by In order to gain maximum exposure for your brand, blog content or products, keyword research is an essential art to master for any publisher or SEO. Keyword research allows you to uncover and analyse search queries relevant to your audience. Gaining detailed insights into what your audience is searching for is an invaluable tool for anyone looking to improve their website’s search visibility.
What is keyword research?
Keyword research is the process of finding and analysing common search terms people use to find products or information relevant to your target audience. Once you can identify terms used and the frequency of these searches, you can develop a more informed content plan and deliver content relevant to the most common search queries.
SEO’s can talk for hours about the importance of site speed, backlinks and accessibility but without proper keyword research, you are unlikely to gain much traction without addressing your audience first. In short, keyword research should be at the top of your to-do list when creating content or planning a new website.
Basic keyword research
Anyone can do some basic but effective keyword research using some free resources and a bit of time. Generally, the process would start by brainstorming or mind-mapping some ideas. Try to come up with some general terms people might be interested in and develop some words, phrases and questions people might search for to find your content.
Developing keyword ideas using mind mapping
Mind mapping is an easy way to brainstorm ideas and concepts naturally without overthinking or structuring your ideas. It allows you to visualise your ideas and collaborate with others making it an efficient way of generating ideas.
Starting from a main topic or term, expand outwards in a hub and spoke pattern writing ideas, drawing relationships and expanding on words and topics. Try considering the following during your research.
- How does my site or content appeal to people interested in the topic?
- What kind of search terms would you use to find information about your subject?
- What kind of questions would your audience want to be answered?
Importance of data in keyword research
Brainstormed lists are a great starting point, especially if you somewhat know your niche or audience already, but without data, the results may disappoint.
Common mistakes site owners and SEO professionals make when researching keywords are:
- Discovering the terms you expect to be popular have low search volumes. In some cases, low volume doesn’t necessarily mean a term is not worth going for especially for very niche products or services or high-ticket items where you can make a good ROI on low search volumes. Having the data to hand before making your decision can save a lot of time and potential expenses.
- Choosing a very popular term with lots of competition. Everyone wants to rank for the high-volume terms but we need to be realistic with our expectations, especially if you have a new site or are fairly new to search engine optimisation. There is nothing more disheartening than starting a website or blog and getting no visitors. Choosing lower volume, less competitive terms will help you build a good foundation to start ranking for more competitive terms over time and should see you start gaining visitors much sooner.
With data such as monthly search volume and cost per click, you can make much more informed decisions when developing your keyword list.
Free keyword research tools
By now, you should have a good list of keyword ideas, but how do we move forward? This is where we need some help. There are various online resources to generate keyword lists. In our example, we are going to use Google’s keyword planner tool. This is a great resource for anyone doing SEO and keyword research on a budget. As it’s the companion tool for the Adwords platform, the results are geared towards commercial terms rather than informational, but the data is solid and free. For informational sites and supporting content, paid keyword research tools generally offer a broader selection of keyword suggestions.
Open Keyword Planner (you will need a Google account) and click ‘discover new keywords’ and enter one of your ‘seed terms’. This should generate a list of suggestions based on your original term as well as estimated monthly search volume, competition and CPC (cost per click). It’s worth noting at this point that the competition score is based on advertisers not optimisation, although high cost per click and advertiser competition often correlate with how competitive the SERPS (Search engine results pages) are. If it were easy to rank for these terms, less advertisers would be willing to pay a high cost per click.
Keyword Planner offers the option to export your data to either Excel or Google Sheets, so export your list to your preferred spreadsheet so you can edit it. The first thing you will be looking at is the volume and competition for your ‘seed term’. This is your original term or terms you entered. It’s time to see if your instincts were right.
You can now use filters, formulas or simple editing to refine your list, removing high-competition terms, and irrelevant or low-volume terms leaving you with a list of usable terms to develop your content around.
Using competitor’s research data and steal their keywords
A great way to discover terms that have already been identified by more experienced SEO teams or expensive keyword research tools is to analyse sites that already rank well for similar terms. This process is easy to do by hand if you do not have access to paid tools that speed up the process or offer more advanced analysis.
First, search Google for your main keywords (try some of the high-traffic terms you previously discounted due to high competition). Open some of the high-ranking results in a new tab (ignore high-authority sites like Wikipedia) and right-click to view source. Now you can use the search feature (CTRL + F) to search the source code for clues to terms they are targeting. Try searching for the following.
name=”description”
<h1
<h2
<title>
It is common practice to include your primary and secondary terms within these elements, you will discover additional terms the website owner is targeting.
Other keyword hacks
You can find lots of keyword ideas by thinking outside the box. Here are a few ideas to get the creative juices flowing.
Auto-suggest
Most popular search engines will suggest related searches or auto-complete as you type. These suggestions can return some interesting ideas.
Add question prefixes to auto-suggest
You can generate a list of related questions by simply adding ‘why’, ‘is’ or ‘how’ to your search query.
Related searches and People are also asking
Google often provides additional information such as related searches and questions right in the results.
Wikipedia
As the world’s most visited website, Wikipedia is a goldmine for keyword suggestions. Often a topic has a ‘related terms’ panel on the left as shown below.
You will also find a selection of related suggestions as you type in the same way Google suggests search terms but the results are often quite different and provide a new source of data.
Quora
quora.com offer similar opportunities for generating topic ideas in their related topics section as well as interesting questions people are asking. In just a few minutes, I found the following questions relating to ‘Hiking’ which could inspire further keyword research or additional content.
Do people carry around a bottle of Mace when they go hiking in areas where there are dangerous animals like mountain lions and bears?
- How long does it typically take to set up a tent?
- What is the point of heavy boots for hiking?
- What tips do experienced hikers have for keeping their feet comfortable when hiking for long distances?
Summary
By now, you should understand the benefits of proper keyword research, how to do your own basic research and a few tip and tricks to uncover more opportunities. By spending a bit of time to research your topic before publishing content, you can drastically increase your traffic potential.