Today I will show you exactly how to do keyword research for SEO.
In this comprehensive guide, I will cover the following:
- What are keywords, why are they important, and what are the various types
- Keyword tools
- How to find keywords and choose the right ones
- How to choose the right keywords
If you want to place your website in the first results of Google for more traffic, this updated keyword research guide will be handy for you.
Let’s begin.
What are keywords?
“Keyword” is a popular term we have all heard, but if SEO is new to you, you might be confused about what keywords are and why they are so important.
A keyword can consist of one or more words (often referred to as a “long-tail keyword”). Keywords are essential because they tell search engines about your website’s page content.
“Keywords” is also a term used to refer to the words and phrases people enter into a search engine to find the information they are looking for. If a user’s search keywords match your site’s keywords, your site will appear in search results.
Why is keyword research important for SEO?
Keyword research impacts every SEO activity, including new topic research, on-page SEO, and content promotion.
That’s why keyword research is the first step of an SEO campaign.
Put it another way:
Keywords are like a compass for SEO campaigns – they tell you where to go and whether or not you’re making progress.
As a bonus, keyword research helps you better understand your target audience. That’s because keyword research gives you the right directions into what customers are looking for and the exact words and phrases they use.
Keyword research is essential for a few reasons, but mostly to bring in organic traffic that is highly likely to convert.
The time and energy you spend researching keywords will pay off by helping you create great targeted content that brings the right people to your website – people who are more likely to buy because your content aligns perfectly with what they are looking for.
What are the different types of keywords?
1. Short-Tail Keywords
A short tail keyword is a two or three-word phrase. Sometimes called a “main keyword,” these terms typically have high volume and can be hard to win due to the term’s breadth.
For example, take the phrase “keywords.” This could refer to keyword research, tools, rebuses, etc. Without context, these short keywords may not be as helpful in driving conversions as the traffic they bring, and they may not be looking for what you provide.
Now, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use short-tail keywords! They work best when combined to create more specificity and context to signal to search engines what your content is really about.
2. Long-Tail Keywords
These keywords consist of more than four words and are much more specific than short-tail keywords. For example, a long-tail keyword would be “how to do keyword research.”
People using long-tail keywords know exactly what they are looking for, resulting in your page/article’s much higher conversion rates.
3. Short-term fresh keywords
Do you remember when Black Adam, the movie, came out in 2022? This is a perfect example of a new short-term keyword. As you can see from this graph, searches for “Black Adam” had a significant spike in 2022 and were incredibly close to its theatrical release.
During that period, it would be considered a new short-term keyword. Since it’s no longer relevant, the utility of that keyword is low, but people using those keywords may have seen explosive growth in views during that period. These search terms benefit current events and news footage to attract new audiences.
4. Long-Term Evergreen Keywords
The exact opposite of new short-term keywords, this type of keyword is always relevant. If you are using par and key evergreens, it’s essential to ensure your content is timeless or put in the effort to keep it current.
For example, keywords like “SEO 2022 keyword research” are limited to the year you identified. An evergreen keyword would be “keyword research for SEO.” While you may not get an immediate high-traffic volume with evergreen keywords, they tend to bring in moderate search volume with a high conversion rate.
5. Local keyword (Geo-targeting keyword)
Some of the most accessible keywords to use, geo-targeting keywords, are just what they sound like: keywords that relate to a specific neighborhood, city, state, or country. The area you’re in serves as keywords you’ll want to use, like “Turin” or “Milan.”
These keywords are great for small businesses looking to attract locals to their products and services.
6. Product-defining keyword
These keywords are related to a specific product. For example, instead of “SEO courses,” the keyword that defines the product would be “courses Adrian Gram.”
When people search for keywords to define a product, they are usually ready to buy or already familiar with your products. They may need that little extra information to seal the deal.
7. Customer-defining keywords
Using these types of keywords is quite simple. In today’s market, personalization is critical. Your target audience is out there, and by using customer-defined keywords, you can help drive them to your products and services through organic SEO reach.
8. LSI Keywords
LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing, which refers are thematic keywords associated with your primary keyword. If your main keyword is “keywords,” your LSI keywords could be “google keyword research,” “keyword tool,” etc.
These keywords help capture the different ways people search for the same thing. People use various keywords related to one topic, and LSI keywords can help you capture all that traffic.
9. Related Vertical Keywords
Related vertical keywords are similar to LSI in that they are connected to your keywords. The difference is that related vertical keywords are more like cousins than direct descendants of the parent keyword.
10. Intent-based keywords
These keywords are those based on the specific intent of the user. There are four different types:
- informative;
- transactional;
- navigation;
- commercial.
Informative keywords
Informational keywords are those based on research. In this phase, the user is trying to search for the product or service he wishes to purchase.
These keywords can be, in our case:
- what are keywords
- how to find keywords for SEO
- how to search keywords on google
- how to choose keywords
- And more.
Transactional keywords
Transactional keywords include all those keywords where the intention is to make a purchase. The user searches to purchase a product or service, such as:
- “Product name” for sale
- Buy “product name”
- “Product name” offer
- How to buy “product name”
- Order “keyword”
Navigation keywords
The navigation keywords suggest that the user intends to navigate to a specific page of which he is most likely already aware. Still, he does not type the web address directly for one reason or another.
Navigation keywords can include brand names, product names, service names, locations, or words like near me, directions, prices, cost, and so on.
