how to do keyword research for website

How to Do Keyword Research for SEO: A Beginner's Guide

Published: April 04, 2024

While Google keeps us on our toes with all the algorithm updates they keep rollin' out, one thing has stayed pretty consistent for inbound marketers looking to optimize their websites for search: keyword research.

In this post, we’ll define what keyword research is, why it’s important, how to conduct your research for your SEO strategy, and choose the right keywords for your website.

Table of Contents

What is keyword research?

Why is keyword research important, elements of keyword research, how to research keywords for your seo strategy, how to find and choose keywords for your website.

Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing search terms that people enter into search engines with the goal of using that data for a specific purpose, often for search engine optimization (SEO) or general marketing. Keyword research can uncover queries to target, the popularity of these queries, their ranking difficulty, and more.

Keyword research helps you find which keywords are best to target and provides valuable insight into the queries that your target audience is actually searching on Google.

Insights from these actual search terms can help inform your content strategy as well as your larger marketing strategy.

People use keywords to find solutions when conducting research online.

So if your content is successful in getting in front of your audience as they conduct searches, you stand to gain more traffic. Therefore, you should be targeting those searches with content that features those keywords in a meaningful way.

Additionally, inbound methodology focuses less on creating content around what we want to tell people. Instead, we should be creating content around what people want to discover.

In other words, our audience is coming to us for helpful content that provides the answers they’re looking for.

In a nutshell, all of this starts with keyword research.

Conducting keyword research has many benefits, the most popular being:

Marketing Trend Insight

Conducting effective keyword research can provide you with insights into current marketing trends and help you center your content on relevant topics and keywords your audience is in search of.

Traffic Growth

When you identify the best-fitting keywords for the content you publish, the higher you’ll rank in search engine results — the more traffic you’ll attract to your website.

Customer Acquisition

If your business has content that other business professionals are looking for, you can meet their needs and provide them with a call-to-action that will lead them into the buyer journey from the awareness stage to the point of purchase.

By researching keywords for their popularity, search volume, and general intent, you can tackle the questions that most people in your audience want answers to.

Keywords vs. Topics

More and more, we hear how much SEO has evolved over just the last 10 years and how seemingly unimportant keywords have transformed our ability to rank well for the searches people make every day.

And to some extent, this is true, but in the eyes of an SEO professional, it’s a different approach. Rather, it’s the intent behind that keyword and whether or not a piece of content solves for that intent (we’ll talk more about intent in just a minute).

But that doesn’t mean keyword research is an outdated process. Let me explain:

Keyword research tells you what topics people care about and, assuming you use the right SEO tool, how popular those topics actually are among your audience.

The operative term here is topics, plural. By researching keywords that are getting a high volume of searches per month, you can identify and sort your content into topics or buckets that you want to create content on.

Then, you can use these topics to dictate which keywords you look for and target.

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There are three main elements I have discovered that you should pay attention to when conducting keyword research.

1. Relevance

Google ranks content for relevance.

This is where the concept of search intent comes in. Your content will only rank for a keyword if it meets the searchers’ needs.

In addition, your content must be the best resource out there for the query. After all, why would Google rank your content higher if it provides less value than other content that exists on the web?

2. Authority

Google will provide more weight to sources it deems authoritative.

That means you must do all you can to become an authoritative source by enriching your site with helpful, informative content and promoting that content to earn social signals and backlinks.

If you’re not seen as authoritative in the space, or if a keyword’s SERPs are loaded with heavy sources you can’t compete with (like Forbes or The Mayo Clinic), you have a lower chance of ranking unless your content is exceptional.

You may end up ranking on the first page for a specific keyword, but if no one ever searches for it, it will not result in traffic to your site. It's like setting up a shop in a ghost town.

Volume is measured by MSV (monthly search volume), which means the number of times the keyword is searched per month across all audiences.

• Make a list of important, relevant topics based on what you know about your business.
• Fill in those topic buckets with keywords.
• Understand how intent affects keyword research and analyze accordingly.
• Research related search terms.
• Use keyword research tools to your advantage.

I’m going to lay out a keyword research process you can follow to help you come up with a list of terms you should be targeting.

That way, you’ll be able to establish and execute a strong keyword strategy that helps you get found for the search terms you actually care about.

Step 1. Make a list of important, relevant topics based on what you know about your business.

To kick off this process, think about the topics you want to rank for in terms of generic buckets.

You’ll come up with about five to 10 topic buckets you think are important to your business, and then you’ll use those topic buckets to help come up with some specific keywords later in the process.

If you’re a regular blogger, these are probably the topics you blog about most frequently. Or perhaps they’re the topics that come up the most in sales conversations.

Put yourself in the shoes of your buyer personas . What types of topics would your target audience search that you’d want your business to get found for?

Drill down into your website’s traffic sources, and sift through your organic search traffic bucket to identify the keywords people are using to arrive at your site.

Repeat this exercise for as many topic buckets as you have.

Remember, if you’re having trouble coming up with relevant search terms, you can always head on over to your customer-facing colleagues — those who are in sales or service. Ask them what types of terms their prospects or customers have questions about.

Those are often great starting points for keyword research.

Here at HubSpot, we use the Search Insights Report in this part of the process. This template is designed to help you do the same and bucket your keywords into topic clusters, analyze MSV, and inform your editorial calendar and strategy.

Featured Resource: Search Insights Report Template

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Step 3. Understand how intent affects keyword research and analyze accordingly.

Like I said in the previous section, user intent is now one of the most pivotal factors in your ability to rank well on search engines like Google.

Today, it’s more important that your web page addresses the problem a searcher intended to solve than simply carries the keyword the searcher used. So, how does this affect the keyword research you do?

It’s easy to take keywords at face value, but unfortunately, keywords can have many different meanings beneath the surface.

Because the intent behind a search is so important to your ranking potential, you need to be extra careful about how you interpret the keywords you target.

Let’s say, for example, you’re researching the keyword “how to start a blog” for an article you want to create. “Blog” can mean a blog post or the blog website itself, and what a searcher’s intent is behind that keyword will influence the direction of your article.

Does the searcher want to learn how to start an individual blog post? Or do they want to know how to actually launch a website domain for the purposes of blogging?

If your content strategy is only targeting people interested in the latter, you’ll need to make sure of the keyword’s intent before committing to it.

To verify what a user’s intent is in a keyword, it’s a good idea to simply enter this keyword into a search engine yourself and see what types of results come up.

Make sure the type of content Google is displaying relates to your intention for the keyword.

Step 4. Research related search terms.

This is a creative step you may have already thought of when doing keyword research. If not, it’s a great way to fill out those lists.

If you’re struggling to think of more keywords people might be searching about a specific topic, take a look at the related search terms that appear when you plug in a keyword into Google.

When you type in your phrase and scroll to the bottom of Google’s results, you’ll notice some suggestions for searches related to your original input.

These keywords can spark ideas for other keywords you may want to take into consideration.

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Keyword Research: An In-Depth Beginner’s Guide

Keyword research is the foundation of search engine optimization. This guide covers what it is and how you should do keyword research.

Keyword research is the foundation of search engine optimization, and without it, you cannot expect to create sustainable and repeatable visibility.

