How To Do Keyword Research: The Foundation of a Successful SEO Strategy

Last Updated on October 6, 2023 by Corey Fox

If you’re navigating the world of digital marketing or running an online business, you’ve likely heard the term “keyword research” thrown around.

But what exactly is it, and why is it crucial for your online success?

In this comprehensive guide, I’ll delve into the art and science of keyword research.

I’ll also explore the importance of keywords, uncover tools and techniques to find the right ones and reveal strategies to optimize your SEO efforts.

Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or just starting, you’ll find valuable insights to boost your online presence.

What Are Keywords, and Why Do They Matter?

Keywords are the words and phrases that users enter into search engines when looking for information, products, or services.

They serve as the bridge connecting your content to your target audience. In essence, keywords are the foundation of SEO, making them an integral part of your online strategy.

Why do keywords matter?

1. Visibility: Keywords determine whether your content appears in search engine results. Ranking for relevant keywords can significantly increase your website’s visibility.
2. Relevance: Using the right keywords ensures that your content is relevant to what users are searching for, leading to better user experiences.
3. Traffic: Ranking for high-traffic keywords can drive a steady stream of organic traffic to your site, potentially converting visitors into customers.
4. Competition: Understanding your competition in the keyword landscape can help you identify opportunities and gaps in the market.

Now that we’ve established the importance of keywords, let’s dive into the steps to conduct effective keyword research.

1. Accessing Keyword Research Tools

The first step in your keyword research journey is to access reliable keyword research tools. These tools provide valuable insights into keyword data, competition, and trends. Here are some popular options:

1. Google Keyword Planner: Google’s own tool provides keyword ideas, search volume data, and competition metrics. It’s a fantastic starting point and is free to use.
2. Semrush: Semrush offers a comprehensive suite of SEO tools, including keyword research. It provides data on search volume, keyword difficulty, and competitor analysis.
3. Ahrefs: Ahrefs is a powerful SEO tool that offers in-depth keyword research capabilities. It provides data on search volume, keyword difficulty, and competitor analysis.
4. Ubersuggest: Ubersuggest is a user-friendly tool that offers keyword data, keyword ideas, and competitor analysis. It’s a great choice for beginners.

Accessing these tools is typically straightforward. Many of them offer free versions with limited features, making them accessible to all levels of users.

2. Entering Keywords and Gathering Data

Once you’ve chosen your preferred keyword research tool, it’s time to enter your target keywords and gather data. Here’s a quick overview of the process:

1. Access Ubersuggest: Visit the Ubersuggest website to get started. You don’t need an account to use the basic features.
2. Enter Keywords: Type your target keywords into the search bar and select your country and language preferences.
3. View Keyword Data: Ubersuggest provides data on search volume, SEO difficulty, paid difficulty, and CPC. You can also see keyword ideas and related terms.
4. Analyze SERPs: Ubersuggest allows you to view the top-ranking pages for a specific keyword. This can help you assess the competition.
5. Export Data: You can export keyword data to CSV or PDF formats for further analysis or reporting.

Ubersuggest is an excellent choice for beginners and small businesses looking for a straightforward keyword research tool. It offers essential keyword data without the complexity of some other tools.

Keyword research tools are essential for uncovering valuable keywords, understanding their potential, and optimizing your SEO strategy. Depending on your specific needs and budget, you can choose the tool that best suits your requirements.

3. Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are specific, detailed search phrases that users enter into search engines. Unlike short, broad keywords, long-tail keywords are longer and more specific.

For example, consider the following:

• Short Keyword: “Laptops”
• Long-Tail Keyword: “Best lightweight laptops for students under $500”

Long-tail keywords offer several advantages in your SEO strategy:

Lower Competition: Long-tail keywords typically have lower search volume than short keywords, but they also have lower competition. This means it’s often easier to rank for long-tail keywords.

Higher Conversion Rates: Long-tail keywords often indicate a user’s specific intent or need. When you optimize your content for these keywords, you’re more likely to attract visitors who are closer to making a purchase or taking a specific action.

Improved Relevance: Long-tail keywords allow you to create highly relevant content that directly addresses a user’s query. This can enhance user experience and engagement.

Better Voice Search Optimization: With the rise of voice-activated devices and voice search, long-tail keywords are crucial for optimizing your content for voice queries.

