Learn How to do Keyword Research the Right way
Do you know what the reason behind the failure of most of the websites is? Of Course keyword research. If you don’t do keyword research properly, then your website will fail. Simple keyword research mistakes can ruin your website.
To help you to do proper keyword research; here, I’m going to share step by step guide on keyword research. If you follow this guide correctly, then your website will have a higher chance to become successful.
What is keyword research exactly?
Keyword research is the most common phrase for those who make money online. You won’t find a single person who is not familiar with the phrase keyword research who make money online.
So what is keyword research exactly? To know about keyword research first, you have to know what keyword is?
A keyword is a phrase that is used by the searcher to find a specific page from the search engine.
Do I need to tell you about the importance of keyword? The keyword can make your online business successful or fail.
People who make niche sites for them keyword research is 80% of total tasks and rest is 20%.
So what is keyword research exactly?
Keyword research is a process to find the right keywords for your business. So that people who are looking to buy your product or service can reach your website from search engines.
Why is keyword research crucial for your website?
The number one goal of keyword research is to rank your website on the first page of the search engine.
People who use search engine 90% of them believe first page results. They don’t consider four or fifth-page results as legitimate.
Quality of the first-page visitors is much much better than 10th-page visitors.
You can get a lot of page views from 5th or 6th page, but you’ll be unable to sell service or product because people who visit 5th or 6th page don’t have proper information about product or service. If you want to sell your service or product online, then you have to rank your website on the first page of the search engine.
Signs of a golden keyword.
After reading the importance of the keyword, one question may arise in your mind, what makes a keyword golden keyword? If you search your niche, you’ll find tons of keywords, but all of those are not golden keywords. There are few keywords in every niche which are considered as golden keywords.
So what are the characteristics of the golden keyword?
A golden keyword must have four characteristics, which are search volume, search intent, low competition, and commerciality.
Search intent is the ultimate factor for a keyword because it defines what you can achieve from a keyword.
A golden keyword must be low competitive because if you select a high competitive keyword, then you’ll be unable to rank on the first page of search engine.
Moreover, if you’re selling products or services, then your keyword should have commercial intent. If you choose a keyword without commercial purpose, then you’ll be unable to sell any product or service.
A Step by step guide on keyword research
Step one: Build a list of seed keywords.
Before going deep into the seed keyword research, you should know about the seed keyword. So what is the seed keyword exactly? In one-word; seed keyword is the main phrase of a niche.
Seed keyword can’t be used for the site. But you can use the seed keyword to find out profitable keywords for your website.
Let’s say I am researching keyword for an amazon niche site about woodworking then woodworking tools can be my seed keyword. By using this seed keyword, i can find out different types of woodworking tools such as miter saw, bench grinder, circular saw, power drill, palm sander, table saw, random orbital sander, etc.
There’s no rocket science for finding seed keyword; you have to be patient for finding seed keywords.
So how to find the seed keyword?
Here i am going to discuss my favourite ways to find out the seed keyword so that you can find out seed keywords easily and quickly.
1. Google suggest.
Google suggest is the goldmine when it comes to keyword research. Just type your niche in the Google search bar and add a to z in front of the topic. This way, you can find out a comprehensive list of seed keywords for a specific niche.
It’s fine but it also huge time-consuming matter because you need to put every character and number in front of the main topic.
Wait, i have an effective solution for this problem. Instead of manually putting keywords in the google search box for finding auto-suggestion of keywords you can use Ubersuggest. At this moment if you ask me which is the best free keyword research tool, then I would say Ubersuggest. Now, Ubersuggest provide more data than before. You can see keyword difficulties, trend, CPC, search volume, estimate visit, etc from the Ubersuggest.
Ubersuggest
As you can see, I got 279 ideas for woodworking tools with just a click. Is it not time-saving?
Additionally, you can use Infinitesuggest tool to find google suggestion for your topic or keyword. Infinite Suggest is an excellent alternative for Ubersuggest, but it doesn’t provide a broader range of data for keywords.
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Oh! I almost forgot about Google related searches. Any keyword research process cannot be completed without google related searches. From newbie to pro, everyone uses google related search at some point of their keyword research.
Another most important fact about google related search is it provides long-tail keywords, which is must for a website. The long-tail keyword is easy to rank compared to the short-tail keyword.
Google related searches idea is similar to the auto-suggest, but instead of providing auto-suggestion, it mixes your keyword with other phrase and gives you a list of related keywords. Whatever the mechanism google use to provide related keywords, you’ll find some seed keywords from Google related searches.
So how to get keywords using google related searches? First, type a keyword in the google search and click the search button. After that scroll to the bottom, at the bottom, you’ll get some potential keywords.