Today, SEO is a much wider discipline than in the early days of the industry and has been segmented into many verticals.

But, at the core, SEO is about finding opportunities online and capturing relevant traffic to a website through visibility in search engines. Keyword research is at the heart of that SEO strategy.

This guide explains what keyword research is, why it’s important, and how you can make a start for a successful SEO strategy.

What Is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is a process of finding words, queries, and phrases that users are searching for, which means a keyword that has search volume.

Research involves connecting the relevance of keywords to a website and its individual pages so that the user can find the best page to answer their query, known as search intent.

Keyword research also involves categorizing search queries into the different stages of a user journey and different categories of search, such as transactional, navigational, and informational.

Good keyword research enables users to find what they need:

• Shoppers who want to buy something can find the right product page.
• A user that wants to know ‘how to’ can find a page that explains a process in-depth.
• Users who want to research a person or brand can find out about that entity.

Keyword research should also carefully consider if ranking on a keyword is worth the effort it would take to rank highly and get visitors. Not all traffic is equal.

Download the ebook, How To Do Keyword Research For SEO .

Why Keyword Research Is Important For SEO

A search engine is an information retrieval system built around the queries that a user inputs to find an answer or relevant information to their search query.

The predominant focus of Google is to connect a user with the best answer to their query and the best website page so that a user is satisfied. Understanding this underlines SEO.

Good keyword research is the foundation of how a business can connect with its potential customers and audience. Understanding this helps to understand a good SEO strategy.

A business strategy starts with understanding its audience and their needs.

• What do they want?
• What do they need?
• What keeps them awake at night?
• What could solve their problem?

Keyword research is an extension of understanding your audience by first considering their needs and then the phrases, keywords, or queries they use to find solutions.

Keyword research is also important for SEO because it can show you where the opportunities are by knowing what your audience is searching for.

This will help you to find new areas of business and to prioritize where to focus attention and resources.

Keyword research will also help you to calculate where you can expect a return on investment to justify your efforts:

• Can a keyword deliver relevant traffic that has the possibility to convert to an end goal?
• What is an estimation of that traffic, and how much is each visitor worth to your business?

Basically, keyword research is the ultimate business research tool.

Read more: Why Keywords Are Still So Very Important For SEO

Keyword Research Basics

Monthly search volume.

Monthly Search Volume (MSV) is a predominant measure of keyword value. It’s a useful metric as a starting point to consider if anyone is searching for that keyword, but it shouldn’t be used in isolation or as the only measure of value.

Just because a keyword has a high MSV doesn’t mean it is the right keyword for you to rank on.

High-volume keywords generally deliver ‘browsing’ traffic at the top of the funnel. They are useful for brand awareness but not for direct conversion.

Low-volume keywords can be much more valuable because they can deliver users who are ready to buy a product.

Read more: A Complete Guide To Keyword Search Volume For SEO

User Intent

User intent refers to what type of result they want to see when they search for a query – the intention of their search.

You will hear user intent talked about a lot in keyword research, as it is one of the most important factors in the process.

User intent is important in two ways, firstly because your primary aim in creating content and pages on a website are to provide a user with information that they want to know.

There’s no point in creating a page about what you care about – your user only cares about their problems and needs.

You can have the best page in the world about the history of cupcakes, but if a user searching for [cupcake] wants a recipe for cupcakes, then they will not click on your link.

Secondly, Google considers relevance when serving results pages (as we said above, they want to deliver the best result for a query). So, the better your page fits user intent, the better it might rank.

Read more: How People Search: Understanding User Intent

When Google considers which pages it will show in search results, the algorithm will look at other pages that users are clicking on for that query.

If we have a query such as [cupcake], Google has to consider if a user wants to know what a cupcake is, how to make a cupcake, or wants to buy a cupcake.

By looking at a search result page, you can get a good idea of user intent from the other results.

Reviewing the search results page of a query should be part of your research process for every keyword you want to consider.

Keyword relevance and user intent are much the same things. It’s about knowing what the user really means when they search. This is more ambiguous for head keywords and less so for long-tail queries.

Long-Tail keywords

Long-tail keywords are called long-tail because they fall to the right of the search demand curve – where the graph looks like a long tail stretching to the right.

The search demand curve is a graph that shows keywords with high volume to the left and lower search volumes to the right.

Longer queries that are more focused fall to the right. Head terms with broad meaning and high volume fall to the left.

The value of long-tail keywords is that they are usually highly focused terms that convert well, as users are actively looking for something very specific.

For example, [iPhone 13] is a head term with high volume (2.7 million MSV), and [Best affordable iPhone 13 cases] (210 MSV) is a long-tail keyword with far fewer searches but would have a high conversion rate.

Long-tail keywords are useful to include in a keyword strategy because they are usually much easier to rank for and achievable for a new website, and the cumulative volume of many long-tail keywords adds up to considerable targeted traffic.

This is a much more stable strategy than focusing on one high-volume ambiguous keyword.

Read more: Long-Tail Keyword Strategy: Why & How To Target Intent For SEO

Types Of Search Query

There are four types of keywords that are useful to understand as they categorize the different user intents and can help when planning a keyword strategy.

• Informational – users looking for information or an answer to a question (top of the funnel).
• Navigational – users wanting to find a specific brand, site, or page (brand searches).
• Commercial – users researching brands, products, or services (middle of the funnel).
• Transactional – users ready to complete a purchase or action (bottom of the funnel).

Local keywords can also be considered another category.

How To Do Keyword Research

Now that you have a better understanding of the basics of keyword research, we can look at where you would start with your research and keyword strategy.

1. How To Find Keyword Ideas

The first stage of keyword research is to brainstorm ideas for seed keywords, and there are several ways to do this.

Your Target Audience

Everything starts with your audience and what they want. Think about their needs, wants, and especially their pain points and problems.

Start to compile your wide list of words, ideas, and topics that surround your niche or business.

Think About Questions

Question-based keyword queries are valuable as they can help you to capture featured snippets and can be a way to jump rank on highly competitive keywords.

Ask your sales team and review CRM data to find the questions that your audience is asking.

Also, think of question modifiers that will start to build out your list:

• What [is a road bike].
• How to [ride a road bike].
• When is [the best time to service a road bike].
• What is [the best road bike].
• Where is [road bike shop].

Current Site Queries

If your site already has some online history, then Google Search Console can tell you what Google thinks your website is relevant for. This is insightful to tell you if your site is conveying the right message and to find opportunities.

If Google is showing a lot of queries that have nothing to do with your product or brand, then you need to apply more keyword focus to your pages.

Look for queries that are position 10 or greater, have reasonable impressions, and you think are relevant to your business.

These are potential quick-win opportunities that you can capture by making improvements and optimizing pages for the query.

Read more: A Complete Google Search Console Guide For SEO Pros

Competitors’ Keywords

Your competitors are a gold mine of information because they might already have invested in extensive research.

A business should be constantly monitoring its competitors anyway, so keep an eye on what content they are producing and the terms they target.

A keyword gap analysis will help you find opportunities your competitors are targeting that you might not have considered.