Finding Long-Tail Keywords

To find long-tail keywords for your SEO strategy, you can use various methods and tools:

1. Google Autocomplete: Start typing a relevant keyword in Google’s search bar, and it will provide autocomplete suggestions, many of which are long-tail keywords.
2. “People Also Ask” Section: When you search for a keyword on Google, you’ll often see a “People Also Ask” section with related questions. These questions can be valuable long-tail keywords.
3. Keyword Research Tools: Keyword research tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, and Ubersuggest can help you identify long-tail keywords with search volume and difficulty metrics.
4. Google Search Console: If you have Google Search Console set up for your website, you can view the search queries that users are using to find your site. This can uncover long-tail keyword opportunities.
5. Competitor Analysis: Analyzing your competitors’ content can reveal long-tail keywords they are targeting. Tools like Semrush and Ahrefs can assist with competitor analysis.
6. Social Media and Forums: Explore social media platforms and forums related to your industry. User discussions and questions can provide insights into long-tail keywords.

Remember that long-tail keywords should align with the topics and products/services you offer.

They should also reflect the specific queries and needs of your target audience. Incorporating long-tail keywords into your content can help capture traffic and improve your overall SEO strategy.

4. Understanding User Intent

User intent, also known as search intent, is a critical aspect of keyword research and content optimization. It involves deciphering what a user intends to achieve when they enter a specific search query. Understanding user intent helps you create content that aligns with users’ needs, increasing the chances of ranking higher in search results.

Types of User Intent

There are four primary types of user intent:

1. Informational Intent: Users with informational intent seek answers, explanations, or information on a particular topic. Example query: “How does photosynthesis work?”
2. Navigational Intent: Users with navigational intent want to find a specific website or web page. Example query: “Facebook login.”
3. Commercial Intent: Users with commercial intent are interested in products or services and may be considering a purchase. Example query: “Best budget smartphones.”
4. Transactional Intent: Users with transactional intent are ready to take action, such as making a purchase, signing up, or downloading. Example query: “Buy iPhone 13 online.”

Why Does User Intent Matter?

Understanding user intent is crucial because it informs your content strategy:

• Relevance: Creating content that aligns with user intent ensures your content is relevant and valuable to your target audience.
• User Experience: Meeting user intent enhances the user experience, leading to higher engagement and longer page visits.
• Keyword Selection: Choosing keywords that match user intent increases the chances of ranking for the right queries.
• Conversion Optimization: Tailoring your content to user intent can lead to higher conversion rates, especially for commercial and transactional intent.

To determine user intent, examine the search results for your target keyword. Ask yourself what type of content Google deems relevant for that query. Analyze the top-ranking pages and their content to gain insights into user intent. Once you understand intent, you can craft content that addresses it effectively.

5. Grouping Keywords Into Topic Clusters

Keyword research isn’t just about individual keywords; it’s also about organizing them into cohesive topic clusters. Topic clustering is a strategic approach that involves grouping related keywords and creating content around a central theme or topic.

Why Use Topic Clusters?

Topic clusters offer several benefits for SEO and content strategy:

• Comprehensive Coverage: By creating content around a central topic, you can provide comprehensive coverage of the subject, which is appealing to both users and search engines.
• Improved Ranking: When you create interconnected content within a topic cluster, it can help boost the ranking of your core pillar page and related content.
• User Experience: Topic clusters enhance the user experience by guiding visitors to related content, keeping them engaged on your site.
• Authority Building: Google rewards websites that demonstrate authority on specific topics. Topic clusters showcase your expertise in a particular niche.

How to Create Topic Clusters

Here’s a simplified process for creating topic clusters:

1. Identify Core Topics: Start by identifying core topics or broad themes relevant to your industry or niche. These topics serve as the foundation of your content strategy.
2. Keyword Research: Perform keyword research to discover related keywords and long-tail variations within each core topic. Use keyword research tools to find keyword opportunities.
3. Create Pillar Content: Develop comprehensive pillar content for each core topic. Pillar content serves as the central hub and covers the main topic in-depth.
4. Create Cluster Content: Create cluster content that delves into subtopics or specific aspects related to the core topic. Each piece of cluster content should link back to the pillar content.
5. Internal Linking: Implement internal linking between the pillar content and cluster content. This interconnection signals to search engines the relevance and authority of your content.
6. Optimize for SEO: Optimize both pillar and cluster content for SEO by incorporating relevant keywords, headers, and meta tags.
7. Monitor and Update: Regularly monitor the performance of your topic clusters and update content as needed to keep it relevant and fresh.

By implementing topic clustering, you can create a well-structured content ecosystem that resonates with both users and search engines, ultimately improving your website’s SEO.

6. Assessing Keyword Difficulty

Keyword difficulty refers to how challenging it is to rank for a particular keyword in search engine results. Understanding keyword difficulty is crucial for optimizing your keyword targeting strategy.

Factors Affecting Keyword Difficulty

Several factors contribute to keyword difficulty:

1. Competition: Keywords with high search volume often have more competition. Assess the strength of competitors in your niche.
2. Backlinks: Pages ranking for a keyword may have numerous backlinks. Backlinks influence rankings, so consider your site’s backlink profile.
3. Content Quality: High-ranking pages often feature high-quality, comprehensive content. Evaluate the content quality of top-ranking pages.
4. Domain Authority: Websites with higher domain authority may have an advantage in ranking for competitive keywords.

