To do keyword research and get the keywords that will help you rank isn’t the most straightforward task.
Search isn’t in its infancy any longer. Search has evolved and so have people who use search.
Queries and their intentions are more complex than ever.
That means it isn’t enough that you plaster an 800-word article on some randomly picked high-volume keyword and expect it to rank. You need to understand the intent behind the search.
You need to be able to weave in their questions, frustrations, demands, and problems within the scope of the article. Fortunately, keyword research tools too have evolved with time. Today, they offer unprecedented ability to sneak a glance past the obvious and give context to any keyword.
Before you’re able to keyword research, you need to figure out how each piece of the puzzle fits in. Also consider reading my comparison of SEMrush vs Moz and see which keyword research tool fits the bill for you.
The next section will cover that.
Understanding Different Stages of Awareness
If you’re not living under a rock, you might be privy to all the search engine updates going around. There’s one update per month. Just 2 days ago, Google rolled out the core September update.
As usual, when the dust settles many sites will bite the dust. Some will lose so much traffic their will to continue will break.
If you haven’t paid attention, there’s something to learn. A lot of the sites that get targeted belong to bottom-of-the-funnel kind of sites. They publish review articles that have no apparent connection with each other. There’s tons of content with the sole purpose of ranking and banking.
That annoys Google.
There are three stages of awareness your prospect goes through
Here are they:
- Problem Aware
- Solution Aware
- Product Aware
By writing product reviews and best-of articles, you’re catering solely to the bottom of the funnel visitors. Yes, that’s where the money is. Meaning most marketers may create churn and burn sites that don’t really help the visitor.
When you have content that speaks to visitors from all groups of awareness that’s the hallmark of an authority site.
Not long ago, Coby Wren, whose guest post on DFYlinks you might be familiar with talked about creating supporting articles between 10 to 20 that then link to the main review.
It worked for Amazon niche sites helping him rank without much additional effort.
Now that you have understood a few things on awareness stages let’s talk about how the queries can be broadly classified into certain types. How to recognize them? And how to write content for that particular query type.
Keyword Research
Not all keywords were created equal. Based on which awareness stage they belong to, they can be clubbed under as informational, transactional and so on.
Some keywords get higher search volume. Others don’t. Keywords tell you how people express what they’re thinking, what they want. In a way that means we have a glimpse into their minds.
But ultimately it boils down to using keywords that are relevant, high volume and easy to rank for.
That’s why you must go beyond a cursory glance at the list of keywords to glean further insights into whether these are doable.
Here’s the lowdown on how to identify which keywords to use to inform your strategy.
Understand Search Intent
Search intent could be the biggest gamechanger today. Those who understand it effectively can and are able to create the right kind of content for their site that ranks well.
Search intent simply means the why behind someone who typed the phrase in search engines. Why did he search that? What does he want?
By fitting search intent inside your content, you drive relevant targeted traffic to your sites.
If someone is seeking the loan rates of a specific bank, and your page provides that info, give it to the visitor in the first few lines, rather than expounding on the benefits of loans in a 2000 word article.
Satisfying search intent doesn’t always mean creating the longest article ever. It means creating the most relevant article for the visitor.
This may be hard to gulp down in the face of articles today that routinely break 10,000 words, and don’t seem to end even past that mark, but that’s all there is to search intent. Being relevant.
Top of the funnel queries
You might remember me talking about the different awareness stages.
So when people are aware of their problem and are looking for an answer. Or when they’re trying different queries to get a hold on what their problem is.
Let’s consider a hypothetical scenario. I have flat feet. If you’ve ever seen a person with flat feet you’ll know they lack a curvature to their foot. Sort of a crescent moon shape that’s created when they walk with feet on a dry floor. I lack that. So, among the many problems such people face is persistent pain in the feet and sometimes in the back. Basic exercise like jogging or brisk walking often ends up in pain.
For some people with flat feet, those who want to run, may not be aware that there are special shoes that help tame the problem to a great deal.
Unless told by someone they will never search for a solution. They’re problem aware but blissfully unaware of a solution. Let’s say someone told me about these special shoes. Now, what will I search for?
Exactly,
I am shown around a lot of products that can potentially solve my problem. I can probably search more on a single pair from a company or search for all the different options. Once you’ve discussed top of the funnel queries—it’s time to go deeper with review posts. Here’s an example of a post discussing Smart podcast player review.
