The Ultimate Guide To SEO Keywords Research- Everything You Need To Know About Keyword Research.

Table of Contents

Introduction to keyword research in SEO.

Keyword research is the most crucial part of your SEO campaign. Keyword research is the foundation stone of your whole SEO campaign. It means finding those keyword phrases or search terms that people use on search engines like Google, to find out the services, products, or information they are looking for. 

Fact: Do you know that google processes 8.5 Billion searches per day?

So in this article, you are going to learn everything from defining keywords to a robust keyword research strategy step by step.

What is a keyword or search phrase, or search term?

Keyword research is part of the on-page SEO, Keywords, key phrases, and search terms all refer to one thing and that is the word or group of words that people search on google or other popular search engines like Bing and Yahoo. So in SEO, we call those words as.

1. keywords
2. Keyphrases
3. Search terms
4. Search phrases.

what is an example of a keyword search?

Well, it is very easy to understand. For example, if you search for 

“ How to bake a cake at home” on google. This is called a keyword search.

Now, google counts its search volume on monthly basis, in other words, google tracks this keyword every time it is searched on google by users, and this is how google shows us the monthly volume for a keyword in the google keyword planner. 

What is keyword research and keyword analysis in SEO?

So now you know what is a keyword? And it’s important in SEO, it is time to understand what does keyword research really mean in SEO?

Keyword research is the process of finding, analyzing, and grouping the keywords that your potential audience search for on google. 

In keyword research, we primarily look at some important SEO elements like 

1. How often a particular keyword is searched?
2. How competitive a keyword is?
3. What kind of business value can a particular keyword give?
4. How relevant the keyword is to my business.

To identify all these elements, you will need to use some SEO KEYWORDS RESEARCH TOOLs, which I will go over later in this article. By now, you know what keyword research in SEO is.

Why is keyword research important in SEO?

As I discussed earlier in this article, keyword research is the foundation stone of your SEO campaign. All of your SEO efforts will be useless if you don’t select the right keywords to optimize your website. 

That being said, selecting and targeting the right keywords for your content will give your website the opportunity to rank well in the SERPs, and a high ranking means high organic traffic to your website. 

Keywords research is also important because you want your website to show up whenever a keyword is searched by your potential audience, right? So your website can only appear in the search results if a keyword is matched with the content on your webpage. 

I know there are several ranking factors, but using a target keyword in the content of your webpage, in the headers and meta tiles of it gives a strong signal to search engines about the content on your webpage. And thus it creates relevance and this is how your webpage gets a chance to appear against your target keywords in the SERPs.

What is keyword research and its types?

Keyword research is the practice of finding the keywords that your potential audience search on google, which you then use on your website and optimize different pages of your website for different target keywords to better match the content on your webpage with what is being searched on google.

Keywords Types:

There are basically three kinds of keywords you should know before starting the keyword research for your website. 

1. Head keyword 
2. Body keywords
3. Longtail keyword. 

What are head keywords?

Head keywords are one-word keywords that are broad in meaning and have high search volume and high SEO difficult scores. But these keywords have unclear intent. You can use these kinds of keywords in the title and H1 tags on your webpage. 

Example: SEO

What are Body keywords?

Body keywords are two to three keywords that also have broad meaning, high search volume, and high SEO difficulty score, but they have a clear intent to some extent. 

Example: SEO Guide

What are long-tail keywords?

Long tails keywords are three to five-word keywords that have a very clear search intent, low search volume, and are very easy to rank on.

Example: How to learn SEO? What is the process of keyword research?

Long-tail keywords are my favorite when it comes to quick SEO wins because they are very easy to rank on, and have very clear search intent, which ultimately gives me more business.

What is the keywords research process or how to do keyword research?

In this section of the keywords research guide, I am going to show you exactly where you need to start your keyword research. As there are several ways to find out the keywords you need to rank for, these are proven ways of getting started with keyword research for your website.

Brain Storming 

Brainstorming is a good starting point for your keyword research process. Here is how you can do it. 

First, know your business. What products or services are you providing? In my case, it may be 

1. SEO
2. SEO CONSULTANT
3. SEO AGENCY.

Second, fill in your customers’ shoes. Just think about what would you search for if you were looking for the same services or products. I would search this way.

1. Best SEO agency in my (city)
2. SEO consultant near me
3. Hire an SEO agency for my business.

Doing this process, you will be good to come up with a big list of seed keywords which you then use to find out other related keywords using some keyword research tools which we will discuss later in this guide. 

Explore Quora To See what is being searched regarding your niche.

