Conducting keyword research is the #1 step to getting more traffic from search engines. Most beginners struggle to increase their search traffic because they write blog posts without doing proper keyword research whatsoever. If you are one among them, stop doing it right now and start spending more time on finding the right keywords that boost your organic traffic. Finding keywords is never an easy task even for SEO experts! If you are a beginner to search engine optimization, doing keyword research is almost a nightmare. Almost every blogger on earth is aiming to find the legitimate ways to increase their search engine traffic after seeing Google latest updates like Penguin and Panda. We all now know that we can’t escape these algorithms without having great content and right kind of keywords on our web pages. Note: If you are looking for ONLY one tool to boost your website traffic and spy on your competitors, I strongly recommend Semrush. It not only helped me to gain 15% more search traffic within 30 days but it is also one of the most recommended SEO tools by SEO experts (you can also add a link to 40 seo experts post). You can read more about it here. SEO is a term that is a nightmare for most bloggers and web master. After all, everyone wants to boost their search traffic no matter what. The competition is really high and it becomes almost impossible to rank high in Google search results without doing proper keyword research. If you don’t use the right keywords on your posts, pages, or videos you won’t see any traffic growth on your blog posts. This is why you should consider spending quality time and energy on finding the perfect keywords for your websites. Keyword research process starts by making your blog or website SEO friendly (by choosing the right keywords allover your site, meta description and title tags). Don’t spend time on ranking for irrelevant keywords because you might get penalized by Google search results sooner or later. Although its possible to recover from Google updates but its a better move if you play the SEO game safely.
What is Keyword Research and why is it Important?
First things first. Let’s first define the term “keyword research”. Finding popular search terms and using them on your web pages to improve your site traffic is how I define the term keyword research. It helps increase your organic traffic if you’re focused on finding the “right keywords” for your websites. If you fail to find profitable keywords, you will fail to drive targeted traffic to your websites. If you don’t get any search traffic, you will eventually fail to make money from your blogs. Keyword research is directly proportional to the money you make. It’s as simple as that! Keyword research includes few important factors:
Keyword competition: It shows us how difficult it will be for few keywords to rank on search results. The high competition it is the more difficulty it would be to rank for any keyword. Try to focus on <1000 monthly average searches if you want to rank high in Google search results. Keyword density: The number of times your keyword appears in your web pages, posts or videos is simply called as keyword density. Google considers it a spam if you use the same keywords again and again. So try to make sure to keep your keyword density between 1 to 2% to naturally rank for your keywords.As a rule of thumb, you can use your primary keywords for every 200 words. It’s even better to use the “relevant keywords” for your primary keyword ideas to get more traffic from Google search results. Long tail keywords: Long tail keywords are those that are generally more specific and include 2 to 3 words. We’ll be talking more about long tail keywords in this article.
Why is keyword research so important? It is what defines the volume and kind of traffic you get from search engines. It doesn’t matter for which keyword item you want to rank for, you need to do a proper keyword research analysis to bring right kind of visitors to your blog posts.
How to do keyword research like a pro in 2023
Search engine optimization once you knew is dead and no longer exists. You now have to follow a specific set of rules to outperform your competitors in search results for your desired keywords. Without much ado let’s jump into the details on how to conduct advanced keyword research in 2023. Here’s the 3 step formula I follow to find profitable keywords for my blog posts. Let’s now go into the details of the 3 step formula to do a proper keyword research. Step 1: Brainstorming keyword ideas Come up relevant keyword ideas that are very targeted to your niche. Here’s the first rule of SEO: always drive targeted visitors to your web pages. You first need to get keyword suggestion before thinking to growing your organic traffic. The first step to increase your search traffic is keyword research. Finding profitable keywords that improve your overall search engine rankings. Step 2: Evaluating keywords Once you have a list of keywords for your upcoming posts, you can then start evaluating them to analyze the competition of your keywords. It’s always better to target keywords with less competition especially when your website is new. Step 3: Expanding selected keywords Once you evaluated the keyword competition, expand your desired keywords in long tail keywords. Before doing keyword research, make sure to use long tail keywords. Here’s what I mean. Football : Short tail keyword Football players : Medium tail keyword Football players in India : Long tail keyword I hope you got my point, so next time when you are doing keyword research make sure to enter long tail keywords to increase your organic traffic. Also here’s why long tail keywords tend to give you more organic traffic. See how your website’s click through rate might increase with the use of long tail keywords? That’s the reason why start using “long tail keywords” while performing your keyword research.
