Is keyword research still important? You might even learn something new about your competition and come up with some great content ideas.

Keyword research is still crucial, but so is optimizing your on-page content for the keywords you’ve picked. Choosing the right keyword is plays a vital role for websites as well as youtube. Google keyword planner, SemRush, ahrefs are some tools for keyword research.

Why Is Keyword Research So Important?

You may not be targeting ‘good’ keywords if your site ranks highly for specific keywords but you aren’t seeing the results of your efforts.

I’m sure you’re thinking something along those lines. Is it true that there are such things as good keywords? To be honest, sure!

Is it really worth it to be number one for search phrases that are only used three times each month? As a result, keyword research is a critical step in determining which keywords to target.

If you’re still not persuaded that keyword research is significant or relevant to SEO today, continue reading to learn *why* Keyword research is so crucial and how it may help your overall marketing strategy.

ALSO READ: YouTube Keyword Research: All you need to know

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is an iterative process of discovery and refinement. The goal of keyword research is to not only locate phrases that are relevant to your business and target audiences, but also to find ‘excellent’ keywords that will bring you a lot of traffic with less competition.

Why is Keyword Research So Important?

1. Find keywords with high search volume

I’ve been talking a lot about ‘excellent’ keywords, and one method to determine this is to look at how many people search for a particular term. The average monthly volume, or AMV, is the most widely used metric.

The more individuals who look up a term, the more likely your website will be found. It’s likely that your site’s traffic will improve if it ranks well for search terms with a high search volume.

To determine the search volume for each of your keywords, use AdWords’ Keyword Planner tool. Although the tool is free to use, it will only provide data ranges if you aren’t already paying for AdWord (PPC) campaigns in excess of a specific amount.

2. Find keywords with low competition

When researching keywords, it’s critical to consider the level of competition. When using Google Keyword Planner, you can see how competitive your keywords are.

‘The number of advertisers who appeared on each term in comparison to all other keywords on Google.’

Competition is graded as low, medium, or high depending on the location and Search Network that you have picked. Although the amount of competition for each phrase is determined by the number of advertisers bidding on those keywords, it can be a fair indicator of the overall level of competition, or the number of sites that target those terms.

The goal is to locate keywords that have a medium to low level of competition.

3. Assess the difficulty to rank

Although looking at a keyword’s ‘competition’ in GKP is beneficial for getting a fast sense of the competition, it doesn’t tell us the complete story. It would be pointless to target keywords if the chances of your site ranking highly for those keywords are slim to none. This is referred to as keyword difficulty or SEO problem.

This is referred to as SEO difficulty by KWFinder, and it is calculated using the following SEO variables from sites that have already ranked for those keywords:

Trust & Authority:Google search rankings are heavily influenced by the topical authority and trust that your site and pages have built up.

Backlinks:the number of external connections pointing to that site and passing link juice to it (links without the nofollow attribute)

Shares on Facebook: The number of times a URL has been shared on Facebook with the same term.

Keywords with a difficulty value of 0-9 are considered easy, while those with a difficulty rating of 50 or more are considered difficult or impossible. Essentially, if you come across terms that are currently being targeted by high-quality domains with a lot of traffic, such as Wiki or Amazon, we recommend going with less competitive keywords.

Examining who appears in SERPs and in what style might be helpful for determining keyword difficulty. The Ahrefs keyword tool, like KWFinder, assesses Domain Rank, Page or URL Rank, and backlinks to determine keyword difficulty. However, Ahrefs allows you to see what types of results are available in SERPs.

We can observe that a featured snippet, two AdWords, and a related question appear before all organic searches for the search term ‘house training a puppy.’

It’s simple to determine whether a keyword is worth targeting using keyword research. Is it worth it if, despite being in first place, your site only appears halfway down the first page of Google? Ahrefs makes it a little simpler to judge this, and I’d add that if a keyword has a low difficulty, moderate search volume, and little competition, it’s always going to be worth it, because people trust organic searches.

4. Find keywords with high conversion rates

The difficulty of a keyword can sometimes indicate that it is excessively wide. The more difficult a keyword is to rank for, and the higher the competition, the more difficult it is to rank for. These are referred to as ‘head’ keywords.

