What is Keyword Research? Best Keyword Research Tools

keyword research

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The power of words on the Internet is no secret. People search for their questions and concerns using different words and phrases, and search engines do searching through different content based on these words and show the best results to user. In SEO, keywords are the words and phrases that a user uses to search and then Google uses them to index the results.

Some keywords have a very high search volume and are competitive, and top rankings in these keywords bring thousands of visitors to their site daily; but some words are less searched and do not have many visitors, but they have a lot of selling power, that means people who search for these words usually intend to buy. For this reason, great attention should be paid to this issue when developing a strategy based on keywords.

Below we will tell you what keyword research is; we will also talk about its types and why keyword research is important. Stay with us until the end of this article.

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is one of the initial steps of website SEO. SEO specialists use keyword research tools to search and select the best keywords related to each business’s field to increase website traffic and improve its position in search results. Google’s algorithms change with each update, making it difficult to keep up with them, but keyword research is always a constant for SEO professionals, and it is a base for developing a website’s SEO strategy. Keyword research is a process of finding and analyzing search terms that users enter into search engines. This is done with the aim of using its outcome for search engine optimization (SEO).

In other hand, keyword research means finding and analyzing the phrases that have most visits and search volume in your work field and direct more users to your website. In this process, you need to come up with a list of words, phrases, and questions that your target audience is searching for in search engines to find their answers. Keyword research make your website content purposeful and improves your digital marketing and SEO strategy.

Keyword research history

Keyword research has changed a lot in the past few years. Keyword Stuffing is one of the famous black hat techniques that was widely used by website owners in the past. Website owners tried to improve their rankings by stuffing keywords into their content and simply added as many keywords as they could into the title and content and made them bold. While it’s perfectly fine to use proper styling and anchor text placement, if you spam a lot of irrelevant keywords into your content, you’ll be ignored. Website owners used every possible way to stuff keywords into sentences. Of course, they were successful; but not for long time. Google recognized this technique and was able to stop websites with poor quality and weak content with very strict updates like Panda algorithm, thus forcing website owners to produce content without using spammy methods.

Today, webmasters have found another way to rank higher: by including different but similar keywords, also known as LSI keywords. By using LSI keywords, website owners can avoid being penalized by Google for keyword stuffing.

LSI keywords can be easily found at the bottom of Google search results. When you search for a word or phrase, you can see a number of related searches below the results that are LSI keywords.

After that, the competition between these keywords became even more intense. Then webmasters started focusing on long-tail keywords, keywords that are more than three words long, and this method is still being used today.

Keyword types

Keywords are divided into two categories based on their size:

  • Short tail keywords: one or two word keywords that cover a wide range of topics and are very competitive, such as “buying shoes”.
  • Long tail keyword: Phrases are more than three words that contain precise details of user’s intent. Although their search volume is lower, they have very high conversion rates; such as “buying men’s sneakers”.

Thematically, keywords can be classified into the following three categories:

  • Navigational keywords: Keywords that a user searches to reach a specific website or brand, such as “YouTube”.
  • Informational keywords: Words that are searched, for information on a specific topic and usually start with how, why, etc.
  • Transactional keywords: Words searched for to buy a product, such as “buying books online”.

Why is keyword research important?

When you want to develop a strategy for your website’s SEO, your best source is definitely your users themselves and the terms they’ve searched for. Keyword research helps you write exactly what users are looking for and searching to find. Keyword research helps you write exactly what users are looking for. In short, keyword research helps you:

  • Find the terms users are searching for.
  • Find your competitors’ keywords.
  • Find low-competition keywords.
  • Understand users’ intent with search terms.
  • Discover new ideas for content creation

What impact does keyword research have on SEO?

One of the most important steps in optimizing a website for search engines is keyword research. SEO allows your website pages to rank better in search results after being crawled and indexed by Google’s robots and algorithms. One of the criteria that these robots consider is examining the keywords in your work field and their relationship to user searches and your website pages content. Keyword research can also help you come up with better ideas for your blog posts, answer the questions people are asking when they search Google, and drive traffic to your website. It can even help you get better at naming your website’s categories and product and service pages.

How to do keyword research?

In general, to conduct effective keyword research, you should follow these 8 steps below to find right keywords for your business.

Goal Determination

First of all, determine what you are looking for. Do you want to attract more traffic to your website? Or increase your sales? This allows you to choose words that will help you achieve the goal and avoid wasting time and money on unnecessary words. The market in which you compete also plays a very important role in this stage. If your market is very competitive and your competitors have also invested heavily in SEO, it is better to start with smaller goals and once you have been able to rank well for a small set of keywords, you can go a step further and target more words.

Complete knowledge of work field

Search for industry or work field that you are going to do keyword research for. Talk to your customers to learn about their needs and concerns and Increase your knowledge. This will help you to get a comprehensive view of your target market. Sometimes you may even need to have a few meetings with your employer just to gather information.