Read more: Competitor Keyword Analysis: 5 Ways To Fill The Gaps In Your Organic Strategy & Get More Traffic

Seed Keywords

Start with high-level ‘seed’ keywords that you can use as a starting point to then open up variants and related queries.

Seed keywords are ‘big’ head terms such as [iPhone], [trainers], [road bike], or [cupcake].

For each seed keyword, start to think of topics that are related:

• Road bike maintenance.
• Road bike training.
• Road bike clothing.
• Road bike lights.

Also, use question modifiers and buying modifiers such as:

• Best [road bike].
• Buy [road bike].
• Price [for women’s road bike].
• [road bikes for hire] near me.
• Reviews [of road bikes under $1,000].

When you have finished this process, you should have a raw list of potential keywords grouped in topics – such as maintenance, clothing, training, etc.

2. How To Analyze Keywords

Once you have your raw list, it’s time to start to analyze and sort by value and opportunity.

Search Volume

Search volume will tell you if anyone is actively searching for this term.

For a first-stage strategy, you should aim for keywords with a mid-range and long-tail volume for quick wins and then build up to approach more competitive terms with higher volumes.

Head keywords with super high volumes (like ‘iPhone’) are not the best keywords to focus on as they can be too ambiguous and rarely have a specific intent.

Also, the amount of work that is needed to rank can be too high a barrier for entry unless you have an established domain of significant authority.

If a tool shows a keyword with zero search volume, this doesn’t always mean you should discard the term.

If the keyword is shown in the tool, then there can be value to consider targeting it in your strategy. However, make sure you know your audience and what is relevant to them before you invest resources in a zero-volume keyword.

Read more: Why You Should Target Zero Search Volume Keywords

Search Intent

After you have sorted your raw lists by search volumes, it’s then time to review the intent for each keyword that you would like to target.

The SERP will tell you everything that you need to know, and you should always review SERPs for clues on how to construct content and rank.

Look at the other listing that rank highly:

• Are they ‘how-to’ guides that indicate it’s informational?
• Do the titles say ‘buy,’ ‘best,’ or include product names?
• Is there a shopping carousel that indicates a buying keyword?
• Is there a location map that indicates it’s a local search?

Tag each keyword type and then consider which are the strongest keywords from each group.

You can also use a research tool that will tell you the type of keyword.

Topic Clusters

Grouping keywords into topic clusters is an advanced keyword strategy that can help to strengthen the topic authority of a site.

To do this, you would start with a high-volume head keyword and then research a series of keywords that supports that head term.

After creating pages of content that target each keyword, you use internal linking to connect pages with the same topic.

Read more: Keyword Clusters: How To Level Up Your SEO Content Strategy

3. How To Choose Organic Keywords

After sorting the volumes, intent, and topics, you will need to decide if you have a chance of ranking on a term by looking at how much competition there is for each keyword.

Keyword Difficulty

Keyword difficulty is one of the most important keyword metrics when doing your research.

If a keyword is so competitive that you need hundreds of thousands of dollars to rank, then you need to get strategic.

The easiest way to calculate keyword difficulty is to use a research tool that gives a score for each keyword.

Or, you can refer to Google Keyword Planner Tool and look at the CPC and level of difficulty. The higher the CPC bid, the higher the competition.

If you are starting out, first approach the lower competition keywords that are achievable and then build your way up to more competitive terms.

Read more: Why Keyword Research Is Useful For SEO & How To Rank

Connecting To Your Objectives And Goals

Unless a keyword can actually deliver a result for you – do you want to target it?

As we said above, targeting head terms is not the best strategy as they will, at best, deliver browsing or drive-by visitors. Unless you are a big brand with a big budget that is aiming for brand awareness, this is not the best application of your resources and budget.

Choosing your keyword priority should start with what can give you the best return in the shortest time frame.

Good keyword research is not just about trying to target a high-volume popular keyword. A good keyword strategy is about finding the right keywords for your needs and outcome. Always keep that front and center.

Read more: How To Calculate ROI For SEO When Targeting A Set Of Keywords

Watch John Mueller talk about ranking for head keywords in this video from the 38:55 minute mark.

Using Keyword Research Tools

Doing your research without a tool is limited; for the most in-depth keyword research, you need help to find keyword opportunities you had not thought of.

The following keyword research tools are all free versions that you can start out with.

Google Keyword Planner

The original keyword tool has evolved over the years, but it still remains one of the best free keyword tools and a good starting point to find seed keywords and keyword ideas.

The Google tool is aligned with Google Ads, so the data is skewed towards paid ads but is still valuable for research.

You need a Google Ads account to access the tool. Google will try to force you to set up an active campaign, but you can access the account by setting up an account without a campaign.

Without a campaign running, you will only get limited search volumes displayed in ranges, but the tool is still useful for its suggestions of keyword ideas. If you have an active campaign, Google will show you the monthly search volume.

You can add up to 10 seed keywords and get a list of suggested keywords, and run competitor URLs in the tool to find keywords they are targeting. Doing this is a great place to start building out raw lists of keywords to work from.

Read more: How To Use Google Keyword Planner

Read more: 9 Creative Ways To Use Google’s Keyword Planner Tool

Google Trends

Google Trends offers data based on actual search query data. It doesn’t provide search volumes, but the data in Google trends can be compared with actual search volumes from other tools so you can get a comparative feel of what the actual volumes are.

Where Trends excels is to identify trending topics and subtopics in a niche and to find geographic search trends in a local area. Trends will recommend related keywords that are currently growing in popularity.

As part of a keyword strategy, this can show you where to focus resources and when to stop investing in terms.

Read more: How To Use Google Trends For SEO

Google Autocomplete

Previously known as Suggest, Autocomplete is integrated into the Google search box to help users complete their search with what Google calls ‘predictions.’

Google takes its predictions from common searches and trending searches.

As the suggestions are all variations around the topic you are typing, the results shown give you an insight into other related terms that users could be looking for.

Checking the predictions that Google provides in Autocomplete can help you find more variations and keywords to consider.

Read more: Google Autocomplete: A Complete SEO Guide

Answer The Public

Answer The Public is a powerful tool that scrapes data from Google Autocomplete and connects a seed keyword with a variety of modifiers to produce a list of variants.

Answer The Public will quickly provide a list of suggestions, especially based on questions that you can use as a raw list to then review.

Read more: More Free Keyword Research Tools

Paid Keyword Research Tools

Free keyword tools are great to get you started and to create raw lists of keywords that you can then drill into.

However, for the best results, you might want to invest in a paid competitive analysis tool that can help you get monthly search volume and keyword difficulty data.

Some tools will also help with assigning topics and clustering for more advanced keyword strategies.

Anyone who does keyword research in-depth or to an advanced level will have their own process. They will also use a variety of tools and a combination of paid and free resources to get the best results.

Read more: Best Keyword Research Tools

Advanced Keyword Strategies

Now that you have an understanding of how to get started with keyword research, experiment with a few different websites and niches. Doing the work yourself is the best way to learn.

Once you have a better understanding in practice, move into more advanced methods and strategies to take your keyword research to the next level.

Advanced Keyword Research

• B2B Keyword Research Done Right With Practical Examples
• Keyword Clusters: How To Level Up Your SEO Content Strategy
• Building A Keyword Strategy For Comparison Content

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

Shelley Walsh is the SEO Content Strategist at SEJ & produces the Pioneers, a series about the history of SEO ...