Head Keywords:Keywords that contain 1-2 words have a high monthly search volume, high competitiveness, and high keyword difficulty.

Long tail keywords:**Contain at least three words. Because they are more targeted, they have a greater conversion and click-through rate.

The following are some of the advantages of locating long tail keywords:

Less competition: Long tail keywords should be specific to the services and products you provide, resulting in lower competition.

Better targeted:These search terms will have a better possibility of targeting visitors if your long tail keywords are particularly targeted. The more accurately a term explains something, the more it will be relevant to your visitor.

Search intent:Long tail keywords are more effective at satisfying search intent and, as a result, can get highly targeted traffic.

5. Scope the competition

One of the first things I do when researching keywords for clients is look at their competition. Spying on the competition allows you to gain a better understanding of the keywords they’re targeting, as well as who they’re targeting and what they’re offering.

Their keywords might also provide you with useful information about their strategy. It might also give you a hint about the type of stuff they’re working on. So take what you’ve learned and apply it to your own content strategy. Don’t just replicate what they’re doing; instead, seek for ways to improve or update the material they’ve provided, or simply utilise it to spark your own ideas for content.

6. Get ideas for your content strategy

Keyword research can help you come up with fantastic article ideas. If you’re trying to improve your landing pages, don’t discard irrelevant keywords. Instead, keep track of any fantastic keywords you come across and use them to develop a content strategy.

7. Find new keywords

This may sound apparent, but it’s not always easy to figure out what search terms your target audience uses. If you’re stuck for ideas or are working on a site that you’re unfamiliar with, keyword research can help. There are a few options for accomplishing this:

Use your own site: Take a look at the items and services available and utilise them as seed keywords. To produce a list of comparable search terms, type them into your preferred keyword tool. AdWords group ideas, and Google’s Keyword tool will group suggestions. Simple!

Use competitor’s site: You can also type in the URL of a competitor’s website to see what search terms they have on their site.

Once you’ve compiled a list of keywords, start narrowing it down by eliminating those with low monthly search traffic and significant competition.

8. Understand trends

Knowing when people are searching for keywords can help you decide when to write a blog post or update your website. To gain an idea of peak hours, use Google Trends.

Unsurprisingly, the search term’s popularity rises just after Christmas, likely since this is the time of year when people present dogs to their loved ones. Make a plan to publish material or make adjustments to your website based on the information you’ve gathered.

Finishing Up

Keyword research isn’t only about finding phrases that your audience might be looking for; it’s also about identifying high-quality keywords that will benefit your site. If your keywords aren’t driving more traffic or converting more visitors (remember to use long tail search terms for this), it’s time to do some real keyword research.

Why Keyword Research is important for SEO?

Keywords are search keywords that people type into firms’ search engines, such as Google, to obtain answers to their questions.

The answer is classified as either informative or commercial in nature. When you undertake keyword research, you’re essentially probing what your industry’s clients are looking for. Or the terms they use to describe your niche’s products and services.

And it’s for this reason that keyword research is crucial for SEO. As a result, connecting your marketing messaging with the terms your target clients use not only improves targeting precision but also resonates with them.

Resonating with your target audience creates an emotional bond that can lead to conversion and loyalty. Essentially, you’ve hit the SPOT if you play the melody your clients want to hear with the words they want to hear. That’s right, you read that correctly.

Keywords are always at the heart of any sales message that converts. Money will practically pour into your business if you get your keyword research game correct. We didn’t stutter at all. People who always have their ears in the right location at the right time are blessed. Why?

Tastes and preferences change with time. This means that your keywords should be regularly optimized in accordance with the attitudes of your specialized market.

Knowing about seasonal trends might help you plan out your content strategy. For example, if you know that Black Friday in California peaks in August through November, you may plan ahead of time and give it a significant push during those months.

5 Recommended Tools for Keyword Research

Why is Keyword Research Important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Consider the following scenario. Ketan is on the lookout for a specific spare part. Let’s say you’re looking for an ABC air conditioning spare component. So he types in ‘where to get ABC air conditioning spare component.’