How to Assess Keyword Difficulty

To assess keyword difficulty effectively, consider the following steps:

1. Keyword Research Tools: Use keyword research tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, or Ubersuggest to access keyword difficulty scores.
2. Analyze SERPs: Examine the search engine results pages (SERPs) for your target keyword. Note the types of content ranking, the authority of the sites, and the number of backlinks.
3. Competitor Analysis: Analyze the top-ranking pages to assess their content quality, backlink profile, and domain authority.
4. Content Gap Analysis: Identify content gaps and opportunities in your niche. Look for keywords with lower competition but still relevant to your audience.
5. Use Keyword Difficulty Metrics: Many keyword research tools provide a keyword difficulty score or metric. These scores typically range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating higher difficulty.
6. Consider Your Resources: Evaluate whether your resources, including time and budget, align with your chosen keywords’ difficulty levels.
7. Long-Term Strategy: Balance your keyword targeting strategy between low-difficulty keywords for quicker wins and higher-difficulty keywords for long-term goals.

Remember that keyword difficulty can vary by industry and niche. It’s essential to choose keywords that align with your website’s authority and your overall SEO strategy.

7. Creating High-Quality Content

Keyword research is only half of the SEO equation; the other half is creating high-quality content that resonates with your audience. Here are some tips for creating content that performs well in search engine rankings:

1. Keyword Integration: Incorporate your target keywords naturally into your content. Avoid keyword stuffing, which can harm your SEO efforts.
2. Quality and Depth: Create content that is well-researched, informative, and in-depth. Google values content that provides value to users.
3. Engaging Headlines: Craft compelling headlines that grab readers’ attention and include relevant keywords when possible.
4. Readability: Ensure your content is easy to read and understand. Use headings, bullet points, and short paragraphs to improve readability.
5. Visual Content: Include images, videos, infographics, and other visual elements to enhance your content.
6. Originality: Produce original content that adds a unique perspective or insight to your topic.
7. User Experience: Focus on user experience by optimizing page load times, mobile responsiveness, and overall website design.
8. Regular Updates: Keep your content up-to-date and relevant by revisiting and refreshing it periodically.
9. Internal and External Links: Include relevant internal links to other pages on your site and external links to reputable sources when appropriate.
10. Social Sharing: Encourage social sharing of your content to increase its reach and visibility.

Creating high-quality content not only improves your chances of ranking well but also enhances the user experience, which can lead to increased engagement and conversions.

8. Tracking and Optimization

Keyword research and content creation are ongoing processes. To achieve lasting SEO success, you need to continually track your keyword performance and optimize your content and strategy accordingly.

Tracking Keywords:

• Use SEO tools to monitor your keyword rankings regularly.
• Keep an eye on changes in keyword search volume and trends.
• Monitor the performance of your content in terms of organic traffic, user engagement, and conversions.

Optimizing Content:

• Update and refresh existing content to keep it relevant.
• Identify new keyword opportunities and create fresh content.
• Implement on-page SEO techniques to improve existing content.
• Adjust your keyword targeting strategy based on performance data.

By staying proactive and responsive to changes in the SEO landscape, you can maintain and improve your website’s search engine rankings over time.

9. Measuring SEO Success

To gauge the effectiveness of your SEO efforts, you need to track and measure key performance indicators (KPIs). Here are essential metrics to monitor:

1. Organic Traffic:

• Monitor the overall organic traffic to your website from search engines.
• Track the growth or decline in organic traffic over time.

2. Keyword Rankings:

• Keep an eye on the rankings of your target keywords.
• Measure improvements or drops in keyword rankings.

3. Click-Through Rate (CTR):

• Analyze the CTR of your pages in search results.
• Optimize meta titles and descriptions to improve CTR.

4. Conversion Rate:

• Measure the conversion rate of organic traffic, such as sign-ups, downloads, or purchases.
• Identify pages with low conversion rates and optimize them.

5. Bounce Rate:

• Track the bounce rate of organic visitors.
• High bounce rates may indicate irrelevant content or poor user experience.

6. Page Load Time:

• Monitor and optimize page load times, as faster-loading pages tend to rank better.

7. Backlinks:

• Keep track of your backlink profile, including the number and quality of backlinks.
• Monitor for any toxic or spammy backlinks and disavow them if necessary.

8. Social Signals:

• Analyze social signals like shares, likes, and comments on your content.

9. Mobile Performance:

• Check how your site performs on mobile devices, including mobile traffic and mobile-specific issues.

