Keyword research is absolutely essential for SEO. If you’re not paying attention to what exactly people are searching for and how they’re going about searching for it then you’re likely not going to be getting much traffic to your website, even if you have what you consider to be high-quality content.
In order to get your website and content ranking higher, you need to be able to conduct keyword research properly – and we’re going to show you how.
1. Invest in a Keyword Search Tool
Though there may be some free search tools out there, with one of the most popular probably being Google Keyword Planner, none of them really compare with the paid ones if you’re serious about doing keyword research properly. You can find search tools for nearly every budget and purpose, so be sure to do your research and take advantage of any free trials before putting down the money.
Here are a few solid options to help get your started:
2. Use the Google Search Console
You can use the free Google Search Console to help you figure out useful information such as the current page rankings for search terms and click-through rates.
This will help you figure out where your website is ranking and give you some ideas on how you can improve those results. If you find that your website is already doing well, then you can use this information to come up with some seed keywords, which are short-tail keywords made up of 1 or 2 words.
3. Develop Your Seed Keywords
Type your seed keywords into your keyword search tool. This will rank your search terms by keyword difficulty (KD) and volume.
When you’re first starting out, you’ll want to focus on less competitive search terms, so keep your KD below 50. Anything above that will need a ton of backlinks in order to increase your rank. Also, avoid anything with a volume under 100, as no one is really searching for those keywords.
Using this information, you should be able to build on your seed keywords and turn them into long-tail keywords.
4. Take Advantage of Google Search
There are a few ways you can do this to help find inspiration for keywords:
- Autocomplete: type your seed keyword into the search bar, hit the space bar, and try adding different letters to see the suggestions
- Related searches: search for a keyword and then scroll to the bottom of the results page to check out the related searches
- People also ask: typically, you will find this when asking a question. This suggests related questions.
5. Research Your Niche
Keep ahead of the game. Take a look at Q&A sites, social media groups, and industry forums to see if there are currently any big issues within your niche that haven’t necessarily shown up in searches or been addressed by your competitors yet.
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