As part of its user experience policy, Google will show Ketan adverts and search engine results that are related to his query keyword. As a result, the pages and advertisements that contain the keywords Ketan used will be prioritized over others.

Ketan will very certainly select the first two options. He’ll move on to the next one if he doesn’t find what he’s looking for. Bouncing indicates to Google that the landing pages and adverts are not aligned with the user’s needs in terms of relevancy.

As a result, they will be pushed down the list in favour of the more important ones.

Another important aspect of the search phrases is that Thomas has a specific goal in mind: to buy. It’s also known as commercial intent, and it’s something that online firms keep a tight eye on.

Sales are rewarded for advertisements or SEO pages that are linked with Ketan’ keywords and address his problem (air conditioning spare component for ABC) (conversion). And, most likely, loyalty if retention is a marketing goal.

Are you beginning to realize why keyword research is so important?

Let’s refresh our heads a little bit before diving into the benefits of keyword research.

What is a Keyword Research?

Keywords are search terms that people use to find what they’re looking for on the internet. In other words, they’re phrases that assist search engines in determining the themes covered by your content.

Google and other search engines have advanced techniques for evaluating the keywords users use in their searches and the terms used in publisher content. This enables them to match the consumer with the content that best meets their requirements.

If you’re looking for a White Shoes your wife, for example, you might type in ‘White Shoes for women’ or ‘Women white shoes.’ This is a list of keywords.

Some keywords are long, while others are only a few words long. If people are typing terms into their devices, you’ll need to conduct keyword research.

How will people find you (or your business) if you don’t know what they’re looking for? However, users aren’t the only ones looking for keywords. Keep in mind that Google and other search engines will read your website’s content for keywords to rank your content.

Why is Keyword Research Essential for Search Engine Optimization?

Understanding your target market and how they search for your information, services, or products is the power of keyword research.

Keyword research gives you particular search data that might assist you in answering queries like:

What are they looking for?
How many individuals are on the lookout for it?
What format do they require the information in?

This section will teach you how to avoid keyword research blunders and create SEO-friendly content.

Remember, if you figure out how your target audience finds your content, you’ll be on your way to discovering a whole new world of profit-driven SEO!

Let’s take a look at four profit-driven SEO strategies that will help you enhance your search engine rating.

4 Profit-driven Keyword Research and SEO TIPs

1. Before Keyword Research, Ask the Right Questions

Before you embark on your SEO adventure, you must first comprehend your target customers and their objectives.

This is where many people save costs. Too many people skip this critical planning phase since keyword research is, without a doubt, time-consuming. Why waste time when you already know the keywords you want to rank for?

The truth is that what you want to rank for and what your audience wants are frequently diametrically opposed. Concentrate on your target market, then use keyword data to fine-tune your insights to improve your chances of success.

You’ll also be in a better position to generate content that engages target audiences, promotes sales, and builds loyalty.

2. Discover Keywords

The ideal method to start keyword research, according to savvy digital marketers, is to start with the concepts you already have in mind.

These will include items such as your products, services, and other themes covered on your website. Why? They’re excellent starting points for your study.

So begin there!

Then, using a keyword research tool, see what you can learn about:

Monthly search volume average
Keywords that are similar

Volume can assist you in determining variations of the most popular keywords among the target users throughout the discovery phase.

Once you’ve entered your seed keywords into a keyword research tool, you’ll start to notice new keywords, common inquiries, and themes for your SEO content that you might not have noticed otherwise.

What exactly do we mean when we say “strategic advantage”?

A remarkable balance between search volume competition and CPC is a strategic advantage in this scenario (as for the pay-per-click ads). Continue reading to learn more about search volume in the following section.

3. Uncover Search Volume (Potential Organic Traffic)

There’s no denying that the larger the search volume for a specific keyword phrase, the more effort it takes to rank higher. We didn’t stutter at all. Here, the competition is a complete nightmare.

The keyword difficulty is a term used to describe this. It also incorporates SERP elements on occasion. For example, difficulty rises when several SERP elements, such as featured snippets, clog up a keyword’s result page.

