Google keeps us updated by releasing each algorithm change they roll out like the recent release of Google PaLM algorithm. One thing hasn’t changed among these high transformations to minor updates; one thing hasn’t changed: ‘ Keyword Research!’ This beginner’s guide to keyword research in 2022 will discuss the term “keyword research,” why keyword research is essential, how to find keywords for your website, and which keyword research tools are the best for the task. If you are yet to understand the basics of SEO, then please check our beginners SEO guide to 2022 first.
What is keyword research?
Keyword research refers to analyzing and finding words that users enter into search engines like Google to use the collected data to serve a specific goal, typically to optimize search results (SEO). Keyword research can reveal keywords to target and the popularity of these search terms, their difficulty to rank, and much more.
What is the importance of keyword research?
Keyword research offers valuable insight into your intended audience’s terms on Google. The insights you gain from these keywords can help you form the content strategy and offer direction to your overall marketing plan.
People use keywords to locate solutions or information when they conduct research online. Therefore, if your content successfully brings a relevant audience to your website and engages them, you will succeed in SEO. Thus, you must be focusing on those right and relevant search terms.
Additionally, when using the inbound marketing methods, we shouldn’t focus on creating content centered around what we would like to convey. Rather, we must create content based on what people would like to learn about.
The process begins with the keyword search. Keyword research can have many advantages, with the most well-known reasons being:
Insights on Current Market Trends
This beginner’s guide to keyword research would like to push you towards conducting a thorough and smart keyword analysis that can give you insights into the latest trends in marketing. It will also help you focus your content around relevant topics that your readers are searching for.
Traffic Growth
If you determine the most appropriate keywords for the content, your Google website ranking will boost search results. A Higher Google ranking will certainly bring more visitors you’ll draw to your website.
Customer Acquisition
Suppose your company has information that other professionals in the business are seeking products/services similar to your offerings. In that case, You can meet their requirements and offer them the call to take action that can lead them on a buyer’s journey, from awareness through the purchase point.
While researching the right keywords, you should focus on their popularity, search volume, difficulty, and general purpose. It helps to understand the questions and search queries of your audience. However, these questions are not keywords; they have a reason to be so because Google has advanced beyond exact match algorithms.
Keywords Vs. Topics
Google has evolved with SEO for the past decade. The SEO strategies which used to be gamechanger back then are now irrelevant. Now keywords are not the only ones relevant to higher Google website rankings. Content optimization strategies have transformed, and SEO professionals use multiple strategies to boost their keyword ranking.
The ball has shifted towards the ‘Intent’ of the content and relevancy of keywords towards such content. But it doesn’t mean that keyword-driven SEO strategies are completely outdated, and it still has their significance if used correctly. Let’s understand this with an example.
Keyword research reveals what is important to people and is searching for this. How do we get that info? From a quality SEO tool like SEMrush. The term used is ‘Topic.’ When you research keywords with lots of search results each month, you can easily determine and categorize your content into multiple subcategories. These subcategories will help you decide the topics for your future content. And researching these topics, you can decide which keywords are right to target.
Key Elements of Keyword Research
Keyword research is vast and confusing. You need to understand your specific needs and target accordingly. Lets more into this beginner’s guide to keyword research and understand the key elements of keyword research.
Relevance
Google evaluates content for relevancy. That’s where the ‘search intent’ comes into the picture. Your website will only rank in SERPs to meet the searcher’s needs. Additionally, the content you provide must be the best available web source for the query. As they say, Content is king! Google only favors the best content with relevance for Google search rankings.
Authority
Google will give more weightage only to trustworthy websites. Therefore, you should try to establish yourself as an authoritative resource. How? Add informative, highly relevant, and useful content and then promote it to gain social signals and backlinks. The ranking is difficult if you’re not considered an authority in your field or the keyword’s SERPs are filled with heavy sources that you cannot beat (such as WebMD or Forbes). There’s a lesser chance of ranking even if your content is outstanding in such a case.
Volume
You might end up on the first page of Google SERPs for a specific keyword. But what if no one is searching for that keyword? Even the top ranking will not bring traffic to your website. Similar to setting up an online shop in a dead town. Volume is measured via MSV (monthly the volume of searches) and the number of times the keyword is used per month for all audience types.
How to Find Keywords to help you with your SEO strategy?
