In this guide, we’ll cover the “how-tos” and “strategies” that will help guide you to creating an effective keyword plan for your website, ad campaigns, or YouTube channel.
Proper keyword research can minimize the time it takes to scale your traffic and boost your ROI.
Worldwide there are approximately 3.5 billion searches on Google each day (source). The good thing is that there are a lot of great keyword opportunities for your content to rank for! We’ll focus on Google’s search engines (Google and YouTube) as they make up the largest search engine market share.
Let the search begin!
Introduction to keyword research:
This section will cover the basics of keyword research, like different types of search intent, keyword attributes, and use cases. This will help formulate a strategy by generating keyword ideas that make the most sense for your objectives.
What are the different types of keywords?
There are five different types of keywords to consider in the keyword research process.
They are categorized by the different types of search intent. Meaning, the user is looking for specific types of content to satisfy their search.
- Informational Intent: Searchers that are looking for informational content like answers to questions, facts, statistics, etc.
- Example of informational searches:
- How to write a blog
- What is the capital of Texas
- Seattle weather
- Example of informational searches:
- Navigational Intent: Searches that are looking for a particular website or page. Many users will search for a page instead of typing in the exact www domain of the page.
- Examples of navigational searches:
- Salesforce login
- Gmail
- CNN
- REI
- Examples of navigational searches:
- Commercial Intent: Searchers looking for additional information about a product or service. Their intent may be to compare products or learn more about a particular service. These tend to be valuable keywords as the user is gathering more information before making a transaction.
- Examples of commercial searches:
- best website builder
- Shopify reviews
- Wix vs Squarespace
- residential home painters
- best winter jacket
- Examples of commercial searches:
- Transactional Intent: Searches that are looking to complete an action like buying a service or product.
- Examples of Transactional searches:
- buy groceries online
- black Friday gopro sale
- lawnmower for sale
- Examples of Transactional searches:
- Local Intent: Searchers are looking for products or services for a specific location. These types of searches usually include a regional or geographical location or “near me” in addition to the main keyword.
- Examples of Local searches:
- Home Depot near me
- Donut shop in West Seattle
- San Diego yoga studios
- Portland OR certified accountants
- Examples of Local searches:
What are short tail and long tail keywords?
Short tail keywords are searches that consist of one to two words. They are less specific, which can make it harder to understand the searchers’ intent and tend to have higher search volumes. Example: “blue”, “laptop”, “b2b marketing”, “old cars”, etc.
Long tail keywords are searches that consist of multiple words that provide additional cues to the intent of the search and have lower search volumes. Example: “What is the best website builder?”, “b2b marketing strategies”, “how to sell an old car”, “best laptop for college students”, etc.
Now that we got a basic understanding of the different types of keywords, let’s get into the details of keyword research for different marketing channels:
How to do keyword research for Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
The goal of an SEO strategy is to increase a website’s organic traffic. In order to do that, one needs to identify keyword opportunities where you can rank on the first page of Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs).
Here are the steps to take when doing keyword research for SEO:
- Brainstorm and create a keyword list using different methods (described below)
- Understand topical authority and how the keyword relates to your content strategy
- Review keyword difficulty and search volumes
1. Brainstorm and create a list of keyword ideas for SEO:
There are a lot of free tools to help with keyword research, though I have found Ahrefs paid tool to be the best for generating keyword ideas and evaluating keyword difficulty.
It isn’t free, but most serious bloggers and SEO’s use Ahref. Try Ahref’s free for 7-days (not affiliated).
Here are the best ways to create a list of keywords:
A. Review what keywords your competitors rank for:
On Ahrefs, you can enter a competitor’s website and see which keywords they rank for.
You can use filters to narrow down the results by looking at keywords the competitor ranks for on the first page of the Google SERPs. You can also exclude the competitor’s brand name.
In the below example, you can see which organic keywords quicksprout.com is ranking for in the first 10 positions of Google’s organic result listings.
The list is sorted by volume, so you can easily scroll through and get keyword ideas for your own site.