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How to effectively research keywords for SEO

Learn the benefits of keyword and SEO research, where to use keywords, and best practices to build a successful SEO strategy for your business.

Webflow Enterprise gives your teams the power to build, ship, and manage sites collaboratively at scale.

Elevating your site to the top of search engine rankings begins with strategic keyword research.

Having a website puts you on the digital map, but it won’t guarantee visitors. To set your site apart from competitors, you must accurately identify and cater to your audience’s specific search behaviors.

Your site might offer the best information in your industry, but if it’s not listed on Google search results pages (SERPs) for relevant queries, potential visitors might not find your content.

That’s where thoughtful keyword research comes in. Strategically using keywords for SEO means you can better understand and more effectively target consumer interests. Read on to discover how to find and use the right keywords for your business.

What’s keyword research?

Keyword research identifies specific words and phrases your target audience types into search engines like Google and Bing. This crucial search engine optimization (SEO) strategy enables you to pinpoint customer questions, pain points, and preferences so you can optimize your content to improve its online visibility and resonance.

Effective keyword research involves several steps, including:

• Identifying your audience , including their interests and what questions they’re asking. This knowledge directs your keyword research and helps you tailor content to meet their search intent.
• Generating keyword ideas using SEO tools , competitor analysis, and brainstorming to create a set of relevant terms aligned with your offerings and content.
• Analyzing keyword metrics by studying each keyword’s search volumes, competition level, and keyword difficulty (how challenging a keyword is to rank for). This analysis helps you prioritize the keywords that offer the best opportunity for visibility with manageable competition.
• Integrating keywords into your SEO plan through appropriate content, website metadata , and other on-site elements to improve search engine visibility and ranking pages.

Why is keyword research important?

Keyword research is crucial for businesses of all sizes and offers the following benefits to drive online growth.

Drives targeted website traffic

Keyword research helps you identify the specific words and phrases your targeted audience uses when searching for products, services, and industry-related information. By aligning your content with these keywords, you attract visitors actively looking for what you offer.

Identifies search trends

Keeping an eye on keyword trends helps you stay ahead in your industry by letting you tailor your content to align with current interests. For example, if a cybersecurity company notices an uptick in searches for "cybersecurity best practices," this awareness helps them swiftly pivot and produce relevant content. By strategically identifying and responding to this trend with keyword research, they can effectively align content with what readers are actively searching for, attracting a targeted audience looking for this information.

Enhances conversion rates

Driving targeted traffic to your website means attracting visitors who are already interested in what you have to offer. Their pre-existing interest in your niche and offerings means they're closer to making a decision, which enhances conversion chances and fosters a stronger engagement with your brand.

If that same cybersecurity company notices an uptick in searches for “the best password protectors,” for example, they can create detailed blog posts, product recommendations, and care guides focused on password protection. This targeted approach not only draws in readers looking for security solutions but also positions the company as a trustworthy expert, increasing the chance of customers purchasing, subscribing to content updates, and engaging with the brand in other meaningful ways.

Addresses search intent

Search intent, or user intent, is the purpose or reason behind someone's query. It helps you understand what people are actually looking for, whether it’s general information, specific answers, or a particular product or service. 

There are four types of search intent:

• Informational: Searchers are looking for information or answers, like "weather in New York today"
• Navigational: Searchers are trying to reach a specific website or page, like Facebook's login page or Amazon's customer service portal
• Transactional: Searchers want to complete a transaction or take action, like buying a product or signing up for a service
• Commercial investigation: Searchers are considering a transaction but want to compare products and services or find more information before making a decision

Understanding search intent helps you create content that aligns with what people are actively seeking, potentially increasing traffic and conversions.

What are long-tail keywords?

Long-tail keywords are extended, more precise phrases users enter into search engines when looking for detailed information. These keywords differ from head terms, which are shorter, more general terms that target specific aspects of a topic, product, or niche.

For example, “laptops” is a short and broad phrase that could refer to any category of laptops, such as those designed for gaming or programming. But a long-tail keyword like “best lightweight laptops for college students under $1000” — a commercial investigation — narrows the search. This specificity means the long-tail keyword is more likely to attract potential customers actively searching for that exact laptop type.

Since they're more detailed, long-tail keywords typically attract lower search volumes but lead to higher conversion rates. They catch visitors farther along the sales funnel looking for something specific, and who are more likely to convert or make a purchase. 

The specificity of long-tail keywords results in less competition, allowing smaller businesses to stand out and achieve higher rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs). Despite their low search volume, these phrases often yield a higher return on investment (ROI) than their more generic, high-volume counterparts.

How to research keyword ideas: 6 steps

Learning how to find good keywords for SEO requires an organized and thoughtful approach. Follow these steps to start ranking better on search engines.

1. Identify seed keywords

Pinpoint general topics, terms, and concepts that align with your brand and its offerings. Brainstorming seed keywords lays the groundwork for more in-depth research, guiding you to discover targeted terms.

During brainstorming, talk to stakeholders from various departments, like marketing, sales, or customer support. Taking a collaborative approach provides diverse insights into your offerings, customer needs, and potential content directions. Using tools like mind maps and shared documents streamlines this process and ensures ideas are accessible and organized for future reference.

2. Use keyword research tools

Keyword research tools uncover key data like keyword search volumes, competition levels, trends, and related term suggestions. Using these tools identifies keywords with high SEO potential that also resonate with your brand’s identity and can meet your audience’s search habits and interests. 

Here are a few popular keyword tools:

• Google Keyword Planner provides information on keyword search volume, competition, and suggested bid prices for Google Ads campaigns.
• Google Search Console offers insights into how your site appears in Google's SERPs, including query reports to find keyword opportunities.
• Semrush offers data on SEO keyword difficulty, competitor analysis, and related suggestions.
• Ahrefs lets you analyze keyword rankings, search volumes, traffic estimates, and industry trends.

By entering seed keywords into these tools, you can explore long-tail keyword variations, gather suggestions, and assess the potential of different phrase combinations to enhance your SEO strategy. Aim for a balanced portfolio that includes seed and long-tail keywords. This approach targets user searches on both ends of the sales funnel spectrum — customers discovering your brand for the first time and visitors poised to make a purchase.

3. Analyze competitor keywords

Dive into your competitors' strategies by examining the keywords they rank for in SERPs. Analyzing everything from phrase usage and meta tags to hyperlinks and page titles can unveil their SEO tactics. This insight reveals gaps in your strategy and opportunities to enhance your SEO efforts, keeping you competitive and increasing your market presence.

To start, enter your competitors’ domain URLs into your chosen keyword research tool. Depending on the tool, this action reveals their organic rankings, highlights their top-performing terms, and lets you directly compare your site’s performance with theirs.

4. Research within your niche

Immerse yourself in your industry’s ecosystem by exploring forums, social media conversations, and direct customer feedback. This exploration helps you identify topics that captivate your audience and the specific search terms they use. Focusing on recurrent questions and challenges provides valuable direction for crafting content that directly addresses your audience’s needs and interests.

