussing below.
- Select a niche
- Do a Google search for a basic or broad keyword that comes up in your mind
Notice how I see a sub-niche right there? Now, what I do is, take that sub-niche and do a google search again and see what I find.
Now you see where you’re going, right? just like that find a niche, and get to a sub-niche until you find some of the key metrics that I will be discussing in this post, towards the end.
Anyway, there are a few ways to get keyword suggestions.
Google Adwords Keywords Planner Tool:
Just do a basic google search for this term and open up the first thing that comes up in the search result, and sign into the Google Adwords (Google Account). Now it may ask you to purchase ads but here’s a little secret I use to bypass the complete account setup for AdWords and you can just get through to our useful little tool!
- Here’s the trick that you can use to get the new AdWords account to bypass the Billing info setup and you don’t have to give your card numbers etc. Click here
Keyword Research using Google AdWord Keyword Planner Tools:
Click on Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category.
So, once you enter your keyword there, and press Get Ideas, you will see a screen that shows two tabs: Ad group ideas and Keyword Ideas. Click on the keyword ideas, you can see the average searches per month for that keyword. You can ignore the suggested bid, as that concerns businesses that are trying to advertise on Google or to find out how much a CPC value is for that particular keyword.
See where I’m going with this? If you scroll down the page, you will see many related keywords. Now, we have a bunch of more keywords to work with.
Google Suggest /AutoComplete:
This was mentioned above as well, is also an easy way to find related keywords for our Keyword research. Comes to rescue when you’re really stuck with finding more alternative keywords.
Google Suggest:
As you can see below, the arrows indicate the place where you can find even more related keywords for your search.
You can use other tools like Long Tail Pro, SEMRush, Oodlesuggest, to find more keywords.
Here are a few tips that might come in handy during your SEO endeavor:
- Look for a good long tail keyword with decent average searches per month
- Do a google search for those keywords, check out the first 3 or 5 results for a robust competition analysis
- Copy the URL in SEMRush domain research tool
- Find out what keywords its ranking for
- Get a list of all the keywords (organic keywords)
- Paste the URL in Moz, Majestic, and ahrefs.com for analyzing how much off-page and on-page SEO your competition is doing. By doing this, you set the standard to beat to rank first in Google.
- Shortlist some of the keywords and put them all in Long Tail Pro SEO keyword research tool
- Calculate the KC (keyword competitiveness) from within the tool.
- Shortlist ALL the keywords that are 30 or less than 30 KC value. This is the key in getting easy rankings.
- Group all the shortlisted keywords that seem acceptable. Create articles based on the groups and rank your articles way easier!
So, that was keyword research done effectively. If you enjoyed reading this and this helped you, then you should check out my other posts related to On-page or off-page SEO.
See ya!