Look at how the post discusses several features of the product in question, listing down pros and cons. That’s what you should do too.
At this stage, I am just testing the waters, taking my sweet time learning about the product and what it promises to do.
So if you were running a blog that covered shoes for flat feet, you’d start with informational queries. What are flat shoes for?
What do they help you with?
Are there any famous people with flat feet (so I don’t feel like a loser) and so on.
The breadth and width of informational queries cover a lot of space. And that’s why it’s difficult to create an authority site. You’ve to slog for months.
Ahrefs has a questions feature that helps you cherry-pick these questions and include them in your content.
You could answer these questions as part of sub-headings or you could create an FAQ section just like 10beasts does here.
They do the same thing for most of their posts.
On Ahrefs go to the Keyword Explorer, search for your query. On the left sidebar, locate Questions and see the Questions that show up.
This can give you ideas to include in your main article or if the subject warrants additional thought, you can write it up as a supporting article.
You will get a lot of traffic that ultimately builds towards a higher number of clicks. Or you could convert the traffic into leads and then send them promotional content later on.
Ahrefs isn’t the only tool that can help you discover questions. BuzzSumo does the same. They sport a highly evolved questions feature in their tool that can give Ahrefs a run for its money.
You may head over to Quora to find more questions you can use. Or simply search on Google to find their carousel results that are full of relevant questions updated every day based on what people are searching.
If you put your head to it, there are hundreds of different ways you could find more questions to add to your posts.
Commercial Intent-bottom of the funnel
Having covered questions, supporting content in the above paras we will come now to where most of the money is.
When someone intends to buy something, he uses keywords we call as commercial intent.
Circling back to the example of running shoes, once I have gone through the products listed, I might search for the Best running shoes. Or I might string together the word review with a brand name to see its reviews.
As a searcher know that he/she wants to make sure their money is well spent.
A person searching for these queries isn’t too far off from purchasing a product. He’s just waiting to arrive at a decision.
Now for most products, if there’s an Amazon link in the best of products people will click through and some will buy. For others, they will try their luck appending coupons and discounts with the particular product to see if they can snag a discount that works.
It’s prevalent in the digital marketing niche. Buy a hosting. Search for a coupon first and so on.
I mean, nobody would search for discount codes and deals about the product unless they’re interested in buying it!
These searchers convert 100% if they’re able to get the coupon code. They’re the highest value in the chain but also are easy to lose if the coupon doesn’t work for them.
Other things to keep in Mind
Monthly Search Volume
Simply put the bigger the search volume more people search for that particular term. More people searching for something means more clicks to your site if you rank well for that term.
For the first position, sans a zero result you get approximately 30% of the clicks. For two that reduces to less than 20% and so on. It’s diminishing returns down.
Search volume without relevance only tells half the story.
Keyword Difficulty
Organic keyword difficulty is a rough estimate of the competition involved in ranking for that keyword. How many sites are there vying for the top spot. How many of these sites have high DA? Loads of links? It seeks to quantify all that and provide a neat little metric that tells you if you can realistically hope to rank for a keyword.
All that said, this metric isn’t set in stone. You may sweat it out trying to rank for an easy KD keyword and coast on the top for a difficult keyword without any trouble.
I have. Several times.
But, that said most times they give a good estimate of the toughness
And odds are by tracking and including questions in your content you’re already sopping up a lot of the low hanging fruit. Long-tail keywords which include questions too contain three or more terms and easy to rank because no one bothers typing all those keywords all the time.
The search volumes are lower but targeted, meaning what you lose in numbers you just might be able to make back in conversions.
Here’s a Sample Scenario
Step 1: Discover search volumes
Find out how many people are searching for your product you’re going to write about or the service in Google and sit down to write a blog post on it
Do you want to rank higher in Google search and drive more traffic?
Then find out how many people are searching for a keyword related to your product and use it as a part of an SEO strategy.
In general, if people are searching for a keyword that is low in competition, you’re likely going to be interested in using it.
So, start by doing some quick keyword research using Google Trends.
Remember, Google Trends gives you the number of times the keyword is searched on Google.
Let’s use ‘pet supplies’ as an example.
Here’s what happens when I type in ‘pet supplies’:
As you can see, there are a few thousand people searching for this keyword.
