So you’ve probably been hearing all this talk about Keyword Research and how it is good for SEO, and you decided to do some research on it and it brought you to this post: How To Get Started With Keyword Research For SEO.
You are at the right post, so just exercise patience and read this guide to the end; but first let’s get to understand the two terms: Keyword Research and SEO.
What is keyword research?
Keyword research is the means by which a blogger tries to find and analyze the terms people enter the most on search engines.
The sole aim of keyword research is to discover queries you ought to target or use to form the topic or title for your blog posts or content.
And it is the popularity of these queries that will help your blog rank on search engines.
And the end result is lots of organic traffic flowing to your blog.
What is SEO?
SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization, and it is a process where blog content meets all the requirements that will help it rank on search engines.
Understanding keyword research for SEO.
Keyword research for SEO is, therefore, the process of searching for the most searched key terms on search engines and using the result to structure your blog content to be found for those key terms on search engines.
If you can do proper keyword research for your blog posts, then you will soon find organic traffic flooding your blog.
Beginners who do not understand the need for keyword research, write their blog titles as they come into their heads.
And the results are hundreds of contents on their blog not ranking for any key terms, as well as being unable to bring in any traffic.
It is keyword research that will tell you what topics people care about the most, and are getting a high volume of searches per month.
And depending on how you can identify and sort out those topics, and use them in creating your blog content, then you will end up targeting the right readers for your blog posts as well as customers for your products and services.
How do I get started with keyword research for SEO?
How do I get started with keyword research for SEO? That is your question, right?
Believe me, I am going to answer this question by stating and explaining the keyword research process you can follow which will help you come up with a list of the right terms you should be targeting.
And if you can get it right, you will be able to create contents that help you get found on search engines for the terms your blog really focuses on.
Without mincing words, here are the steps you need to follow to do keyword research for SEO.
- List out words that relate to your blog’s mission, goal, or online business.
- Understand the user’s intent as it relates to the keyword you want to target.
- Also, look for related terms.
1. List out words that relate to your blog’s mission, goal, or online business.
To start off this process, you need to think of generic words that are most important for your blog’s mission, goal, or online business.
The next thing that is important is their search volume, which is always calculated in months.
Now once you have that data at your fingertips, you can then begin to create titles that will give your content the energy to rank on search engines.
2. Understand the user’s intent as it relates to the keyword you want to target.
There are times you may aim to address the problem of a searcher from a broader perspective and fail to succeed in ranking for the specific term.
And for that reason, you need to be very careful how you interpret the keywords you are targeting because keywords can have many different meanings beneath the surface, and the intent behind a search term is the most important factor for your ranking potential.
For instance, if you’re researching the keyword “how to promote your music” for an article you want to create.
“Promote your music” is too broad a topic since music has a lot of genres, therefore you need to be more specific on the kind of music you want to teach and how to promote or narrow it down to a country or region that has a major genre of music that supersedes the rest.
So instead of titling your article “How to promote your music” why not say “How to promote rap or hip hop music or “How to promote music in Nigeria”.
To however verify what the intent of a user is for a keyword, you might do well to input the keyword on the search engine yourself and see the types of results that come up.
3. Also look for related terms.
Now when you input a keyword into Google search, also take a closer look at what related terms people are also searching for.
You will see these related terms at the bottom of Google’s results, you can then use this keyword to spark up ideas for other keywords you may want to consider.
How to use the right keywords for your blog content.
1. Consider the 3 factors for choosing keywords.
There are 3 main factors to consider when settling for keywords to use for your blog posts, and they are relevance, authority, and volume.
- Relevance. For your content to rank on search engines, it must be the best source on the internet for the query and moreover is able to solve the searcher’s problem or meet up with his intents. Oh! lest I forget, other content is already ranking for those intents, and why do you think Google will replace them with yours? And for that reason, you must make your content more relevant than the ones already ranking. You can do this by looking up what information they already carry, their lengths as well style of writing. And if you can find more information that includes in your content, then you might just beat the competition.
- Authority. Authority amounts to the number of backlinks a page that is ranking already has. Backlinks are what send a signal of authority to Google to understand that the content is filled with so much information that cannot be hijacked or copied, and that’s why more content is pointing back at it. Thus, if you can get more backlinks for your content, then you will establish your authority on the subject and get a better search engine ranking.
- Volume: Volume is the number of times the keyword is searched per month across all audiences, and it is measured by MSV (monthly search volume). Therefore, you must ensure you are ranking for the keywords people are searching for the most.
2. Identify head terms and long-tail keywords and understand how to use them.
Head terms are those keywords that are generally shorter and more generic, they can be just 3 words in length. While Long-tail keywords are longer keyword phrases that usually contain 3 or more words.
It is therefore wise to mix them up while writing your blog content.
But it has been found that head terms are quick to rank than long-tail keywords because most people always love to cut down on the stress of having to input so many words into search engines.
3. Check those who are competing for the same keyword.
It is a good idea to try and discover those who are competing for a specific keyword you are aiming to rank for.
And this will help you to evaluate your keywords more.
If your competitor ranks for certain keywords you have on your list, it definitely makes sense to try and improve your own ranking for those words by adding words that are more realistic.
Another key is to also look out for those keywords your competitors might not care about, and use them to own a market share on very important terms.
There are various tools that will help you discover this, while I don’t recommend any, I suggest you run a Google search to discover them.
4. Use Google keyword planner to settle for the most perfect keywords.
Google’s Keyword Planner will help to get search the volume and traffic estimates for keywords you consider using. And when you get the information you learn from Keyword Planner, you can then use Google Trends to fill in some blanks.
Now when you discover terms that have a very little amount of traffic, flag them off and use the ones that are most searched for.
But then, no one knows what will happen tomorrow and cause those keywords with little search volumes to soar to the top.
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