For high-volume keywords, enterprise-size brands such as Walmart frequently dominate the top ten results. So, if you’re just getting started on the internet and targeting the same keywords, the costly battle for ranking can take months, if not years. The stronger the competition and effort required to achieve organic ranking success, the higher the search volume.

If you go too low, though, you risk not attracting any searchers to your content. As previously stated, it is best to target very specialized, low-competition search phrases. Long-tail keywords are what we call them in SEO.

Now that you know what search volume is, let’s look at how you can use it strategically in terms of area and season.

4. Get Strategic with Volume

You may get even more strategic by studying your competition and seeing how searches fluctuate depending on the season or area.

– Keywords by Season

– Keywords by Region

You can narrow down your keyword research to specific towns, counties, or states to strategically target a certain location.

Keyword research by region can help you make your content more relevant to your intended audience. For example, in Texas, a large truck is referred to as a “big rig,” whereas in New York, it is referred to as a “tractor-trailer.” Have you noticed a difference?

If that’s the case, let’s get started.

– Keywords by Competitor

You’ll undoubtedly collect a large number of keywords. How do you know which one to start with?

Prioritizing high-volume keywords that your competitors aren’t already ranking for could prove to be an effective tactic.

However, you have the option of pursuing keywords that your competitors are already ranking for. We favour the former because you’ll be able to profit from your competitors’ mistakes. This isn’t to imply the latter isn’t good.

In reality, it’s a bold strategy that positions you to compete for keywords that your competitors are currently dominating.

– Identify the Intent

Google search results are determined by purpose, and each inquiry has its own. In their Quality Rater Guidelines, the search engine behemoth defines these intentions as follows:

Know (find information)
Do (accomplish a goal)
Website (find a specific website)
visit-in-person (visit a local business)

To improve the user experience, the search engine behemoth places a greater emphasis on intent (UX). Let’s take a deeper look at Google’s classification of the five most important intents:

Informational queries: The searcher is looking for specific information, such as the name of a band or the Empire State Building’s height.
Navigational queries: The searcher want to visit a certain website, such as Facebook or Twitter.
Transactional queries: The searcher want to do a specific action, such as purchasing an airline ticket or listening to a song.
Commercial queries: The searcher wants to compare products and determine which one is best for their needs.
Local queries: The searcher is looking for something in their immediate area, such as a coffee shop, doctor, or music venue.

Clients may desire that their content approach corresponds to their geography. The majority of them are brick-and-mortar establishments, such as coffee shops, restaurants, garages, and so on.

Specify your Location

Specifying your area is the first, and possibly most crucial, step in locating local SEO keywords. You must first decide the locations you want to focus on for local search.

Location keywords near your business or where you travel for service can be targeted.

Focus on Niche-related Keywords:

Focus on niche-related keywords when conducting local keyword research.

Because they have a large search volume and bring traffic, some businesses will strive to rank for keywords that aren’t relevant to their industry. Those keywords, on the other hand, will not bring qualified leads to your page.

If this traffic arrives at your website, it will leave because your content is unrelated to the search query.

Assume you’re in search of a photographer in New York. What happens if you click on a link to an ad or a page and don’t get the information you’re looking for? You’ll leave that page and return to the search results to look for another listing.

Rather than attempting to rank for these irrelevant terms, concentrate on niche-related keywords, which will bring in qualified leads looking for your products or services.

If you’re a mumbai-based event planner, you might focus on terms like:

Mumbai event planners
Party planners in Mumbai
Mumbai event planner
Mumbai event coordinator

Use Keyword Modifiers in your Strategy

You’ll want to add keyword modifiers to some of your terms when you uncover keywords for local search. Why?

Modifiers add more to your main keyword and help you reach a wider audience, resulting in more relevant traffic and leads. To bulldoze your way up the local SEO rankings, you can utilize three different sorts of keyword modifiers. Let’s have a look at them.

Quality

To characterize brands, quality modifiers use adjectives like “best” or “top.” “Best event planners in Mumbai,” for example.

Occasion

Occasion modifiers are used to describe a specific event or time period. “Fall,” “birthday,” and “Christmas” are examples of them. “Wedding planner great discounts in Mumbai this Christmas,” for example, is an example keyword.