Through this beginner’s guide to keyword research, InDepthSEO will present a modern approach to keyword research. You can use this to create keywords that you need to focus on, and this will allow you to create and implement an effective keyword strategy to get your content discovered on Google.
Step 1: Create an outline of the most important and relevant topics
Consider the topics for which you’d like to rank in general buckets. Develop approximately five to ten topic buckets that are relevant to your company. Later, utilize these topic buckets to help you develop a specific keyword strategy later in the process.
Before writing content based on the keywords, consider yourself one in the shoes of your customer personas. What kinds of subjects would your potential reader search for? Fo which keyword and content you’d like your company to be found?
In the case of a firm similar to InDepthSEO, which offers timely insights on the latest news on SEO and advanced tips on mastering SEO skills. The general topic buckets for InDepthSEO are,
- “SEO” (214K)
- SEO Tools (9k)
- “blogging” (19K)
- “on-page SEO” (8.1K)
- “off-page SEO” (6.6K)
Just right to these keywords, you can see numbers. This is their monthly search. This info will allow you to assess how important the topics you choose to cover for your target audience are. It will also denote how many sub-topics you may require in content to use that keyword successfully.
Step 2: Fill in the topics with keywords.
Now that you’ve got several topic areas that you’d like to focus on, you need to determine which keywords belong to these buckets. These are keywords crucial to rank for in SERPs. Why? Because the person you want to target will likely be conducting searches for these specific keywords.
For instance, if a user decides to learn the latest techniques and tools in SEO. So, the user may search for the keyword ‘SEO Tools’ and a few other keywords. They are,
- Free SEO tools
- How to utilize SEO tools and software
- What do you mean by local SEO tools?
- How to analyze optimization with the best SEO tools
- SEO tools for lead generation
- Top SEO audit tools
This step isn’t directing to create the final list of keywords. Rather, it’s creating a quick dump of keywords and phrases that our prospective readers might be using to find relevant content. We’ll reduce the list later.
An effective method to gather the right keywords is to figure out the keywords already getting indexed on your site. You’ll need website analytics software such as Google Analytics, which offers a detailed view of your daily and monthly traffic. SEOs should always keep exploring their website’s traffic sources, and it helps understand the organic search traffic pool and offers the terms users use to get to your website.
Repeat the exercise for the other topic buckets. Many free SEO tools like SEMrush and ahrefs can offer more lists. You can also reach out to your friends and colleagues in sales who deal with customers daily, and they can shed light on relevant terms they’ve heard from their customers and prospects. These are typically good places to start your keyword research.
Step 3: Learn How the intent affects Keyword Research and Analyze Accordingly.
As we mentioned in the previous paragraph, user intent is one of the key elements in ranking highly in search engines such as Google. Your site must tackle the issue a searcher wants to resolve rather than simply containing the user’s keywords. How does this impact your keyword research?
It’s easy to choose keywords at face value, and however, they could have a variety of meanings. Since the purpose of a search is crucial for your rankings, you need to interpret the keywords you are targetting.
For instance, you’re looking up the phrase “how to begin the blog” as an article title that you are planning to write. The word “Blog” has two meanings, and it can either refer to a blog article or a website for blogging. Now, a user’s intent about that keyword will determine your article’s direction. Are they looking to know how to begin writing a blog post? Or do they want to know how to create a blogging website?
It may be not very clear. You’ll have to be certain of the intent behind the keyword before you commit to it.
But how do you know a person’s intent when they type in a keyword? It’s simple! Try typing the word into the search engines on your own and then see what kinds of results show up. Be sure that the kind of content you’re putting up on Google should match closely with your planned keywords.
Step 4: Conduct research on similar search terms.
You might have already thought about this while doing keyword research. If not, it’s an excellent option to complete the keyword lists. If you’re having trouble thinking of other intent-driven keywords, take Google’s help. Google offers you a list of relevant keywords when you type a keyword. For example, if we type ‘shoes’ in Google and the search results, it offers a relevant list of keywords at the bottom of the SERP. These keywords may give you thoughts on other keywords you might want to think about.
Step 5: Utilize Keyword research tools for your benefit.
The research of keywords and search engine optimization tools will help you develop new keyword ideas based on specific match keywords and phrase match keywords based on the concepts you’ve come up with now. The most well-known keywords are:
- Ahrefs
- SEMrush
- Ubersuggest
- Google Keyword Planner
- SECockpit
- Keywords All Over the Place
- Moz
- KeywordTool.io
- KWFinder