However, it’s not super competitive.
That’s because there are lots of other pet supply sites competing for these searches.
So, if you want to rank higher in Google search results, you’ll want to target a keyword with a lower competition level.
You can also use a tool such as Ubersuggest to find all keywords related to a keyword. But we will come to that later.
Step 2: Write content for each of your titles
Now that you’ve figured out the keyword, it’s time to write content for each of your titles.
Although you can write content for each page of your shop, it’s best to focus on one of the main pages.
Why?
Two main reasons for this are that it ensures that you get the most search traffic, and it helps you get the most eyes on your page.
To illustrate this further, consider the case of Simon Penson.
Simon has an eCommerce store that sells ‘scissors’.
And, on each of these pages, Simon has written content that addresses the keyword that is searched most often.
Simon has written content for each of these pages.
However, it’s the main keyword used on the third and fourth page that is the one Simon is targeting.
This could mean that Simon is well-placed to succeed.
Because he’s able to successfully rank for this keyword, he’ll get a lot of organic traffic to his eCommerce store.
However, I am not going to focus on the third page here.
Instead, I want you to focus on the secondary keywords that are used on the third page.
For instance, Simon will be able to rank for ‘scissors’ and ‘handcraft’ keywords, as well as ‘pet supplies’ and ‘handcraft’.
These are the two main types of keywords that people search for on Google.
So, if you want to achieve the best results, you should focus on creating content for these keywords.
What’s more, if you really want to rank well on Google, you should also create content for one of the other types of keywords.
This will save you a lot of time when creating content.
Secondly, you’ll want to create content for the keywords that receive the highest search volume.
Neither Simon nor I would recommend trying to rank for any of the ‘low competition’ keywords unless you’ve already had some success with ranking well for them.
Instead, it is best to target keywords that have low competition.
If you’re new to blogging, I want you to read this guide from Blogging Pros.
In it, the author uses different types of keywords to rank for the keywords that they’re targeting.
After typing in ‘pet supplies’, the results page looks like this:
This is a good example of how you can target keywords efficiently.
If you want to target keywords like this, you need to first create content that will target the main keywords that you’re targeting.
However, let’s take a look at something else.
You’ll also need to create content that is going
How to find profitable keywords
1. Search for your product/service on Google
The simplest keyword research method is to search for a product or service on Google. Find your product or service by typing in a phrase into the search bar. For example, if you are a florist and you want to find florist listings, you may search for florist listings with “florist” in the search bar.
Here’s the keyword results page for “florist.”
By typing in “florist,” you’ll see the following:
2. Find searches related to florist
Another method of keyword research is to go to the bottom of the page. For example, if you’re searching for “florist,” you’ll see the following:
Searches related to florist
Click on the link to get additional search suggestions. You may not get a lot of search suggestions, but you will get a few.
Then, you’ll need to interact with these keywords to see what other keywords people type into Google.
One of the keywords you’re going to want to look at is “flowers.” You can see the top three listings for this search:
* New flowers * Flowers from New York City * Flowers Harbor
If you want to find more, you can click on the “More” tab. You’ll be presented with a list of other keywords in this list.
One of the other options you have is “flowers in New York City.” You can see the best results from the second search, as you can see below. You can also click on the second listing for additional long-tail keywords. You’ll see the same results, as there is a lot of competition for this keyword.
If you were good at Google, you’ll love this keyword.
How to do Keyword Research with Google Keyword Planner for free
Keyword research isn’t a new thing. Google is an industry leader.
One of the best free tools that aid this process is the Google Keyword Planner.
It’s got all the tools you need including accurate keyword suggestions. In fact, it’s pretty much the best keyword tool to use if your budget is limited.
The reason why I’m going to share this guide is because it’s something more than just a guide.
Google Keyword Planner is an elite tool that will help you save time and money.
With it, you can find all kinds of information.
You can even search for everything from the top keywords, to the most competitive keywords.
Google Keyword Planner even features a difficulty score that tells you how many advertisers are in the thick bidding for the particular keyword.
And the data isn’t just from Google. It’s based on AdWords data as well.
So you know exactly what you need to know to use the Google Keyword Planner to your advantage.
But here’s why you really need to use it.
There’s one thing you need: your Google Ads account.