Special offer

Special offering modifiers can be used as a USP for your SEO client’s brand. “Wedding planner in Mumbai: exceptional incentives for early birds,” for example.

Let’s look at the advantages and differences now that you know more about the importance of keyword research in SEO.

Keyword Research Benefits and Differences: PPC and SEO

Pay-per-click advertising is a high-octane method of increasing visitors to a website. Furthermore, it is a paid method for reaching out to both existing and new target audiences.

SEO, on the other hand, is a natural way of bringing visitors to your website. Because it is depending on a variety of elements, such as ranking, domain authority, the quantity of reliable backlinks, and the quality of the content, this technique might take months or even years to implement.

To address the question, there isn’t much of a difference between keyword research for SEO and keyword research for PPC. To screen out irrelevant visitors in PPC, you must use negative keyword lists.

Keyword research should be modified based on where the target audiences are in the user journey in both PPC and SEO. A simple funnel should ideally consist of the following components:

Awareness
Consideration
Purchase
Loyalty

As a result, tailoring content and ad messages based on the funnel touchpoints makes sense. If you’re working for an SEO client who is new to a niche market, for example, you should develop a tone of educational content to target cold prospects who are unfamiliar with the brand.

As the funnel progresses, this will build an emotional bond between the brand and the target demographic. So keyword research boils down to where your target audience is in the funnel.

You don’t want to generate educational content for in-market viewers who are holding credit cards and a phone in one hand.

Content on a new line of products and services, on the other hand, is best suited for audiences who are in the purchasing or loyalty stages. Let’s come to an agreement on this. In keyword research, there are no shortcuts. You must be meticulous and test-ready.

Yes, testing is one approach to ensure that your keywords are correct. If your customer has data, the Google Search Console search data is the best place to start. Some of the traffic-driving keywords may not be included in the article.

How to do Keyword Research in SEO [2021]

Keyword Research in SEO

Keyword research is the process of identifying key phrases that clients use while conducting searches on search engines. This aids in

Obtain information about the products and services that a company provides.
Purchase the goods or services that a company provides.

Check keyword ranking

Why is keyword research important?

The only way to figure out what people are putting into search engines is to conduct keyword research. You should be aware of this in order to avoid writing material about topics that no one is looking for. Many website owners make this error, and it’s most certainly one of the reasons why 90.63 percent of pages receive no Google traffic.

Keyword research also helps you to answer questions like:

How difficult will it be to rank for this keyword?
What kind of traffic can I expect if I rank for this keyword?
To rank for this keyword, what kind of content should I create?
Is it likely that persons who search for this keyword will become my customers?

Consider how potential buyers could search for your company or website while conducting keyword research. After that, you can utilise keyword research tools to elaborate on those concepts and discover even more keywords.

It’s a simple process, but two things must be true for it to work properly:

You’ll need to be well-versed in your industry.
You must comprehend how keyword research tools work and how to make the most of them.

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Average Monthly Search Volume

The number of average monthly searches for the key term or keyword on the Google search engine is referred to as average monthly search volume. Let’s say the average monthly search volume for the terms above is as follows:

Keywords	Avg. Monthly Search Volume
Compare oneplus and iphone	2500
Buy smartphone online	12000
Buy smartphones in mumbai	8000
Best smartphones 2020	5000
Buy redmi note 6	1800

The keyword research list isn’t restricted to a small number of terms. The above activity will result in the creation and optimization of landing pages for these keywords. The average search volume metric aids in determining which keywords to prioritise in terms of SEO optimization and landing page building.

Note: Ranking for keywords with a high search volume is more harder than ranking for keywords with a low search volume. In order to achieve a higher Google ranking, the website must also be optimised better than the competition.

Building a Keyword Bucket – Approach

Keyword research can be done in a variety of techniques or methodologies. Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how I go about doing keyword research. I recommend that you carry out all of these steps at the same time. By the time you’ve finished reading this post, you’ll have a keyword bucket.

Step 1 – Creating a list of already ranking keywords:

A list of keywords for which our website ranks is required. Our website is relevant for these search terms, according to Google. As a result, it is currently ranked for the same. The instructions and tools we used to make this list are listed below:

Search Console:

If your website has been configured with the search console, go to the performance report section. Select the web search type and the maximum period or date duration.

