Keyword Research For SEO: The Beginner’s Guide
Are you interested in learning how to perform keyword research for SEO?
Keyword research covers a lot of different purposes. When it’s done for SEO, it’s done with the intent to optimize a web page for search engines.
The result is that you’ll be more likely to rank higher & drive traffic.
In this post, you’ll learn what keyword research is and how to get started. We cover a bunch of different methodologies and tools you can use.
What is keyword research for SEO?
Keyword research is a broad topic that encompasses the work, exploration and industry examination involved in pinpointing search terms consumers use across a variety of platforms.
Keyword research for SEO is keyword research that’s performed for the purposes of search engine optimization (SEO).
It involves using keyword tools, industry research and competitive research to find keywords your website can target with content.
This research will uncover a keyword’s monthly search volume and difficulty to rank for as well as keywords your competitors rank for (and don’t rank for).
Benefits of keyword research
There are four main benefits performing keyword research can bring:
- Helping you create content for topics your audience is actually searching for in Google and will be searching for in the future
- Keeping you aware of keywords your competitors are ranking for and keywords they’re neglecting
- Helping you earn more organic traffic from search engines, primarily Google
- Helping you spend less on customer acquisition by helping you increase your organic search traffic
Topic relevance and forecasting
When consumers come across problems, they turn to a few different sources, one of which is search engines.
Most consumers turn to Google as it’s popular and is readily available on Android and iOS phones alike.
In fact, Google has a 90.48% market share among major search engines, according to StatCounter.
Keyword research clues you in on the individual search terms your audience uses to find solutions to the problems they face in your niche.
Knowing what these terms are can help you create content that targets these problems. It can even help you discover upcoming trends.
Competitive awareness
No matter how old or successful your blog is, you will always have at least one competitor who outperforms or nearly outperforms you.
Competitive websites are huge fountains filled with numerous keywords for you to track.
Competitive research is an important method of keyword research. It involves using competitive analysis tools to determine which keywords your competitors rank for, how well they rank for them and which keywords they don’t rank for.
This makes you more aware of just how well your competitors are doing in your niche and how much work you need to do to keep up.
Organic traffic
Traffic you earn from search engines is called “organic traffic” because you don’t need to pay for it through advertising.
When Google views your website and content as authoritative, it ranks your pages higher and higher, eventually allowing you to receive traffic from keywords your audience inputs into search engines.
When you perform keyword research, find suitable SEO keywords to target and target them well, you have the opportunity to increase the amount of organic traffic you receive from Google.
Customer acquisition
Keyword research leads to a domino effect of benefits, one of which includes more customer acquisitions and a cheaper cost of acquisition.
When you have more organic traffic, you’ll also receive more customers.
And because you’re acquiring those customers with content, you also won’t need to spend as much on advertising.
Keyword research terms to know
- Search Term – The term a user inputs into Google.
- Seed Keyword – A keyword you input into a keyword research tool to find additional keywords.
- Long-tail Keywords – A keyword that has three or more words.
- Search Volume – The number of times users search for a keyword on a monthly basis.
- Keyword Difficulty – How difficult it is to rank for a particular keyword.
- Broad Match – Keywords that contain your seed keyword or a variation of it in any position.
- Phrase Match – Keywords that contain your seed keyword as you typed it in any position.
- Exact Match – Keywords that contain your seed keyword as you typed it and in a specific position, usually first.
- SERP – An acronym for search engine results page.
- Position – Where you appear in search results. Your goal should be to rank on the first page for each keyword you target, which is usually the first 10 positions.
- CPC – Cost per click, or the amount you’ll spend per ad click if you advertise for this keyword in Google search results. It’s a metric you’ll see in keyword tools.
- Competition – The number of advertisers a keyword has. It’s also a metric in keyword tools. This metric is commonly misunderstood as a metric used to determine how difficult it is to rank for a particular keyword, which it’s not. That’s keyword difficulty.
- Search Intent – The reason users search for a particular keyword.
- Informational (I) – The user is seeking information on a subject.
- Navigational (N) – The user is trying to find a specific web page.
- Commercial (C) – A product the user is trying to find.
- Transactional (T) – Specific commercial transactions the user is trying to find, such as “car insurance quotes” or “flights to NYC.”
- Similar Keywords – Keywords that have the same meaning or almost have the same meaning as the one you’re researching.