4 Less-Known Keyword Research Tips In 2023
So how can you find what questions your target audience are looking for? One best way is to use Quora, it’s the best Q&A platform where millions of people around the world hangout online to ask questions and get quality answers. When you enter a question like “what are the best stocks to buy” on Quora, not only it shows you highly useful answers from experts but also it shows you related questions at the sidebar which you can see from the above image. As you can see above, Google is showing “People also ask” questions for the example keyword “keyword stuffing”. When you click on any one of them, Google gives you even more list of questions that people ask in search. All this data can be so much helpful for in coming up with LSI keyword ideas along with long tail keyword phrases to improve your blog’s organic traffic. 2. Use Google trends Did you know that you can use Google trends to perform keyword research? Yes, Google trends is one of the underrated tools which can offer you great insights about any topic you want to cover. Here’s how it works; From the above illustration, you can notice that, nutrition has a lot more interest over time in Google when compared to SEO. You can also add more topics to compare with to find out the audience interest. Go to Google Trends and do the following simple steps to perform keyword research.
Enter a search term and search Then, enter a search term in the “+ Add Comparison” search box In the right side of the first search term box, click More Change filters Select a time period or enter a custom time range and click OK to continue
That’s it! It will show you all the data that you need according to your search. Recommended: How to use Google Trends to Make Money in 2023 3. Sneak into your competitors sites One of the fastest ways to find high performing keywords is to do competitor analysis. You should always have a list of 10 to 15 top blogs in your industry so you can use these sites to get a ton of blog post ideas along with keyword ideas. Make sure to find a list of top traffic generating blog posts along with the posts that are generating most profits to your competitor sites. That way you can also consider creating 10x better content around the same topics to be able to generate more search traffic and sales. We highly recommend you to give a try to tools like Semrush or Ahrefs for doing competitor research as both the tools help you easily find;
Traffic generating blog posts Profit generating blog posts and keyword ideas
Have a look at the below screenshot to see how competitor analysis works on Semrush. As you can see above, Semrush gives you a list of all the main organic competitors when you enter any URL in the dashboard and you can easily find a list of common keywords, search engine keywords along with a list of competitor websites. 4. Evaluate the keywords The best way to find profitable keywords is to evaluate their cost and CPC value. Although there are many tools to find CPC value of a keyword but we highly recommend you to try Semrush as it gives a ton of information which include the following.
Keyword: These are the keywords that are ranked for a specific page on search engines like Google Pos: The keyword position in the (specific) search engine. In this example i already selected Google US default database but you can change it to other locations and search engines. Volume: This is the number of exact match queries for that keyword CPC: Average cost per click for the keyword (MOST IMPORTANT when evaluating a keyword profitability) URL: URL to which keyword is driving traffic Com: It shows the competition of advertisers for that keyword. A lower number means that there is little competition and a Higher means greater competition for that term. Results: This is the number of search engine results Trend: You need to make sure that the traffic trend for that keyword is not dying and the column pulls up the search tend for that keyword over the Last 12 Months
Here’s the free trial of Semrush (worth $119.95)
Top 5 Keyword Research Tools
1. Semrush
If I had to pick only one SEO tool, I’d go for Semrush. Note that, I’m a long time happy user of Semrush tool but it helped me increase my search traffic by 15% in just 30 days. Semrush is a lot more than keyword research tool but I’m not going to extensively talk about its other features because we’re going to talk more about how it will help you find the most profitable keywords for any niche. In case if you are wondering what Semrush is all about, I’ll explain you briefly. If you want to spy on your competitors best performing keywords and know their BEST link building strategies, Semrush is for you. You may ask, “why should I focus on my competitors?” The reason is simple – if you want to get the top search results for any keyword you are targeting, you should first know who are currently ranking at the top of Google. Once you know their best