Date Range - Search Console — Date Range – Search Console

Download the report after sorting the queries by clicks. You will uncover a maximum of 1000 keywords that your website is already ranking for in this report. Keep these keywords in an excel file, and we’ll be adding more from other tools to this list.

Ahrefs

In the Ahrefs tool’s site explorer tab, type your website’s URL. As shown below, select the organic keywords report.
This report should also be exported and added to the existing excel file, which contains the queries from the search console report.

MUST READ: The Basics of Content Marketing Strategy 2021

SEMrush

Go to the organic research insights section of domain analytics and enter the website. Go to the report on the top organic keywords and export it. Add these keywords to the existing excel spreadsheet as well.

I hope you’re working on your Excel spreadsheet! This excel will now have all of the keywords for which your website is already ranking. You can go to neilpatel.com if you don’t have access to Ahrefs or SEMrush. and then repeat the previous steps (enter your domain, download the organic keywords report and add them to the existing excel).

Now remove all the duplicate keywords so that we have a clear list of ranking keywords.

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Step 2 – Categorizing the list of keywords

Begin categorising the keywords in the list we just made into different groups or subjects. For example, a company that sells electrical devices will have keyword categories such as television (TV), games, mobile phones, kitchen appliances, computers and tablets, audio and video, and so on. Each of these categories can contain a large number of keywords.

Step 3 – Identifying categories without keywords in existing list

There will be products or services for which no keywords or categories have been developed. Use the Google Keyword Planner to find similar categories. To find new keyword ideas relevant to the product, service, and target clients, enter the primary category keywords. Update and categorise these keywords in the existing list.

Do not forget to select target location and language while using the google keyword tool.

Step 4 – Identifying SERP Competitors

The term SERP refers to the search engine result page. You may already be aware of your company’s competitors who offer similar goods and services. SERP competitors, on the other hand, comprise both business competitors and websites that rank for desired keywords.

You must be thinking that the only competition for your business would be the SERP competitors, right? In the vast majority of circumstances, this is correct. However, there are a few websites that have built authority in the categories we service, but we’ve never considered them competitors.

Simply search at least three keywords from each category you created and examine the search results to find SERP competitors. There are likely to be a few websites that are well-known and rank well for each of the category keywords. Make a list of the websites you want to visit. That will be required in the next stage.

Step 5 – Identifying other Categories/Keywords SERP Competitors are Targeting or Ranking for

We’ll utilise the SEMrush Keyword Gap Analysis tool to do this. In this tool, enter all of your SERP competitors one by one, along with your website, and then click compare.

Now, export all of the terms underlined in the missing area, as seen below. This should be done for all of the contestants.

These are keywords that your competitors in the SERPs are targeting and ranking for, but not your site. Make a list of the keywords that are missing. Add any keywords from this list that you’d like to rank for to the existing list and classify them.

Note:If you don’t have access to SEMrush, repeat Step 1 for each competitor except the search console export.

Best Keywords for SEO

Understand that there are no “best” keywords; only ones that your target audience uses frequently. With this in mind, it’s up to you to devise a plan that will aid in page ranking and traffic generation.

Relevance, authority, and volume will all be factors in determining the optimum keywords for your SEO campaign. You wish to uncover highly searched terms that you may compete for based on the following criteria:

You’re up against a lot of competition.
Your ability to create content that is of higher quality than what is already ranked.

Conclusion

I’m hoping that by the end of the fifth stage, you’ll have compiled a keyword bucket list that will aid you in other aspects of on-page SEO.

Make sure to re-evaluate these terms every few months — once a quarter is a decent starting point, but some companies prefer to do it more frequently. As your authority in the SERPs grows, you’ll be able to add more and more keywords to your keyword lists to tackle as you focus on sustaining your current presence and then expanding into new areas.

If you found this helpful, please let me know in the comments section.

We specialize in different digital marketing services such as e-commerce SEO services, pay per click service, app store optimization, conversion rate optimization services, and much more.

Keyword Research Guide