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3. Wikipedia
What do you think when Wikipedia comes in your mind? Wikipedia is a massive encyclopedia. Is it right? But for me, Wikipedia is a great asset when it comes to keyword research.
Here is how to use Wikipedia for keyword research;
First, go to google and type your topic+wikipedia:
After clicking the red marked link it takes me to this Wikipedia page;
A lot of seed keywords from a single Wikipedia page? It is the power of Wikipedia for researching keyword.
Wikipedia is one of the world’s most popular website, and it contains pages about virtually anything available on this earth. You can get tons of seed keywords idea from Wikipedia.
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4. Amazon
If you are looking to make a website for affiliate or selling your product or services, then you will need buying intent keywords. For buying intent keyword research Amazon is like the bible. You can’t ignore amazon when it comes to purchasing intent keyword research. I never ignore Amazon when i research buying intent keywords for my website. So let me tell you how to use amazon for finding ideal seed keywords;
First, go to the Google homepage and type topic+amazon. By using this searching method, Google will show the majority results from amazon. So let’s see what happen after searching on google;
As you can see, i can use router tables, wood chisels, angle clamps, hand tools, and so on as the seed keyword. Even you can also find more seed keywords by visiting subcategory in the amazon.
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5. Forum
Forum is a great way to discuss a specific topic with a group of people. Besides from talking about your problem with them you can also use the forum to find out your seed keywords.
How forum help you to find seed keywords? To get seed keywords, you need to browse the different sections of the forum. Each part of the forum can be a seed keyword.
By browsing your topic related forum, you can also learn about the problems of your audience. It’s an effective way to get content ideas.
To find out related forum use these search strings in google;
- Topic + forum
- Topic + board
- Topic + powered by BlogEngine
- Topic + powered By MyBB
- Topic + powered by PhpBB
You can get more seed keywords by visiting specific boards of a forum. Isn’t it a cool idea to collect seed keywords?
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6. Reddit.
Reddit is another massive source to find out seed keywords. Reddit has sub-Reddits on different topics. You can search for your topic on Reddit and check your topic related sub Reddits. To get more seed keywords idea from the Reddit don’t miss to visit related sub Reddits.
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Step 2: Expand every single seed keyword.
Now you have a list of seed keywords; it’s time to expand those keywords. So how can we expand those seed keywords? Here I’m going to show you how can you expand seed keywords by using different tools.
Important: In this step, you’ll need to see the search volume of keywords. Google keyword planner stopped showing search volume long ago, so install keyword everywhere add on to view the search volume.
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1. Keyword planner
Keyword planner remains a major keyword research tool for most of the people. For me, still, keyword planner is my number one keyword research tool. To expand every seed keyword, you need to place every keyword in the keyword planner keyword section. You can add a maximum of 10 keywords at a time. Keyword planner provides the most accurate data on keywords.
With the help of keyword planner, you can generate many keywords. Isn’t it so easy?
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2. Soovle
Do you have experience researching keyword with google auto suggest? If yes, then you can understand the mechanism of Soovle easily. Soovle provides keyword auto suggestion from google, Bing, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube, and answers.com. Every time you’ll get new keywords idea from Soovle. Soovle is a fantastic tool for keyword research.
To get keyword ideas from Soovle, you need to put the keyword in the search box then see the magic.
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3. LSIGraph
LSI keyword is an essential asset when it comes to writing SEO optimised content. You can use LSI keywords in your text copy to increase the search relevancy. Besides getting LSI keywords, you can use LSI Graph to expand your seed keywords. Apart from LSI keywords, LSI Graph also generates relevant keywords. As you’re in the mission of expanding seed keywords, LSI Graph will help you to do that properly.
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4. Longtail pro
As its name suggests, it can generate long-tail keywords. You can use this tool to expand your seed keywords and generate long-tail keywords. This tool will provide you data for search volume, CPC, keyword competitiveness, and competitor analysis.
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5. Semrush
Semrush is an all in one software. You can do a lot of things such as keywords research, organic research, competitor research, backlink analysis, and more. For keyword research, it’ll give you data on keyword search volume, CPC, keyword difficulty, competitiveness, keyword trend, and so on. You can quickly expand seed keywords by using Semrush.
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6. Quora
You may be familiar with Quora for getting answers for questions. Do you know you can use Quora for researching keyword? Quora is an excellent site for researching keyword. If you enter your keyword in the Quora search bar, you’ll get answers related to your seed keyword. This way, you can expand your seed keywords. You have to enter every single keyword in the Quora search box for expanding seed keywords.
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Step 3: Find out keyword stats.
Measure keyword difficulty.
Keyword difficulty stats is a ranking criterion for ranking keyword. Keyword difficulty starts from 0 to 100. Higher the keyword difficulty tough to rank the keyword on the search engine.