keywords that are generating more traffic and incoming links they are getting, it becomes easy for you to outrank them. This is where Semrush comes into place. It allows you spy and crush your competitors no matter what niche you are in. Using Semrush to do advanced keyword research I know majority of the bloggers use Google’s Keyword Planner (which is a free tool access to anyone) but the only problem with it is even though if you find low competitive keywords, there’s a lot of competition for them because everyone else is also using the same tool. To get rid of this problem and really uncover the hidden keywords that help you increase your website traffic, you need to find few more ways. I highly recommend you to give a try to Semrush which is a fantastic tool that gives you details of search volume, number of competing pages, average cost per click, related keywords and a lot more details. It is surely 100% better than Keyword Planner. Here’s how to use it to do better keyword research. For instance, if I want to rank for the keyword “WordPress tutorial”, here’s how I can use Semrush to find really good keywords that actually help me increase traffic. In the above screenshot, you will notice that Semrush giving you the monthly search visits for the keyword you enter. You can also pick any country’s database that your are targeting. In the same page, Semrush also provides you a list of all the relevant keyword ideas for your main keyword. See the below screenshot. See that! Instead of trying to rank for your targeted keyword “WordPress tutorials” that has approx. 10,000 monthly search volume, by focusing on the keyword “WordPress tutorial” (with 880 monthly visits), you are bound to get more search traffic. That’s how you should do keyword research. Click here to try Semrush for 30 days for free worth $119.95 I’ve written a lot of helpful posts on Semrush, you can check them here. Semrush Review With Screenshots[Case Study] How I Increased My Blog Traffic by 15% In 30 Days Make sure to read any of the above articles and all of them are exclusively written for beginners who want to grow their website search traffic. Browse More:
Semrush Coupon Code 2023 + FREE eBook! Best Semrush Alternatives for 2023
2. Long Tail Pro
Content is king they say. It’s really true, but how you ever wondered why your blog is not getting any search traffic even though if you are posting quality stuff? It might be because you are not using long tail keywords in your content. If you are wondering what they are, here’s a simple example.
Short tail keyword: “cars” (highly competitive keyword and almost impossible to rank higher) Normal keyword: “best sedan cars” (still competitive to rank for this keyword) Long tail keyword: “best sedan cars in India” (Now, guess what? You can rank for the keyword by posting quality stuff around it)
Anyone (even if you have a new blog) can rank higher in the search results by using “long tail keywords”. But the only problem is how can you find them without hiring a SEO expert who charges you thousands of dollars? Long Tail Pro has basically two versions, one is the basic tool (this is enough for most bloggers) and the other is Long Tail Platinum (advanced version that allows you to control over keyword research campaigns). You can get Long Tail Pro for just $27/month How to use Long Tail Pro keyword research tool to find keywords? Here’s the simple tutorial. Step 1: After downloading the Long Tail Pro tool, to find the better keywords, you need to first start a new project by clicking the “+” in the top left corner. Then simply name your project and select the option you would like from the new project window Step 2: Now, add the seed keywords. It will give you the result with the details including “local searches”, and Avg CPC. Choose the best keyword that has low competition and better “Avg KC” (Keyword Competitiveness) Step 3: Focus mostly on finding long tail keywords with 3 or more words for better results (note: make sure to choose keywords that are under KC 40) Although there are many but the best use of this tool is it allows you to find out the long tail keywords that can be generated from a seed keyword or phrase. This is extremely useful if you’re stuck somewhere and don’t know what long tail keywords to use in your content creation. Just in case, if you are wondering what this tool offers, here are few benefits of using it.
Keyword Research (find up to 800 keywords per seed keyword quickly) Competitor Analysis (quickly analyse the top 10 results for every keyword you enter) Pay-Per-Click Analysis (find out what competitors are willing to pay for their PPC ads) Real-Time Filtering Exact Match Domain Check (good for SEO!) Rank Checker (automatically monitor domain ranking factors) Unlimited keyword searches and results (that’s what make this tool incredible)
Get Long Tail Pro for $27/month Read: Semrush vs Long Tail Pro Review: Which is Best Keyword Research Tool?