You can select keywords and save them to a list that you can then use to evaluate which keywords to create content for first.
In Ahrefs, you can also go into the content gap section under the site explore tab to see keywords that one domain ranks for but another does not.
The screenshot below shows a list of keywords neilpatel.com ranks for that quicksprout.com doesn’t. This can help you find keywords that you have not covered in your content, but are working well for the competition.
I also like to use Ahrefs chrome extension when reviewing a competitor’s website to see all the keywords that a particular page ranks for. Just click the Ahrefs chrome extension while visiting a website, and then click the keywords section, and a new tab will open up in Ahrefs with the keywords that the page ranks for.
B. Review matching and related terms on Ahref:
Under the keywords explorer section, you can go to matching terms and enter a keyword to get search terms that include that keyword. This is great for finding longer tail keywords and to get ideas for other types of content you can create.
In the screenshot below, you can see many different searches matching the keyword “keyword research” that I could create content for.
I could write about “keyword research” in general, create a blog post on “keyword research tools,” or even a list post of all the “free keyword research tools.”
The related terms section will give you terms related to a keyword you enter. In the below example, I searched “best keyword research,” and I got related results like “google keyword planner,” “answer the public,” “how to search words on a page,” etc.
This can help you discover related topics and keywords you can write about.
C. Use Google to get keyword ideas:
Since Google owns most of the search market share, it makes sense to use their tools to get keyword ideas and search volumes.
- Google’s keyword planner
- Google Trends
- Google’s people also ask
- Google’s related searches
- Google’s autocomplete in the search bar
Google’s keyword planner:
To access Google’s keyword planner, you need to create a free Google Ads account. In your Google Ads Account, go to Tools and Settings → Keyword Planner.
From there, you can choose to discover new keywords or get search volumes and forecasts.
In the discover new keywords section, you can get keywords by entering some example keywords or by entering a website to generate keyword ideas.
Google will give you estimated monthly search volumes and other performance metrics like estimated cost-per-clicks (CPCs).
Google Trends:
Google trends is great to see how specific keywords and topics are trending over time. They also provide a breakout section that identifies terms that are seeing an increase in search activity.
You can adjust the geographic location, time range, categories, and search type (web search, image search, shopping, YouTube search).
Use this tool to understand how certain topics and searches are trending over time and to get keyword ideas from the related topics and queries section.
Google People Also Ask:
The Google “people also ask for” section on the Google SERPs provides additional searches and questions people have also search for related to the keyword you searched. This is great to get additional keyword and content ideas.
Here you can see the other things people search for related to “b2b marketing”.
If you click on one of the results it will show some information and also populate more “people also ask” queries that you can review.
Google Related Searches:
At the bottom of Google’s SERPs you can find the “Related searches” section that provides searches related to the keyword you searched.
Google’s Auto Complete:
As you type in a keyword in Google’s search bar, you can see the autocomplete search options which can be great for finding terms related to your keywords. You can type additional letters to see what Google auto suggests.
2. Understand topical authority:
Topical authority occurs when one writes and covers all areas of a topic. Case studies show that when a website covers all portions of topic, including the search terms that get little to no volume, Google’s knowledge graph will see you as an authority and possibly start ranking your pages higher on the SERPs.
This topical authority case study by Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR shows how he was able to dramatically increase the organic traffic to a few sites by leveraging the concept of creating content based on topical maps.
Another popular SEO, Matt Digity discusses the concept of topical authority in many of his YouTube videos. Check his channel out for examples of how topical authority has helped him increase the traffic for his clients’ sites.
So when generating keyword ideas, don’t forget to include keywords that are relevant to your topic, even if the search volume is low.
You’ll definitely want to prioritize which keywords you create content for, but you should consider covering all aspects of a particular topic.
As an example: If I’m targeting the keyword “B2B Marketing”, I’ll want to make sure I have content written and internally linked on my site about all aspects of B2B marketings.