You can find keyword difficulties with the help of Semrush, Moz, ahrefs, etc. You need to create a list of potential keywords that’s why keyword competitiveness is so important. If you don’t have money to pay for premium tools, then you can use Moz chrome extension to measure keyword difficulty.
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Check back-link profile of the competitors
The backlink is the key for ranking of any website on the search engine. Backlink profile of a website or page indicates the quality of that page or site to the search engine. To go forward with your keyword listing process, you need to analyse the backlinks of competitors. If you find the competitor has backlinks from higher authority sites, then it’s recommended to avoid that keyword. You should select keywords which competitors have the minimum number of backlinks and backlinks are not from authority websites.
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Search volume of keywords.
For selecting potential keywords for a website, search volume plays an important role. Search volume indicates profitability of the keyword, visitors number, keyword competitiveness, etc.
Keywords with higher search volume will be tough to rank on the search engine. Keywords with less search volume have easier competition and easy to rank. But less search volume means less visitors and less profit. You need to find out keywords which have a good number of search volume, but competitiveness is low. If you can find this type of keyword, then you can get more visitors and can rank them on the search engine with less effort.
You can use keyword everywhere extension tool to see the search volume of your listed keywords. On the other hand, you can use other paid tools such as long tail pro and semrush to see your listed keywords search volume. Moreover, ubersuggest is the best free tool to check the keywords search volume.
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Page authority of a web-page indicates the trust, relevance, and link count. Page authority represented by a number and it’s 1 to 100. The higher number means higher authority. High authority pages carry values in the eyes of search engines.
Moreover, pages that rank on the search engine tends to have higher page authority. So you have to select keywords which competitors have lower page authority. You should avoid keywords which competitors have higher page authority.
You can use Moz extension to see page authority of a web-page.
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Use tools like long tail pro
Keyword research is not an easy task. For complete keyword research, you need a lot of work to be done. So to make your keyword research process easy, you can use the long tail pro as your keyword research tool. With the help of the long tail pro, you can get the necessary data with few clicks.
On the other hand, you can get your necessary data manually by using different tools such as for search volume you can use Uber suggest, Moz bar for domain and page authority, for backlink checking Ahrefs backlink checker.
You can use any tool; it’s up to you. I’m using the long-tail pro for a long time. This tool is considered to be one of the best keyword research tools by many SEO experts; that’s why I am recommending you to use this tool.
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Step 4: Reorganise and prioritise your keyword list.
Select keywords that have low competition.
You have completed finding out seed keywords, expanding seed keywords, collecting keywords stats. So what’s next? Now to going forward with the keyword research, you need to prioritise your keywords.
To prioritise keywords follow SEO metrics such as keyword difficulty, search volume, page authority, backlinks profile, etc.
Choose keywords that have favourable SEO metrics such as good average search volume, low competition, few links, lower page authority, etc.
I told you before that you can use tools such as long tail pro, Semrush, Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, etc.; to find out the SEO metrics.
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Analyse pages of low competition keywords.
Low competition metrics alone don’t give you guarantee that your keyword will be ranked on the first page of search engine. You should avoid deciding by depending on this metric alone.
Search the low competition keyword on Google and visit top ten pages, check their page authority, backlink profile, URL, title, word count, and other SEO factors.
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It’s time to make a list of keywords which looks very easy to rank according to SEO metrics.
After completing the checking search results of low competitors keywords, it’s time to list easy target keywords.
So how can we select easy target keywords? In the list of easy target keywords pick those keywords if they satisfy below conditions;
- Keywords that have lower competition
- Few backlinks
- Most of the pages have lower page authority
- Most of the pages have a lower domain authority.
- Weak on-page SEO.
After prioritising easy keyword list, you can move to the next step. In the next step, you will check the on-page SEO factors of competitors of your easy target keywords, because On-page SEO determines the position of a web-page on the search engine.
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Analyse on-page SEO of your easy target keywords.
By analysing on-page SEO factors such as word count and keyword density, you can understand what you need to improve over your competitors.
Moreover, you need to check page title, URL, image alt tags, page speed, internal linking, media, outbound links, etc.
Let’s say if you find that your competitor’s web-page doesn’t contain any video, then you can add a video in your page that will improve the quality of your page over the competitor. Check every on-page factors and see what you can improve.
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Produce SEO optimised content for your website.
Congratulations! You have completed your keyword research, and it’s time to produce content on them.
You should publish content on your website regularly. You can post once a week. What should I do after finishing writing content on prioritised keywords? You can start improving your published content.
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Final words
This step by step guide on keyword research is my proven process for keyword research. I have been following this same process for keyword research since I started building websites to make money. If you follow this step by step guide on keyword research, you’ll be able to find profitable keywords for your website. If you have any questions regarding keyword research, let me know about that in the comment box below.
Best of luck!