3. KeywordTool.io: best free alternative to Google’s Keyword Planner
The only bad thing about using Google’s Keyword planner is almost every other blogger in your industry is already using it. Even if you find less competitive keywords, they are still used by most of other bloggers in your niche, that again leads to more competition and it’s hard to rank higher. This is where KeywordTool.io comes into rescue, it is the BEST alternative to keyword planner tool. It not only gives you the keyword ideas that are not provided by Keyword Planner but it also helps you easily optimize your posts with the long tail keyword phrases.
How to use keywordtool.io for keyword research?
Step 1: Go to KeywordTool.io and enter your favourite keywords (it’s free!) Step 2: Now, pick the long tail keywords with more than 3 words. You can use all of them in your blog posts or web pages to rank higher! (note: you can use tools like Semrush to find the competition and monthly searches for the keywords you find on this tool). For instance, let’s say you want to know the monthly searches for the keyword “best seo tools free”, here’s the search result from Semrush. Okay wait.. but what about Google Keyword planner? Here are few more reasons why Google Keyword Planner is not the right option for you.
It won’t help you search multiple keywords at once No real time filtering (filtering keywords as you type) No in-depth competitor analysis No checking of page or domain authority and many more
4. Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is the SEO tool managed by the expert himself Neil Patel. Ubersuggest is a free keyword research tool which you can use to easily come up with a ton of useful keyword ideas to get more traffic and sales. Here’s how it looks like; As you can see above, immediately after entering any keyword of your choice (ex: marketing), Ubersuggest gives you a ton of keyword ideas along with the following metrics.
Trend Search volume CPD value Paid difficulty and SEO difficulty
You can also click on the other tab “Related” to find a list of highly relevant keyword phrases for your target keyword. Read: Ubersuggest vs Semrush: Which SEO Tool Is Worth Every Penny? Read: BEST Ubersuggest Alternatives for 2023
5. KW Finder
KW Finder is one of the best keyword tools if you’re looking for accurate keyword data. Unlike other premium SEO tools like Semrush, Ahrefs – KW Finder also offers you free limitations for every registered user (up to 5 keyword lookups per day) which makes it an awesome tool even for beginners. Here’s how it looks like; Here are few of the metrics you can find in KW Finder which can be so much useful while mining high performing keywords.
Trend – trend of search in the last 12 months Search – average monthly search volume (exact match) in the last 12 months CPC – average cost per click of the listed keyword PPC – level of competition in PPC advertising (min = 0; max = 100) DIFF – SEO difficulty of a keyword, based on SEO stats (DA, PA, MR, MT – we’ll talk about these in a short while) of the pages on the first Google SERP (min = 0; max = 100)
Read: Mangools SEO Tools Review with 40% OFF Read: KWFinder Review: Is It the Only Keyword Research Tool You Need?
Another tool: Using Keyword Planner tool
We’ll first start with the Google Keyword Planner because it’s not only free to use but is widely used by majority of the bloggers to conduct keyword research. Google’s Keyword Planner is perhaps the BEST free keyword research tool to find profitable keywords for your websites. Just create an account in Google Adwords and you will be able to use free keyword planner tool to start finding the keywords for any topic. Here are few advantages of using Keyword planner tool;
You can research best performing keywords using this tool. It doesn’t matter which niche you are in and what topics you might want to rank for, Google Keyword planner tool helps you find the best keywords. You can also find extra keywords and add them to any existing campaign to make your keyword research better. You will also get traffic estimation using keyword planner tool. They include, estimated clicks and historical statistics to find some great keyword ideas.