Navigation keywords are those types of queries that users enter to jump directly to a particular page: product names, service names, locations, and even brand names.
These aren’t typically the types of keywords you can physically optimize for, but it’s a good idea to know they exist.
Commercial keywords
People trust keywords with commercial intent if they are in the “consideration” stage of the marketing funnel. These keywords highlight interest in a particular product or service and usually lead to a purchase.
An example of a keyword with commercial intent is “best tools for finding keywords.” Searchers using the query most likely need a tool for research, which is why they are looking for the best options.
Remember that, like navigation; commercial keywords can also contain brand names.
An example would be “Ahrefs vs. Semrush.” However, since these keywords aren’t used to find a specific page on your website, the keywords aren’t considered navigational.
How to identify commercial keywords?
An easy way to find commercial keywords is to use Google’s autocomplete. Enter a phrase or a keyword that describes your target product along with business terms, such as:
- Best
- Alternative
- Review
- VS
By following an excellent organizational content hierarchy and adequately optimizing your potential keywords, it will be easier for people to navigate to the content that is important to them.
Keyword tools
Can you find keywords without a tool?
Safe.
But a tool makes the whole process MUCH easier.
Here are the keyword research tools that I use and recommend.
1. Ahrefs
Most people consider Ahrefs a valuable link-building tool, but it is also an excellent tool for keywords; I mainly use it.
The nice thing about Ahrefs “Keyword Explorer” is that you get a lot of valuable data about each keyword.
That said:
When delving into a single term, Ahrefs Keyword Explorer is the best.
2. SEMrush
If you want to use a paid keyword tool, I HIGHLY recommend SEMrush.
This is because SEMrush is a HUGE time saver.
This is because instead of entering random keywords into a keyword research tool, SEMrush shows you the exact keywords a site already ranks.
So, if you have a site that you’re competing with within Google, enter it in SEMrush.
And steal all their keywords.
3. Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is helpful because it has a free version. It recently received a massive update and overhaul.
Ubersuggest generates keyword ideas from Google search suggestions and provides data on each keyword (such as search volume, CPC, keyword difficulty, and more).
There are many other keyword research tools:
- Keywords Everywhere
- KeywordTool.io
- Moz Keyword Explorer
- SE Ranking
- Keyword Research Pro
- Mangools KW Finder
- etc.
I’m going to go deeper into this topic in a specific article because we have to distinguish the different tools by their functionality which can be: keyword suggestion tools, competitor keyword research, keyword density tool, and finally, tools for searching for keywords which will be the ones we will use in this guide.
How to do keyword research for SEO?
Keyword research should align with your SEO strategy and goals. Before you start your keyword research, review your website profile to assess its strengths and weaknesses.
Depending on your website’s authority, the content’s quality, and your industry’s competitive landscape, optimizing your pages will take a different effort. Keep your target audience in mind: You should focus on the value your website offers users and how to satisfy their search intent.
When you get down to it, keyword research is a three-part process.
1. Create a list of keywords (topics)
The first step in keyword research is brainstorming a list of possible keywords. These keywords can be as broad as you like and anything related to your industry, products, or services.
So, for example, if you are a web agency, your keywords could be something like “website development,” “website design services,” or anything related to the products you sell.
You can also use location-based keywords, meaning words and phrases that describe your state, city, region, or other terms that users might use to describe your area.
2. Main keyword and search intent
We then need to enter these keywords in Google to search for our long tail, which, as we said, will be much more specific if we also have short tail keywords in the list, bringing our page/article to much higher conversion rates.
The keywords that Google returns are specific to a web agency’s service. We choose “professional website design services”.
You can also check your competitors’ sites and see the keywords they use to describe their similar products and services. Investigating your competitors can be a great way to develop ideas you never thought of in the first place and can inform the rest of your keyword research later on.
In any case, we would do it for specific articles; it concerns my strategy and how I organize the keywords.
3. Enter your long tail keyword into Google
The point is to understand our competition and the types of posts/pages Google places at the top. Once this is done, we would get the article or page of one of our competitors, preferably choosing from the top
4. Use the keyword research tool
When you type a keyword into Ahrefs, you’ll get a list of related keywords that people commonly search for on Google.
We are dealing with multiple types of keywords, including Local Keywords. Now, faced with local keywords, we need to explore how we optimize them. Let’s focus on our strategy and the primary keyword, “professional website design services.”
But in the next step, we’ll go over what to do with all your keywords and how to organize them to get the best possible results for your SEO strategy.
5. Export your keyword data and organize them by type and intent
So, you already have clear what your main keyword is, you need to define all the keywords for the article, and here we can divide them into:
- Primary Keyword – The primary keyword that a page is optimized for
- Secondary keywords – different but related to the main keyword
- Variation of Keywords: synonyms, plurals, abbreviations, etc.
For the strategy I use, I further define the keywords by intent which, as we said above, can be:
- Informational
- Commercial
- Transactional and
- Navigation
To make your search easier, I’m sharing my working template with you. Please write us your email in the form below so you can download the template and stay updated with my latest guides.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed my keyword research guide.
Keyword research is part of search engine optimization and a source of inspiration for your business. With an efficient keyword list, you will rank and target the right audience, which means you are on your way to a reliable website that converts.
Let me know if you have any questions about this by leaving a short comment below.