Quora is a platform where people extensively search questions nearly about anything. You simply search for a keyword that is related to your business and you will see several other related terms.

Use keyword research tools to find keywords.

I was a big fan of free google keyword research tools when I just started my SEO career. as I did not have enough budget to buy paid tools, I would definitely recommend you too to rely on these free tools to research your keywords. They are the GOOGLE KEYWORD PLANNER and GOOGLE TRENDS.

You can use these tools to research the keywords for your business and sure they cost you nothing. So you can use them for free. 

What to look for in keyword research?

This is the big question in keyword research, but don’t worry, I will tell you exactly what you need to look for in keyword research. After all, you are doing keywords for a purpose and that is to gain more organic traffic and eventually gain more business. So here is a small list of elements that you should monitor.

1. The competition
2. The monthly volume 
3. The keyword difficulty
4. The relevancy 
5. The intent 
6. The trend.

• Competition 

Doing keyword research it is paramount to keep your competitors in mind, let your competitors work for you but not compete with you. 

That said, you can take a quick look at your competitors to see how and what keywords they are ranking for. Doing this will give you an overview of how your content should be structured or make it better than your competitors. 

• Monthly search volume

Search volume refers to the number of times a keyword is searched on google each month.

You must pay special attention to this part of keyword research, as you may end up getting no traffic if you target a keyword with zero monthly search volume. 

I would say target keywords that have minimum traffic of 50 to 100 searches each month. Of course, you can target keywords with huge monthly searches, but if you are just getting started with SEO, then targeting keywords with low search volume can boost your website ranking quickly. 

• Keyword Difficulty 

A keyword difficulty determines how hard is to rank for a specific keyword in the SERPs. Now to determine the keyword difficulty, you will need to make use of some SEO PAID tools, like Ubersuggest, and SEMrush. 

PRO TIP: Target keywords that have a difficulty score below 50.

• The keyword relevancy

When you do the keyword research for your website, make sure you are targeting the keywords which are highly relevant to your business core goals, 

Getting ranked on irrelevant keywords may not give you the business you hope for. 

• Understand The Keyword intent.

Every key phrase has an intent behind it. So you must be smart enough to uncover the intent for every keyword.

For example: If I search for the keyword “How to learn SEO” what do I mean by this search term? 

Well, it is obvious I want to learn SEO and I am looking for ways to learn it online. I am looking for courses at the moment to learn. Etc. 

So, in the same way, every keyword comes with intent. So there are four kinds of intents associated with keywords. 

1. Informational intent: Looking for information 
2. navigation intent: Looking for specific websites and webpages.
3. Transactional Intent: Looking to make a purchase
4. Commercial Intent: Looking to make a purchase or inquire about a product 

So when you understand the keyword intent, you will be able to allot keywords to specific pages on your website. For better understanding, read my article on UNDERSTANDING THE KEYWORD INTENT. 

The Best Free Keyword research tools

There are several free and paid keywords research tools out there,  if you simply search for “ Keyword research tools” 

So the keyword research tools I would recommend you are 

1. Use Google Keyword Planner

This is a keyword research tool, available in the google ads account, it is primarily used for keyword research for google paid ads or PPC campaigns. But it also gives you a decent amount of data that you can use for SEO purposes too. 

2) Use Wordstream free keyword tool

This is one of my favorite Keyword research tools as it gives you amazing data for any keyword. The cool part is that it allows you to filter keywords, by industry, and country. It is just like google keyword planner 

3) Use the keyword tool dominator 

This is an awesome keyword research tool that I use from time to time, especially whenever I  do keyword research for specific platforms like Amazon, eBay, Being, etc.

So it means it allows you to search keywords for different platforms out there like 

Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Walmart, and YouTube. So go ahead, sign up for free and enjoy the free keyword research tool.

 

how to find what keywords a website is ranking for?

Well, it is pretty easy. You simply need to install a free chrome extension called Ubersuggest- SEO and keyword discovery.

Once you have installed it, then simply visit the website for which you want to discover the keywords, and it will show you a decent amount of SEO data, like DOMAIN OVERVIEW, KEYWORDS BY TRAFFIC, BACKLINKS, and an SEO analyzer. 

Just look at this screenshot from our SEO CLIENT WEBSITE.

 

The Conclusion.

In this article, I have tried to teach you everything regarding SEO Keywords research, and now you understand keywords research is the most crucial part of your SEO campaign, without a proper SEO keywords research, your SEO campaign may not bring your the results you hope for. 

So it is very important to take this step intelligently just to make sure you are not targeting the wrong keywords. If you want my SEO TEAM to increase your website organic traffic and sales, then make sure to get in touch with us today!