Here’s how to do keyword research using Google keyword planner. Let’s now jump into the details of using Google Keyword Planner. Open your Google Keyword Planner tool and follow the step by step process mentioned below. Step 1: Click on “Search for new keyword and ad group ideas” Step 2: Now enter the keywords that you are targeting. Always select the keywords that are high volume keywords that are less competitive. In general, low competition keywords are those that have good enough monthly searches but they are easily to rank for unlike high competition keywords where its almost impossible for anyone to rank for unless you’re a brand and has high budget to spend on SEO. Here’s the rule of thumb when using Google Keyword Planner:
If you are a niche marketer, focus on keywords that has low competition with High CPC If you want to increase SEO traffic, focus on low competition keywords with Low CPC
Read: Best Google Keyword Planner Alternatives for 2023
Use the most advanced keyword research technique: the alphabet soup
This is actually an incredible strategy most SEO experts use to find the best keywords in any niche. Alphabet soup is nothing but coming up with different keyword ideas for one particular keyword item using Google Instant search tool. Here’s how to use alphabet soup to come up with fantastic keyword ideas for your niche. This process also gives you unlimited blog post ideas and you will never run of post ideas if used right. Open Google and start typing the keyword you want to rank for. For instance, I’m considering the keyword item “affiliate marketing”, and Google Instant is giving me the following suggestions. See, instead of spending time on writing blog posts that are aiming the high competition keyword like “affiliate marketing”, we can also focus on something more specific keyword like “affiliate marketing for dummies”. I don’t say its an easy keyword to rank for, but you’ll get the idea once you are effectively started using Google Instant search. Here’s how to come up with unlimited keyword ideas using Google instant. Just enter the letter “b” after your keyword item “affiliate marketing” and its showing the most popular keyword search results. In the above case, you can start writing a post on “affiliate marketing basics”. It is definitely a profitable keyword idea when compared to the original keyword. Then enter “c” after your keyword Then “d” Are you getting me now? This is how you can get unlimited keyword suggestions by simply using Google Instant.
5 Biggest Keyword Research Mistakes to Avoid
Keyword research is not a piece of cakewalk. We’ve been doing keyword research for years and we still struggle sometimes finding high potential keywords. That being said, if you’re a beginner who’re just getting started with keyword research, here are few biggest mistakes you must avoid to attract more search traffic.
- Targeting “short phrase” long tail keywords We all know long tail keywords are easier to rank for because of their low competitiveness. But here’s the thing. If you’re targeting “short phrase” long tail keywords, you’re NOT going to get any results (especially when you’ve a new website with low backlink profile or domain authority). Here’s what we mean by “short phrase” long tail keywords. Long tail keywords can contain 3 or more words but it doesn’t mean you should be targeting a 3 word long short tail keyword as it will definitely have a lot more competition when compared to a 5 word long short tail keyword. Here are few examples of short phrase long tail keywords (you should avoid them).
Best apple phones Cheap bluetooth speakers Apple Macbook air Perfumes for men And the list goes on
As you can see above, all the above keyword examples are short phrase keywords which are 3 word long tail keywords. And you can’t compete for the above terms because you can’t rank for them unless you’ve a ton of budget and quality backlinks. 2. Ignoring commercial intent Whether you know it or not, there are several types of keywords which include; If you’re ignoring commercial intent keywords and only focusing on either informative or navigational keywords, you’re NEVER going to attract people who will actually buy stuff from you. Here are few examples of commercial intent keywords just in case if you’re curious to know.
Best discounts on macbook air Semrush free trial Grammarly promo code And the list goes on
If you look at the above examples, they are all commercial intent keywords where people are actually looking for “best deals” to buy online. 3. Not checking keyword competition This is a HUGE mistake while doing keyword research. If you’re not keeping an eye on the competition for the keywords you’re going to rank for, how can you even get into top 10 search results? That being said, here are few keyword metrics you need to find out to easily discover the competitiveness of any keyword that you are trying to rank for.