5. Choose relevant keywords

Once you have a list of potential keywords, narrow them down based on search volume, intent, competition, relevance, and market trends. You'll have a list of final keywords that align with your business and search intent.

6. Map out content

Create a content map that states:

• Content type
• Target audience
• When you’ll publish it
• What primary and secondary keywords you’ll include in it
• Current competitors ranking for the target keyword
• When you’ll check in about how the content is ranking

Regularly assess how keyword popularity and content ranking change, adjusting your content map accordingly.

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Where to use keywords 

After refining your SEO approach and keyword research processes, it’s time to strategically incorporate these phrases. Here are a few areas where keywords have the highest impact.

Page titles

Page titles, or title tags, are clickable headlines in SERPs that concisely describe a page's content. Adding relevant keywords to page titles helps search engines understand and rank your content effectively. 

Ensure each web page has a unique and descriptive title that includes keywords relevant to its content. Place the most important keywords at the beginning of the page title to maximize visibility and impact.

Meta descriptions

These brief summaries appear beneath page titles in search results and offer potential visitors a glimpse of the page’s content. While meta descriptions don’t directly influence rankings, they affect click-through rates by showing your content’s relevance to the search query and clarifying the page’s focus to users and search engines.

Craft these descriptions to be engaging and informative, enticing users to visit your site for more information.

Internal and external links help search engines understand the relationships between web pages. The anchor text — the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink — acts as a signal, providing context about the linked page’s contents.

When adding hyperlinks to your context, use descriptive anchor text incorporating relevant keywords reflecting the linked page's focus. For example, an SEO-focused blog article might carry anchor text saying, “Learn more about on-page SEO techniques.” 

Headings and subheadings

Heading and subheading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) organize web page content and establish a clear content hierarchy. In this article, for example, "Where to use keywords" is an H2 tag, serving as a main section title, while "Page titles," "Meta descriptions," and "Headings and subheadings" are H3s, indicating subsections.

Search engines rely on these headings to understand the content’s structure, prioritizing information presented under main headings and subheadings. This organization helps them index sites and improves the user experience by breaking the content into digestible sections. Incorporating relevant keywords into these tags further clarifies the content's focus for search engines, enhancing the page's visibility for those topics.

Images and alt text

Images elevate your site's visual appeal and add crucial context and reference to content. And implementing alternative text (alt text) is crucial to make these images accessible to all users , including those who rely on screen readers.

Consider a technology news company’s review of a new smartphone. An image within the article may have a file titled “smartphone-model-review-4.jpg” with alt text like “Camera samples from the brand's latest product.” This alt text ensures that users who can’t view the image still receive information about what it depicts and informs search engines about the image’s content.

Search engines can’t interpret images directly, so they depend on alt text to understand multimedia elements. By describing images with relevant keywords in the alt text, you provide search engines with context, improving your site's SEO.

How to optimize keyword use

After adding keywords to your site content, ensure you follow these best practices for consistent, high-impact SEO performance over time.

Target SERP features strategically

Focus on the unique elements within SERPs, like featured snippets, knowledge panels (information boxes provided by Google's Knowledge Graph), local packs (listings for local services), and multimedia carousels. Since these features often appear at the top of the search results, they capture users' immediate attention. 

By optimizing your content to appear in these high-visibility spots, you significantly increase the chance of users clicking through to your website.

Optimize URL structures

Include keywords in your web page's URL structures to help search engines understand its content. Keep URLs concise, descriptive, and readable for Google and readers, and avoid using numbers or symbols. 

For example, a URL like “www.example.com/blog/software-for-enterprises" provides more context than "www.example.com/blog/article-2705." Making URLs more informative and SEO-friendly helps search engines crawl and improves your pages’ visibility in search results.

Avoid over-optimization

Avoid over-optimizing your content with excessive keywords (called keyword stuffing), which could lead to search engine penalties that affect your site’s credibility and visibility.

For example, repeating “cybersecurity” in every sentence, like “We offer cybersecurity checklists and cybersecurity guides. Find a cybersecurity resource for every need,” can make content appear manipulative and low-quality.

Search engines penalize this behavior because they aim to provide users with valuable, informative content, and over-optimized content undermines this goal by prioritizing keywords over the user experience. Keyword stuffing diminishes your site’s credibility for visitors and search engines and negatively impacts your website’s ability to attract organic traffic .

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Webflow's extensive integrations, analytics , and SEO tools also help you build and refine keyword campaigns, preparing your site for success. By balancing aesthetic appeal with SEO best practices, Webflow helps you create a website that attracts, retains, and converts your target audience.

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Keyword Research – An In-Depth Guide to Help You Rank Higher [+Template]

Keyword research can help you effectively reach more of your audience. By understanding exactly what they are searching for, you can create targeted content to meet their needs. But, in order to maximize your impact, you need to take a systematic approach using the most accurate keyword research tools . In this post, we’ll break down the complete step-by-step guide to how to conduct keyword research and the tools to use to achieve real results.

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of finding the words and phrases your target audience is searching for on Google. Whether they are looking to find information like, pizza delivery options in your city, or are ready to purchase a product or a service, once you identify the high-value keywords they are searching related to your business, and their intent, you can optimize your search strategy and rank higher on Google.

Why does keyword research matter to you?

Using the right keywords (also known as search terms) gives your content the power to climb higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). This is exactly why keyword research is a pillar in search engine optimization (SEO).

If you set up your keyword research properly, scaling your ongoing SEO efforts and powering your growth will be fairly easy to execute.

It is important that your primary research is comprehensive and hones in on search intent because it will be the foundation of your search engine optimization strategy. Think of it as the base of all your future subject-specific SEO efforts to bring you new leads like a passive income. During this initial phase of research, your goal is to gather as many relevant keyword phrases as you can that could reach your audience.

In this blog we will guide you through how to conduct keyword research:

• Scan your website for keywords
• Dig deeper into your keyword data with Google Search Console
• Take advantage of competitor analysis tools
• Find the most valuable phrases with the keyword generation tool
• Consolidate your keyword data
• Categorize keywords by user intent and semantic search
• Analyze long-tail vs. short-tail keywords
• Choose the right mix of keywords to focus on

You can download our keyword research template below and apply what you learn as you go.

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How to do keyword research

1. scan your website for keywords.

To start your keyword research process, the first step is to open your website and identify the main categories. Note any very obvious keywords you will need to include. The keywords you find during this process are the first ones you should add to your initial list to gain high-level insight into your website’s main goals.

At this stage don’t focus on the specific terminology used, you can tweak the wording later, focus on understanding what your website is aiming to do and/or sell to understand how you will generate search traffic.

• Pro Tip: Pay special attention to how your content is organized. Look for where the content and product pages are located. If you have a menu, those keywords are (yes, you guessed it) key. You can also find additional crucial industry words by scanning your site as a whole, including content featured on your homepage, blogs, product pages, feature descriptions, mission statements, and FAQ. If you sell a product, both the product and its category would be included .

Below you can see an example of important keywords on Similarweb’s homepage that would need to be included during this stage of SEO research. Words like ‘digital research’ and ‘investing’  relate to how our content is organized. As you go through your own website these are the types of phrases you are searching for in this stage of your keyword research.