- Related Keywords – Keywords associated with the one you’re researching.
- Secondary Keywords – Related keywords to mention in an article for a keyword you’re trying to target.
- Keyword Density – The amount of times you mention your target keyword in an article relative to the number of words in the article. This metric is presented as a percentage.
- Keyword Stuffing – Using a keyword too many times in an article, forcing keywords into an article unnaturally or including keywords that aren’t directly related to the topic. It’s a spammy SEO tactic that will only get you penalized by Google.
- Keyword Stemming – The use of keyword variations in an article. If you feel you’re using a keyword too many times in your article, you can use a variation of it every now and then.
Targeting keywords after Google’s HCU
Google rolled out a change to its algorithm in September 2023 called the Helpful Content Update (HCU). It’s designed to push content it deems more relevant than others to the top of SERPs, but it’s only proven to lower rankings for a lot of websites on the web for reasons that aren’t obvious.
There’s a lot we don’t know about the HCU, but we do know that sites Google sees as “review sites” got hit the hardest.
So, when you target keywords with your content, follow these guidelines to align your content with the HCU:
- Align your content with the user’s search intent. You shouldn’t create a tutorial for a keyword that only returns product-based search results. Target a different keyword instead.
- Don’t just target commercial content, including “best X” type articles and reviews. Publish more informational content that doesn’t have affiliate links to help balance the scales.
- Write high-quality content. Cover topics thoroughly and include unique insights while keeping your content as relevant to the keyword’s topic as possible.
- Only include relevant internal links.
- Include relevant external links from credible sources.
- Don’t over optimize your content.
How to find SEO keywords
We have a few different recommended methods for finding SEO keywords to target:
- Use a keyword research tool
- Determine keywords you already rank for
- Research relevant seed keywords
- Research your competitors
- Find relevant secondary keywords
- Find rising keywords that are likely to grow in popularity
We’ll explore each method below.
Choose a keyword research tool
You can input a seed keyword into a search engine and read through each page that comes up as well as internal links those pages link to in order to find similar and related keywords, but this is a lot of work.
It’s much more efficient to use a keyword research tool. Not only will it output similar and related keywords for your seed keywords, it will include keyword difficulty scores and search volumes.
It’s best to choose a tool that allows you to perform keyword and competitive research and allows you to create keyword lists so you don’t forget about keywords you find.
Best keyword research tools
We mostly recommend SE Ranking for SEO keyword research. It’s affordable and has tools for keyword and competitive research.
It also has a keyword manager and will allow you to audit your site and track rankings for individual keywords.
Morningscore, Mangools, Semrush, Ahrefs and SpyFu are fantastic keyword research tools as well, and they include the same features as SE Ranking.
Some, like Semrush, include more features, but if you only want to perform keyword and competitive research, SE Ranking is a fantastic tool to use that won’t oversell you on features you don’t need.
Look for keywords you already rank for
If your site has been up and running for a few months or more, you likely already rank for a few keywords.
Even if you rank on Page 10 for a particular keyword, it’s likely more valuable to optimize your site for a keyword you already rank for than one you haven’t even targeted, yet.
Use your keyword research tool to audit your site. It will reveal keywords you already rank for as well as which pages rank for them.
This gives you a handy list of articles to optimize.
In SE Ranking, you can research your site with the Competitive Research tool and reveal which keywords you rank for that are in the lowest positions.
Some of these are low-quality keywords or keyword variations that aren’t worth targeting, but some may reveal content that needs to be optimized.
You should only optimize content that’s at least six months old. If an article is too new, you may just need to give it time or you may need to promote it better.
If your entire site is too new, you likely need to work on improving your domain authority instead by producing more high-quality content, diversifying your traffic sources and acquiring more backlinks.
You can also track your rankings and traffic for free with tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
Research seed keywords
This is where keyword research truly begins.
You know your niche, but you need keyword ideas to come up with new content ideas. What you also need are keywords to input into your keyword research tool in order to generate those keyword ideas. These are seed keywords.
Use your own knowledge of your niche to come up with seed keywords to look up.
Use broad keywords. For example, in the fishing niche, we could use “fishing,” “bass fishing” and “walleye” as seed keywords.
Note: Using a term like “bass” on its own isn’t recommended because “bass” may also refer to the musical instrumental, which will only lead to inaccurate keyword ideas. If you’re not sure if a keyword suggestion is relevant to your niche, input it into Google to see what type of results it produces.