Google SERP – top results from Google search for the selected keyword. Overall SEO score is computed as the average of the SEO competitiveness of the top 10 pages. Red colour = big SEO competitiveness. Green colour = low SEO competitiveness. DA – Domain Authority (developed by Moz) predicts how well a website will rank on search engines PA – Page Authority (developed by Moz) predicts how well a specific page will rank on search engines MR – MozRank of the URL represents a link popularity score reflecting the importance of any given website on the Internet. MT – MozTrust of the URL is similar to MozRank, but rather than measuring link popularity, it measures trustworthiness of the link Links – the number of external authority-passing links to the URL FB – the number of Facebook shares for the URL Rank – SEO competitiveness rank – the higher it is, the harder it is to compete. (min = 0; max = 100) Est. visits – estimated visits per month on this SERP position
Quick tip: Install Moz toolbar (available for chrome for free) so you can easily discover the PA, DA and backlinks metrics while searching on Google on the go. 4. Not consider the keyword value Not all keywords are the same. Some keywords have more value (more than $10 CPC, Cost Per Click) while others have low CPC value (less than $1 CPC). So if you’re looking to attract highly potential keywords, you also need to consider the value of a keyword. In other words, you should always keep your eye on the CPC to find highly profitable keywords. This one keyword research mistake alone could cost you thousands of dollars in the long run, so be sure to give more importance to CPC while doing keyword research. 5. Not finding multiple LSI keywords for the primary keyword LSI Keywords are essentially keywords which are related to the keyword that you search for on search engines. In short, LSI keywords are those keywords that are related to your main term. For example, “apple laptop” can be an LSI keyword for “Macbook air” or “Macbook pro” You can easily find a ton of LSI keywords using tools like
LSI Graph Ubersuggest Semrush Google autosuggest and so on
LSI keywords help Google to better understand the relevancy of your pages. A legitimate page about ‘Apple computers’ will likely contain a set of other words that are related to Apple computers such as ‘apple phones’, ‘apple iphone 5’, ‘apple new ipad’, ‘apple stock price’ and so on. On the other hand, a keyword stuffed page about ‘Apple computers’ will probably just contain that one keyword. That’s the reason why Google has moved from “keyword stuffing” era to “LSI indexing” era. So make sure to find multiple LSI keywords when you’re finding a primary keyword to rank for your website. Browse more SEO Tutorials:
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→ Helps you get more targeted traffic from search→ Helps you increase your website conversion rates→ Increases your overall website sales→ Gives you high ROI→ And the list goes on → Google’s keyword planner (free and used by millions of people worldwide)→ Ubersuggest (a great keyword research tool)→ Keywordtool.io (an ultimate alternative to Google keyword planner) → Semrush keyword magic tool (a must tool for every blogger, SEO and marketer)→ Ahrefs (gives really accurate keyword metrics)→ KW Finder (a better alternative and also cheaper alternative to the above 2 tools) All in all, keyword mapping helps you align highly relevant keywords to create useful and related pages within your site.
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Final Thoughts
Doing proper keyword research is an art and takes time to master it. You can’t find better keywords that increase your traffic from the beginning. Once you start spending more time on it and start playing with the keyword research tools mentioned in this guide, you will learn how to rank for any keyword in the Google search result. How to do keyword research is perhaps the one question most people can’t answer properly. Finding buyer keywords for your articles, web pages or videos is a difficult task especially when you are new to search engine optimization. You need to first work on finding the right kind of keyword ideas for overall your site and make your site search engine friendly by optimizing it for those keywords. Once you analyzed your keywords, start focusing on writing quality content (nothing beats quality, you can’t expect great results from Google by creating thin content) to boost your organic traffic. There’s also a powerful way to increase your search traffic and that is to attract backlinks from other sites. The more links that are pointing to your websites, the more authoritative your articles will be and they can easily rank high in Google search results. Although there are a lot of keyword research tools available out there, but I strongly recommend you to start your keyword research process by using Google Keyword planner. As this tool is one of the best keyword research tools which is also free to use. You can not only able to find the best keywords but you can also analyze the keyword competition to rank better in Google search results. Always focus on using long tail keywords when you are performing keyword research as they can give you low competition and more traffic. And it’s easy to rank in top results by focusing on long tail keywords on your blog posts. Once you have mastered the skills of using Google Keyword planner tool to do keyword research, then you can start using advanced keyword research tools like HitTail, Moz, WordStream, Semrush etc. to find the most profitable keywords for your niche. As a rule of thumb, NEVER write another post without doing proper keyword research. And focus on using high volume and low competition keywords to rank higher on Google search results for any keyword you take. Please share this keyword research guide with your friends if you find it useful. Do you have any more questions on how to do keyword research in 2023? If yes, please ask them in the comments section below and I’d be glad to respond to your comments.