10. ROI:

• Calculate the return on investment (ROI) of your SEO efforts, considering factors like increased traffic and conversions.

Regularly review these metrics, set clear goals, and make data-driven adjustments to your SEO strategy. SEO is an ongoing process, and staying adaptable and responsive to changes is crucial for long-term success.

Free Keyword Research Tools

Googe Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is a tool offered by Google Ads that helps you research and select the right keywords to target for your website.

The tool provides information such as search volume, competition level, and keyword liquidity, which can help you determine the optimal keywords for your website’s copy and content.

Its user-friendly interface makes it easy to filter out irrelevant keywords and focus only on those most relevant to what you are trying to achieve.

With this information, you can craft targeted campaigns and ensure better ROI from your keyword-targeting efforts.

Google Trends

Google Trends is a tool that shows how often specific keywords, phrases, or topics are being searched in different countries or regions.

It’s also helpful for seeing trending topics and can be used to compare the search volume of several different keywords simultaneously.

This information can then inform keyword targeting strategies and create content around the most popular terms.

Additionally, it can be used to analyze seasonality trends over time, giving you insight into the best timing for certain campaigns.

Google Autocomplete

Google Autocomplete is a predictive search feature that helps users complete their searches quickly.

When you start typing in Google Search, related keywords and phrases will appear in a dropdown box, providing suggestions to help you find the information you’re looking for faster.

This feature uses factors like your past search history, common searches by other users, and relevance to offer the best possible suggestions.

By using this tool, you can save time and energy while getting better results.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free web service that helps website owners monitor and maintain their website’s presence in Google Search results.

It provides detailed reports to help you understand how your site performs, track any errors or crawl issues, optimize visibility in search results, and more.

It also allows you to submit your sitemap for faster indexing and gain access to deeper analytics about traffic sources. With this information, you can make smart decisions to improve your website performance and reach potential customers effectively.

Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is a free keyword suggestion tool that helps you find popular and relevant keywords to target in their organic and paid search campaigns.

It provides an automated way to generate hundreds of long-tail keyword ideas, related search terms, and content ideas to help you reach your target audience more effectively.

This tool lets you quickly and efficiently research the right keywords for your website or campaign quickly and efficiently.

Answer The Public

Answer The Public is an online research tool for generating keyword and content ideas.

It works by analyzing web search data to uncover questions that people ask about a particular topic or keyword.

This tool can identify the types of questions your audience is asking so you can create relevant content that resonates with them.

Additionally, it offers insights into related topics and ideas for blog posts, content titles, and product descriptions.

With these insights, you can develop content strategies to effectively and efficiently reach your target audience.

Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere is a keyword research tool to help you identify the most profitable and relevant keywords for your website or campaign.

It provides easy access to real-time search volumes, cost-per-click (CPC) data, competition data, and related search terms.

With this tool, you can find long-tail keywords that are more likely to convert and uncover new content opportunities.

Keywords Everywhere also has a browser extension that allows you to easily add keywords and related search terms while you are researching online.

Keyword Surfer

Keyword Surfer is a free Chrome extension that quickly reveals keyword search volumes and related terms when users search on Google.

It displays the estimated monthly searches for each term, along with related topics, questions, and prepositions.

This tool can help you identify profitable keywords quicker and easier and uncover content ideas. Also, it allows you to refine your keyword research by filtering results by volume or competition.

Paid Keyword Research Tools

Semrush

SEMrush is an all-in-one digital marketing suite that helps businesses boost their website’s visibility and performance.

It provides comprehensive insights into website traffic, keyword research, link building, competitive analysis, and more.

With SEMrush, you can easily identify the best keywords for your target audience and uncover new content ideas.

Additionally, it has a range of tools to help with backlink analysis, ranking tracking, site audits, and more.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a suite of SEO tools used to improve website performance. It provides comprehensive insights into competitor keyword research, backlinks, rankings, content ideas, and more.

With Ahrefs, you can quickly identify profitable keywords and new content ideas and track their website’s rankings in real-time. Its backlink analysis tool gives you detailed reports on the quality and quantity of the site’s backlinks.

Conclusion

Keyword research is the foundation of effective SEO.

By understanding user intent, organizing keywords into topic clusters, assessing keyword difficulty, creating high-quality content, and tracking performance, you can develop a robust SEO strategy that improves your website’s visibility, traffic, and conversions.

Continuously refining your strategy based on data and industry trends will help you stay competitive in the ever-evolving world of search engine optimization.

Best of luck with your SEO journey!

References:

SEO Basics by Moz

Google’s Guide to SEO

SEMrush Keyword Research Guide

Ahrefs Keyword Research Guide

Backlinko Keyword Research Guide

Neil Patel’s Keyword Research Guide