2. Dig deep into your keyword data in Google Search Console

Take a look at the data you already have. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel – yet. If you have access to Google Search Console, (which can also be visible through your Google Analytics account), you can navigate to the performance section and look at the search results reported there. The list you create here will give you a thorough review of your strongest keywords that are already working.  If a term is performing well, you need to ensure you continue to include it in your SEO strategy , and possibly, even double down on your content efforts to win traffic from the term.

• Pro Tip: To use the Performance section effectively, set the data range for the page at 6 months, exclude all branded queries to compile a list of general terms that your audience is searching for, and then download the list it creates as a CSV file.

3. Take advantage of competitor analysis tools

Use competitive data tools to analyze your website and gain more insight into your current performance. Keep in mind that the keywords you will find differ for macro-level SEO and local SEO. You could conduct macro-level keyword research for specific countries using Similarweb. This will help you drill down and understand the topics and keyword opportunities that are trending in countries that interest you.

To do this, you can use Similarweb’s website analysis tool , and first, insert your own URL. Next, click on the Keywords section and filter out all branded keywords. After that, navigate to the “Competitors” section of your website analysis. Note the top three competitors you have and then run an audit on their websites too. For each audit you run, go to the Keyword Analysis section, filter out the branded search queries and export the reports for internal use. Remember that competitors’ traffic data can be as valuable as ranking data for your analysis, so don’t give up on any exported dataset yet – many of them will come in handy for your SEO strategy.

• Pro Tip: It can also be useful to filter out results that fall outside of the top 50 rankings in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) to weed out many irrelevant queries.

Combine the keyword list you created for each of your competitors’ sites with the one you made for your own site. You should merge the exported Excel files into one. Now you can consolidate the ranking and traffic data for each of your competitors and then remove any duplicate keywords.

Alternatively, you can decide not to consolidate your competitors’ ranking and traffic data and use only the keyword data. At this point you have the basis of the research: You found out what your website is ranked for, what phrases your competitors’ websites are ranked for, and what real people search for. Now it’s time to inspect your entire search potential.

You can also perform micro-level research using an SEO tool like Navads . Navads, acquired by Uberall in 2018, is the leading location data provider for the databases that power the navigation and mapping industry. It has a local search tool that helps you rank higher in map search results.

4. Find the most valuable phrases with Keyword Generation Tool

Your next step is to use a keyword tool to discover more keyword ideas, synonyms, and suggestions. You can use Google Keyword Planner to discover new keyword ideas. Another and often easier option is to use a keyword research tool like Similarweb’s Keyword Generator Tool and insert keywords by the categories you found on your website during stage one. Diving into more specific categories ensures the keywords the tool suggests are relevant to your topic.

Consider your target audience: Who are they? How do they search for what they need? What words or phrasing do they use? Are they primarily on desktop or mobile? This is also the perfect time to further research “interesting” phrases you may have found through competitive keyword research .

• Pro Tip: Since branded terms are usually irrelevant to SEO, be sure to filter out brand terms when you conduct your keyword research. You should also filter out irrelevant keyword phrase suggestions such as price and jobs. 

Again, in this stage, the goal is to compile a comprehensive keyword list for each of your chosen categories, so add as many relevant keywords as possible. You will probably discover that the broad category you started off with needs to be broken down into subtopics to make your keyword list usable for technical SEO and content marketing purposes. For example, digital marketing is a huge category that includes SEO, pay-per-click (PPC), media planning , marketing strategies, and more. So, each of those subjects should become its own subcategory at this stage since they each require research into specific keyword terms.

After you’ve broken down your main category into more easily digestible bite-sized subcategories, each subcategory should have its own keyword list that you can download. Now, it’s time to download those lists and take some time to review each. If you find that one of your categories is still quite wide, meaning it contains many search queries and very large volumes, you can break it down further into more detailed subcategories until it’s manageable.

Once you’re happy with your subcategory lists go to Google Keyword Planner. This tool allows up to 10 base phrases per ‘research,’ so group all phrases from the same subcategory together to find the best relevant keyword suggestions. ‘Research’ in SEO keyword planning refers to the maximum number of starting keywords that you can use in Google Keyword Planner to find related keyword suggestions.

5. Consolidate your keyword data

At this point, you’re probably wondering why you have so many keyword lists, but don’t worry that means you’re on the right track! These lists are your data sources for all search volumes and trends, and also for your competitors’ ranking and performance data. In fact, now it’s time to combine all of the lists that fall into the same subcategory by migrating all the data to one master Excel file. Once you’ve combined them remove any duplicate keywords. The reason you are merging the lists you’ve made is so you can effectively organize and implement your keyword research when it’s go-time.

• Pro Tip : Perform search trend and rank calculations on your data lists. Then consolidate the sources and remove duplicate phrase entries. Finally, pull all the competitive data related to your research (competitors ranking, traffic shares , etc.). Now you can calculate competitive keyword difficulty and value easily and build a data-driven SEO strategy. For example, you can identify recent changes in search volumes as well as competitor’s weak spots, and adjust your strategy accordingly.

To understand how to most effectively implement your keyword research, map out your data and insights against the current content on your website. Ask yourself:

• Which terms do you already have pages for?
• Which ones do you need to create pages for?

These questions will allow you to understand how to prioritize your efforts and successfully execute your keyword strategy.

6. Categorize keywords by user intent and semantic search

Start by dividing the phrases you’ve compiled into smaller groups based on topic similarities. From there you can break them down into large categories, like digital marketing, subcategories like SEO, and topic words like keyword research. For your topic keywords with semantic similarities, you want to keep in mind the users’ search intent for every query and effectively reach your potential customers.

People can use the same keywords to mean different things, so an important part of this process is decoding the user’s search intent.

For example, if someone searches for toilet paper what do they mean? Are they looking for places to order from, popular brands, or keeping tabs on which stores have toilet paper in stock? This is why you must understand search intent to categorize your keywords and ultimately reach your relevant target audience. Once you understand your target audience’s intent you can analyze the most relevant search phrases for them and for your business, and decide what are the right keywords for you.

In general, there are four main intent categories:

• Informational: These generally include “how-to” questions and “what” questions. For example, ‘how to disinfect plastic.’   
• Commercial investigation : Specific Attributes, versus, best, for example, ‘Walmart vs Target.’
• Transactional : This includes searches where the user has the intent to buy or download, for example, ‘buying waterproof kid’s toys.’
• Navigational : This includes branded queries, like ‘Facebook updates.’
• Pro Tip : Taking the time to thoroughly complete this step will help you to achieve very high clarity in your groups and ensure your SEO optimization efforts will have the largest impact possible.

Remove all remaining terms that are still irrelevant to your SEO goals such as queries that include times, locations, and competitor names. What you deem irrelevant will change based on your individual site and industry, so there is not a hard and fast rule to follow.

Optimization gaps are pages that are optimized for the wrong search intent, that have missing content, or are missing the right meta elements . To do this, continue re-dividing your keyword groups into smaller and smaller groups until you’re left only with keyword groups of semantically related search queries .  