Like- What is B2B marketing, B2B marketing tools, B2B marketing strategies, B2B marketing plans, B2B marketing issues, B2B marketing channels, etc.
Source: www.oncrawl.com
3. Review keyword difficulty and search volumes:
Once you have a list of keyword ideas, you’ll want to prioritize which keywords you will target first.
The truth is, a lot of keywords are super competitive, especially if you are in an industry with large competitors.
To make the most use of your time and money, you can evaluate the keyword difficulty and prioritize your keywords by answering the below questions.
- What is the keyword difficulty in Ahref?
- Does a website with a low domain authority rank on the first page for this keyword?
- What are the Domain and URL ratings of the websites that rank on the first page of Google?
- How much search volume does the keyword receive?
- Does this keyword fit into my content strategy?
In Ahref, select a keyword from your list and look at the keyword difficulty. This gives a score on how difficult it is to rank on the first page of Google. Generally, the larger the number, the more difficult, though that’s not always the case.
I like to use this as an initial indicator. If it’s near 100, there’s little to no chance to rank for that keyword.
That doesn’t mean you should not write content for that keyword. It just means that it is improbable you will rank on the first page of Google. You can still write content for that keyword to use as a sharable asset that can help you get backlinks to your website. Also, covering that topic can still help build your topical authority in your niche.
That’s exactly why I’m writing this post, not to rank on the first page of Google. The term “keyword research” is super competitive, but I can still use this post to share online or include in guest post articles that can help build backlinks to my site, and in turn, help build my domain authority.
If you see a website with a low Domain Rating (DR) on the first page of Google for a keyword, that’s a good indicator that there is an opportunity to also rank on the first page of Google.
Typically a DR of less than 40 is a good baseline. If you see multiple organic rankings with less than 40, then chances are the keyword is less competitive.
You can also check the URL Rating (UR). If the UR rating is less than 20, there are fewer backlinks to that page, which generally makes it less competitive. If you see a UR rating of 30+, it can be hard to outrank that content unless you build a lot of backlinks to it.
In general, if the keyword has commercial or transactional intent and high volume, it will be more competitive as a lot of websites will have written content and built backlinks to that content.
For example, the term “best CRM” is mainly dominated by high DR sites like pcmag and Zapier.
From there, you’ll also want to evaluate how much volume the keyword gets.
I tend to focus on low to medium volume keywords (200 – 2,500 searches per month) that have websites with lower domain ratings.
How to do keyword research for PPC?
**This section will be updated in 2022**
You can use many of the same techniques for PPC keyword research that are used on SEO.
You can use Google’s KW planner to brainstorm ideas and get estimated cost-per-clicks which can help you forecast how much you want to spend on terms.
You can use a tool like Ahrefs or SpyFu to review the terms your competition is bidding on.
How to do keyword research for YouTube:
**This section will be updated in 2022**
YouTube is the second-largest search engine globally, making up about 3 billion searches per month (source: forbes.com). I like using a tool like VidIQ, which will give you estimated search volumes and how competitive a term is.
Wrapping Things Up:
Good keyword research starts with understanding keyword intent and then using a variety of processes like Ahrefs keyword explorer or reviewing Google’s “people also ask” and other SERP features to find additional keyword opportunities.
For PPC, you can use similar techniques to SEO and also leverage tools like SpyFu to see what other competitors are bidding on.
With YouTube, tools like VidIQ work well at getting estimated keyword volumes and related keyword ideas.
Frequently Asked Questions About KW Research:
What are the best keyword research tools for SEO?
The best keyword research tool for SEO is Ahrefs.
What is the best free keyword research tool?
The best free keyword research tool is Google’s keyword planner.
How to do keyword research for Amazon?
To do keyword research on Amazon, you can use a tool like DataHawk.
What is a search query?
A search query is a word or combination of words used in a search on any search engine, like Google.com. Here are some example of search queries: “how to train a dog”, “how to run faster”, “best hiking socks”, “best laptop”, “cafe near me”, etc.