Develop an initial list of keywords

Use brainstorming method, ask the employer to say words that come to mind. Start keyword research based on these words. You can create a word list in Google Sheets or Excel. These initial words are very important because you will need to enter these words when using keyword research tools.

Competitor analysis

Use the primary keywords from previous step. Search them in Google and see which websites are ranking high and check them out for content and keyword usage. You can see keywords list that these websites rank for in tools that will be introduced below. It is obvious that is very difficult to compete with big brands, especially if they advertise on TV and radio. But checking their pages content can help you a lot. If your competitors are not well known brands or have not worked hard on their website’s SEO, your chances of achieving a high ranking are much higher.

Also, look at “Google Ads” section in the results. See which brands have invested in Google Ads in addition to SEO. Note that it is harder to rank higher for keywords that are heavily ppc-driven.

Using tools

There are tools and websites that can help you a lot in keyword research. You can enter the main and basic words you obtained in previous steps into these websites and they will show you related searches using the searches already made in Google. You can extract the full list of keywords from these tools and add them to your initial file.

Keyword targeting

After extracting the keywords list, you need to categorize them according to your business purpose. Put words that are related together in separate categories. For example, put words that give you ideas for blog content in one category and words related to product purchases in another category.

Page allocation

After you have categorized the keywords, you need to determine which page of your website is suitable for each category of words. For example, one category is for website homepage and another category is for product pages or blog content. Also, at this stage, remove words that are not appropriate for your business. For example, if you are a shoe manufacturer in Montreal, the keyword “buy shoes in Toronto” is not suitable for you. Or if you only produce men’s shoes, you should remove the keyword “buy women’s shoes”

Prioritizing keywords

Considering the factors discussed in previous section, determine which keywords are most important to your website, which you can invest in. Based on your completed spreadsheet or Excel file, you should prioritize which words from each category will have the best results for your website. At this stage, the competition level and conversion for these keywords should be examined and finally those are suitable for your website should be selected.

Introducing keyword research tools

These tools will help you find keywords with high search volume. They can even suggest words that your competitors have not worked on and they can increase your chances of competing with them. The way these tools work is similar. You introduce an initial keyword and a keywords list is displayed to you. Many free and paid tools can help you with keyword research.

Google Suggestions

When you search for something on Google, it gives you suggestions that complement your search term. These suggestions can be a very useful resource for keyword research because they are displayed based on other users’ searches. Also, when you search for something, you will see a section at the bottom of page titled Related Searches that display words or phrases related to your search.

Google Search Console

Search Console gives you the ability to see which keywords users used to enter your website. In Search Console menu, go to the Performance section. In this section, you can see Impressions (the number of times the keyword was displayed) and Clicks (the number of times it was clicked). From this table, you can see which of your keywords had a high number of impressions, but were not clicked on due to low rankings.

Ahrefs tool

Using Ahrefs keyword research tool, you can reach thousands of related words and keyword phrases by typing in a keyword. Using Ahrefs keyword research tool, you can reach thousands of related words and keyword phrases by typing in a keyword. You can start by entering your main keyword and selecting a country.

Moz website

By going to Keyword Explorer section of Moz website and entering the main keyword, You will receive a list of suggested keywords along with their difficulty and click-through rate.

SEMRush tool

This site provides the user with information such as search volume, increase or decrease in word searches, etc. You can also see information about your competitors’ SEO by entering their website address.

Google Keyword Planner

It is a free Google tool where you can view the most popular keywords. You need a Google Ads account to use this tool. You can also see the search volume for these words over a specific time period.

KWFinder tool

This tool shows you related keywords and their statistics. You can also track your competitors’ keywords and your website’s ranking on keywords on a daily basis.

ubersuggest.io website

This website collects its data through search engines such as Google and others to find keywords. This website offers you various keywords, and through the analysis, you can get help and find ideas to expand your business. You don’t need to register to use this tool.

Conclusion

Keywords are golden key to your success in the internet marketing arena. Keywords are a part of SEO services that has many fans and becomes doubly important when it comes to content creation. Most businesses cannot find keywords on their own and turn to tools to help them. Before you jump straight to free keyword tools, it’s worth knowing that to find keywords, you need to start a keyword research project. When you define your niche, there are keywords that drive users to that niche.

Write down these words and any other words that you think will drive users to you. These are keywords that came to your mind without checking their search statistics throughout the day and are relevant to your business. Another way is to monitor business competitors. In every business, there are companies or individuals who are more successful and have many customers. Take a little time and see what keywords they use in their content and titles to drive users to their website. Keyword competition is a serious issue, and huge sums of money are spent on this area every day. Google AdWords monitors this keyword competition and shows users websites that are not in a good SEO position with high-search keywords at the top of search results. You can get help from SEO experts to find keywords or use free tools to find them.

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