7. Analyze long-tail vs. short-tail keywords

Within your keyword groups, it’s important to ensure you have a mix of short-tail and long-tail keywords . Short-tail keywords are more competitive and more to rank for because they are broader searches. On the other hand, long-tail keywords typically contain over three words and are less competitive because they are geared toward more specific searches. A good mix of the two types allows you to develop a keyword strategy that balances long-term and short-term wins.

For example, which of these keyword phrases do you think would be easier to rank for?

Toilet paper

Reusable toilet paper

[Did you pick the second one? Good!] The more competition there is for a keyword, the harder it is to rank.

As you can tell, long-tail keywords are more specific so they have a much clearer search intent than short-tail keywords. They also usually drive higher-quality traffic to your site since people are looking for something specific, which results in a more qualified lead. At many times data will show long-tail keywords can also produce larger traffic volumes when accumulated than short-tails for a specific topic, in those cases, it will be a strategic decision to focus on long-tail keywords that offer higher relevancy and match the audience’s search intent. This is another reason to make sure you don’t only pick high-volume phrases, but look at the big picture and choose the right keywords for SEO that offer maximum relevance and potential.

8. Choose the right mix of keywords to focus on

When creating your keyword plan you need to consider the following information and how they fit into your SEO strategy:

• Search volume: You should be closely evaluating the search volume of the keywords you are targeting. A keyword with a high search volume is more likely to be competitive, or harder to rank for. In order to rank higher on a high-volume, highly competitive keyword, you need to have site authority for the topic. One way you can build authority: create content on lower volume-related keywords. This shows Google that you are an expert on the topic and boosts your standing. Knowing the search volume for any given keyword helps you strategize to create the most effective approach given the characteristics of your website.
• Organic click-through rates (CTRs): This metric will give you an idea of how likely people are to click on posts that rank for a specific keyword. For example search terms like “what is the weather,” which are often answered on the Google Search Result page, may have a lower click-through rate since the user gets their answer question without needing to take another action.
• Keyword search trends: Trending keywords are constantly changing, so you need the most up-to-date data to stay on top of what’s trending in search. Similarweb has a keywords trends feature where you can quickly see what keywords are driving traffic now. Trends can change based on current events, pop culture developments (think Meghan and Harry’s Oprah interview ), or even seasonal events like Black Friday. Watch for specific times to rank for keywords because that’s when it matters.
• Your competitors’ keywords:  You can gain a lot of insight from keywords your competitors are ranking on. Using Similarweb’s Website Analysis, you can see the market share that each competitor has for specific keywords.
• Long-tail and short-tail keywords: As discussed earlier, you want to be sure you are focusing on the long-tail and short-tail keywords that make sense for your search strategy and your site’s level of authority.

Now you have sorted and expanded on your data strategically. This means you can easily estimate the difficulty as well as the value of ranking for a keyword or a topic and build an SEO strategy that takes everything into account and can be easily deployed. You can make smarter choices in creating or optimizing content, easily discover and address content gaps , and scale your activity without duplication hazards.

Put your keyword research to work

Boom. You did it. You just completed your initial keyword research. You now have small keyword groups you can use to map out and optimize pages from your site and create new pages for keywords you know will win SEO traffic. The list you have now enables you to easily manage on-page optimization and keyword use, as well as mitigate the risk of duplicate content.

This blog was written in collaboration with Sarah Mehlman , Content Manager at Similarweb.

Keyword research FAQs

Keyword research is the process of finding the terms and phrases that your target audience is searching for on search engines.

Why should I use keyword research?

You should use keyword research to discover the right terms that will help you climb higher on the SERP, and therefore increase the traffic to your website.

How do I conduct keyword research?

You can conduct keyword research with SEO tools . Similarweb’s keyword tool allows you to discover keywords your target audience is searching for, and the terms that are driving traffic to your competitors.

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A Step-By-Step Guide to Keyword Research (Bonus: Best Keyword Research Tools Compared)

Imagine getting over a quarter million visitors to your site every month. We did it thanks to keyword research:

That screenshot is from one of my sites called The Wandering RV . My wife and I grew this site from a brand new site to a quarter million monthly visits in just three years with less than 30 articles.

Yes, you also have to create great content and build links to that content, but those actions come AFTER you know the best keywords to target. Every successful SEO campaign begins with keyword research ; skip this step at your peril.

Ready to get started?

How to Do Keyword Research (Quick Steps):

Good keywords make or brake a successful SEO marketing campaign. Here’s the key steps to get started with keyword research :

Step 1 : Find keyword ideas based on key terms, related search, long-tail keywords, and LSI. Step 2 : Check the TRUE keyword difficulty and search volume. Step 3 : Determine user intent.

In today’s guide, I share a step-by-step guide to keyword research that covers not just how to find hundreds of great keywords, but also how to tell which ones can move the needle for your business and which aren’t worth your time. Let’s dive in!

Keyword Research Fundamentals

Before I talk about the exact steps to find keywords for your SEO campaign, let’s briefly cover what keyword research is and why you should care.

What Is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is the act of finding and vetting keywords to target in an SEO campaign.

This is done using a number of free and/or paid tools that show you what people are searching for on Google and other search engines .

Suggested in-depth guides: Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools .

The Role of Keyword Research in Digital Marketing

As you’ll learn in the next section, the quality of your keywords is the difference between a successful marketing campaign and a waste of time. The keywords you pick will determine your SEO marketing strategy from beginning to end.

Let’s see how.

How Important is Keyword Research? (Don’t Skip This!)

SEO can be complex, but it boils down to three fundamentals:

• Keyword Research
• Link building

Of those three, keyword research is the most important.

Why? Because you can create the best content and build incredible links that score you #1 Google rankings and still get zero benefits in terms of business growth or revenue if you target the wrong keywords.

For example, let’s say you want to write some content on your site’s blog so you can show up on Google’s first page. You have an idea of a blog post and think you have a good keyword to target. You make amazing content, build links to it through guest posting and email outreach (here’s how to find anyone’s email address ), and end up on the first page of Google . You’re getting hundreds of visits every month…

But your income from that article remains a big fat $0.

That’s because you didn’t properly research your keyword ahead of time. You may have found a keyword, but finding a keyword and doing keyword research are very different things.

Properly researching a keyword means understanding it’s income potential, how competitive it is, and even the exact kind of content you need to create to be able to rank for it. You’ll see what I mean by the end of this guide.

In a nutshell: Proper keyword research can be the difference between a wildly successful SEO campaign that makes your business tons of money and an utter waste of time and money.

Search Volume and Long Tail Keywords

The first concept to understand about keywords is search volume .

This is what most people look at when they first start researching keywords, and also one of the worst metrics to look at.

A high search volume is very deceiving for two reasons:

• The raw number of people searching for something has very little to do with how much you can actually earn from that traffic. For example, if you rank for a keyword that gets 10,000 searches per month, but if people are just looking for information and aren’t ready to buy (hint: you’d need to define the search intent. More below.), that does nothing for your bottom line.
• Just because 10,000 people search for a keyword doesn’t mean all 10,000 people actually click on a result. Take a look at the keyword “How old is Biden”, for example—it gets 51,000 searches per month, but only 17% of those people actually click on anything. That’s because people get the answer right on Google and don’t need to click through to find it.