SE Ranking separates its keyword suggestions into a few different categories:
- Similar keywords – Keywords that feature your seed keyword and variations of it. For example, inputting “fishing” as a seed keyword will also generate suggestions that include “fish” in the Similar list
- Related keywords – Keywords that directly relate to your seed keyword
- Questions – Keyword suggestions that feature your seed keyword in any variation but are phrased as questions
- Low search volume – Keywords that have low search volumes. This keyword list is useful because it helps you find keywords that may be easier to rank for and will help you fill your blog with informational content
You can also filter the results by search volume and keyword difficulty to make it easier to find keywords that may be easier to rank for.
Setting the minimum search volume to 100 to 250 will weed out low-quality keywords, especially if your keyword research tool has limitations on the number of suggestions it will list for your plan.
If you click the “+” icon next to a keyword suggestion in SE Ranking, you can add the keyword to a list, helping you create a list of keyword ideas for your seed keyword or for a particular project.
You should only choose keywords that are directly related to your niche.
For example, inputting “fishing” as a seed keyword will return “what fish can live with a betta” as a suggestion.
However, if most of your content is about fly fishing, targeting keywords related to bettas is not recommended since fly fishing is a sport and bettas are pets. These are two separate niches.
Google Keyword Planner is a free keyword research tool you can use to find seed keywords. It doesn’t have data on keyword difficulty, so it may not be useful as your only keyword research tool.
Perform competitive research
Keywords your competitors rank for are fantastic keywords to target.
You need to do everything your competitor does in order to rank but you also need to do more than they do. Targeting the same content they target and doing it better is a great place to start.
Again, when you input your competitor’s URL into your keyword research tool’s competitive analysis tool, it’ll reveal organic keywords your competitor ranks for as well as which pages rank for those keywords.
However, most decent keyword research tools include an additional competitive analysis tool that allows you to determine which keywords both you and your competitor rank for, which keywords your competitor ranks for and you don’t, and which keywords you rank for and your competitor doesn’t.
This tool is called “Competitor Comparison” in SE Ranking, “Keyword Gap” in Semrush and “Content Gap” in Ahrefs.
Find secondary keywords
Secondary keywords are related to your target keyword. Mentioning relevant keywords in your article helps the Google algorithm determine what your article is about.
Keyword research tools can reveal secondary keywords, but it’s much better to use tools like Frase and Surfer SEO, which let you know how long your articles should be and how many images you should use.
They also give you a list of secondary keywords you should mention as well as content scores that grade how well optimized your content is for your target keywords.
Find rising keywords
Use Google Trends to find keywords that are rising in popularity.
Just input a seed keyword, choosing the “topic” version, if you can. Make sure you change the duration to “Past 30 Days.”
Then, scroll down to the Related Queries section, and make sure it’s set to Rising.
Click the arrow at the bottom to reveal more queries.
Do a second search with “Past 90 Days” after your first.
Target keywords you find here only if it’s relevant to your niche. “TinyFishing” may be a rising keyword, but if you don’t normally produce content on video games, it may not be relevant.
Use your own knowledge of your audience or ask them directly if you’re not sure if they’d be interested in certain topics.
How to choose the right keywords to target for your site
When you do keyword research, there are a few things to consider when deciding on keywords to target:
- Keyword difficulty – If your site is newer, target keywords that have a difficulty score that’s 40 or lower, focusing on keywords that are 30 or lower, if you can. You can still target competitive keywords later on, but focus on keywords that are easier to rank for to start out with.
- Search intent – Only choose keywords that have search intents that align with your site. If you don’t sell products, don’t target keywords with commercial intent.
- Relevancy – Only target keywords that are relevant to your niche. Don’t just target keywords that include keywords that are related to your niche.
Conclusion
Keyword research should never be an afterthought. You need to get it done right away.
You’ll also need to consider things like search intent, keyword difficulty, and relevancy.
It makes the most sense to go for low difficulty keywords that are relevant to your niche.
But you also need to ensure that search results align with your site & content.
For example, if you find ecommerce product pages ranking for your target keyword and you don’t run an ecommerce site, you’ll be unlikely to rank at all.
You need all of your keywords to tick these boxes.
This will help your time & budget go further so you can remain as competitive as possible.
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