But what’s more, you don’t have to guess. The tool also gives you insights so you can see the exact keywords that work best. The Planner gives hundreds of suggestions based on a seed keyword. You also get to see search volumes associated with each of these keywords.
Use Google Keyword Planner to plan the most profitable keywords in your campaign
But if you want to speed things up, you’ll need to use this tool in the right way.
And that’s what I am going to provide in this guide.
I’ve created a simple step-by-step process that will help you plan the most profitable keywords in your campaign.
If you follow this process, you’ll have a huge advantage when you’re planning your keywords.
But in order to complete this process, you’ll need to have a tool in place.
How to use Google Keyword Planner to plan your keyword list
It’s no wonder that Google AdWords is one of the most used marketing channels.
It’s not just for big corporations. It’s for small businesses too.
On Google ads, in the listed tools click on Keyword Planner.
Before you, you see two different tools. First, one says Find new keywords and the second one says get metrics and forecasts for keywords.
With the first tool, you can add keywords to get relevant suggestions in response.
With the second tool, you can generate search volumes if you already have a long list of keywords.
I’ll show you what’s available.
If you just want to get an approximate idea of the search volume associated with these keywords, it comes in handy. Please note you won’t get new ideas with this tool.
To get started copy and paste the list of keywords you have.
Enter them into the search field and click on Get started.
Finally, the key here is how targeting is going to influence your campaign.
Let’s say that you’re researching “dog food.”
Your campaign could start with a broad keyword and then narrow it down or broaden it up depending on your goals.
Here’s what matters most:
Keyword: You get a list of keywords that are sorted by relevance if you choose the keyword by relevance option. These keywords are most relevant to your seed keyword.
Avg. monthly searches: This is the range of the monthly search volume of the keyword ideas that were generated. Please take the search volumes with a pinch of salt.
There are also seasonal keywords that jump into focus depending on the season say Christmas, or a festival. The averaged out search volumes would divide it month by month. This is by no means an accurate representation of reality. The volumes peak in December and are low during all other months.
Competition: Competition on the keyword planner shows the number of advertisers bidding on that keyword. A high competition doesn’t reflect organic difficulty.
How to do Keyword research with Ubersuggest for free
Ubersuggest is one of the best keyword research tools out there.
It allows you to search for keywords with dozens of different data points, and it’s easy to keep track of your competitors’ keyword and content marketing strategies.
Here’s how to get started using Ubersuggest:
1. Create a free account on Ubersuggest or go right ahead without an account. The tool works just as fine.
2. Create a search with a phrase that you want to search.
3. Fill in the search field with a keyword.
4. Click the Done button.
Finally, you’ll see a keyword list, at the bottom. Scroll down to find it.
For instance, I searched for the term running shoes.
Click on the tab view all keyword ideas to get the entire list of exact match and phrase match keywords.
There’s been an update to the tool and now they offer questions, prepositions and comparison keywords too (running shoes vs trainers)
Here you’ll find all the keywords that are relevant to the main term or are its variations. You can see how many keywords you can be using in their online marketing strategies.
Now, you can start to research your competition’s keywords. You can click on the tabs on the left side of the search results to filter the results by your competition.
If you want to get even more precise, you can enter your competitor’s URL.
The tool will show you every single keyword they rank for.
You can click on any keyword, and you can filter the results by the competition.
So you can quickly see what your competition is doing with their keywords.
It also gives you a clear overview of the keywords you’re ranking for.
The tool also gives you traffic estimates, based on how many visitors your competition is getting.
If they are getting thousands of visitors a day from search engines, you want to copy their strategy.
Or, if they are getting a fraction of the traffic, you want to build a better strategy.
Just click on your competition’s website and you’ll see all of their traffic estimates: See all the top pages that are bringing them traffic. It doesn’t get any easier than this.
You don’t want to copy them. That would be a huge waste of time.
Instead, you want to build off of their strategies. And gain understanding based on what’s working for them.
So create a list of keywords that your competition is using.
Once you have a list of keywords, you want to start building off of their sites.
Ubersuggest is a free tool that shows you all the keywords that your competition is targeting.
If you enter a keyword on Ubersuggest, the tool shows you which of the competitors are ranking on the first page for the keyword. You can see how many backlinks they have and the domain authority for each of the sites on the first page.
Congrats! You’ve found all the keywords that your competition is targeting.