On the other hand, a low search volume doesn’t mean a keyword is bad or that the number you see is the number of visitors you’ll get. Virtually all pages that rank on Google for one keyword also rank for dozens, hundreds, and sometimes thousands of other keywords.

These other keywords are usually synonyms and long-tail variants. There are also Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords, which I get to in a section below.

For example, take a look at this post that my wife, Kayla, wrote for The Wandering RV. She was targeting the keyword “best camping gear”, which gets around 2,700 searches per month according to Ahrefs. But as you can see in the screenshot below, it also ranks for 1,912 other keywords and even ranks on page one for “camping gear” at 32,000 searches per month!

The point of the story? While search volume is an important metric, you shouldn’t base your target keywords solely on how many people are searching for it every month (unless you’re only focused on brand awareness and/or advertising revenue on a per-impression basis).

Search Intent

Search intent is exactly what it sounds like—the intent of the person searching for a given keyword. It’s similar to the marketing concept “buyer intent”.

In other words: What is the user looking for?

Are they searching for an item they are ready to buy right now? Are they doing research before they make a purchase decision? Or are they just looking for information that has nothing to do with buying anything, but rather with a problem they may need a solution to?

Let’s look at an example of each.

High Buying Intent : A high buying intent keyword may be a product name, such as “RV rental las vegas”. If you type that into Google and look at the results, you see a bunch of ads for RV rentals and a map showing Las Vegas RV rental companies. Someone searching this is likely ready to buy, or very close.

Research Intent : These are keywords where people are still doing research on solutions, but will likely buy soon. “Best” and “Review” keywords often fall into this category, such as “best RV rental companies”.

Informational Intent : These keywords are for people strictly looking for information and aren’t ready or even thinking about buying anything. The “how old is Biden” example falls under this category. Another example that fits with RV rentals might be something like “how to travel the country with a pet”.

However, don’t think that you should only go after buying intent keywords. Informational keywords can help you build your email list and get people into your marketing funnel to eventually buy from you.

Search intent is also important to know because it affects what content ranks on Google. If you try to create a landing page to rank for an informational keyword when Google is ranking long-form blog content, you probably won’t rank even with perfect on-page SEO and plenty of backlinks because it’s simply not what the user is searching for.

For example, let’s say you want to rank for “small campers”. So you create a guide to owning small campers. However, when we look at Google, we can see that people aren’t looking for a guide, but rather, they’re looking for a list of small campers to buy.

That’s why even after you find good keyword ideas , you should always manually type them into Google and see what’s currently ranking to get an idea of what you need to create. Don’t write a massive guide when people just want a quick answer and don’t try to rank a blog post when people are looking to buy a product.

The Role of LSI and Synonyms

Earlier, I mentioned LSI keywords. This stands for Latent Semantic Indexing, and it’s a fancy way for Google to say “synonyms and related keywords”. They’re words that are commonly found together within a single topic and are semantically related to each other.

They’re important to tell the search engines what your content is about since there can be multiple meanings to the same keywords.

For example, let’s say you’re writing an article about cars. There are five different potential “cars” you could be talking about:

• Cars, the vehicles
• Cars, the animated Disney movie
• CARS, the Canadian Association for Rally Sports
• CARs, the Canadian Aviation Regulations
• (The) Cars, the American 1970s music band

How does Google know which version of “cars” you’re talking about? By LSI keywords! Take a look:

• Using the words “vehicle”, “used”, “new”, “buy”, “sell”, etc.
• Using the words “film”, “movie”, “Disney”, etc.
• Using the words “association”, “rally”, “sports”, etc.
• Using the words “aviation”, “regulation”, “administration”, etc.

While LSI keywords don’t necessarily matter during your keyword research, they are important when developing your actual content. You should include various LSI keywords naturally in your content without stuffing them, including in headings and image alt text.

You can find LSI keywords (and learn more about them) with a tool like LSI Graph .

How Do You Do Keyword Research? (Step-by-Step Guide)

Alright, now that you have a firm understanding of the important metrics behind keyword research, it’s time to actually find your very own keywords! There are three steps I follow when I’m doing keyword research for a new site, with an optional, more advanced fourth step:

• Find keyword ideas
• Check the TRUE keyword difficulty and search volume
• Determine their search intent
• (Optional) Find & utilize keyword silos

Let’s dive in!

Step 1: Find Keyword Ideas

Finding keyword ideas is the easy part. There are loads of tools that will spit out hundreds of ideas at the click of a button. It’s vetting them that takes effort, but we’ll get to that.

For now, go take a look at the “Best Keyword Research Tool” section below and pick your poison. I’ll be using Ahrefs in the examples because it’s my favorite tool and has all the bells and whistles, but the other tools can work as well.

My favorite way to find great keyword opportunities is spying on my competition. You can do this by plugging their site into any keyword tool and look at their keywords. Ahrefs has a nifty tool called the Content Gap Analysis.

Here’s how it works:

1. Plug your site into Ahrefs, then click the Content Gap link in the left-hand menu.

2. Plug in 1-10 competitors who are ranking on Google for keywords you want to rank for. You can find them by Googling those keywords and grabbing the URLs off of Google or by using Ahrefs’ Competing domains tool right above the Content gap link. Run the tool.

3. From here, you can export the list to an excel spreadsheet if you want. I like to comb through the list right in Ahrefs. If I see a keyword I might want to target, I open it in a new tab and add it to a keyword list using the + Add to button in the top right.

If you don’t have access to Ahrefs or another keyword tool that allows you to see competitor’s keywords, you can also use a tool like Keyword Shitter to give you a ton of ideas, then vet them using other free tools such as Uber Suggest.

Step 2: Check The TRUE Keyword Difficulty and Search Volume

Once you have a list of keyword ideas you’re comfortable working with (I aim for 50-100 at a time but you can do far more), it’s time to see which are even worth pursuing based on keyword difficulty (KD) and search volume.

There’s just one caveat… the search volume and KD you see in most keyword research tools are usually way off. KD in Ahrefs is solely based off the number of linking domains to the top results, which isn’t a 100% accurate depiction of the true difficulty to rank for a keyword.

This is because SEO is a complex beast, and things like domain rating (which I’ll cover shortly) and internal linking can have a massive impact on rankings. Backlinks are only part of the picture.

And the search volume? That’s not including LSI and long-tail keywords!

Remember that camping gear example I showed you at the beginning of this article that ranks for over 1,900 keywords? The main keyword only had 2,700 searches per month, yet the article gets over 5,000 visits per month. That’s because it’s ranking for other keywords besides the main keyword.

So if you see a keyword with 200 searches per month, chances are it’s really more like 500 or 1,000 if you include the related keywords that you’ll rank for.

To determine true search volume, grab the #1 result on Google for the keyword and plug it into Ahrefs or Uber Suggest to see how much traffic that page actually gets. That should give you a more accurate picture of the search volume for a given keyword.

Here’s the traffic for the #1 ranking page for “tiny campers”, a keyword that gets ~3,400 searches per month:

See how the page gets over 10k traffic, despite the main keyword getting a third of that? That’s true search volume potential.

The other metric, keyword difficulty, is also not 100% accurate. But figuring out true difficulty is usually as easy as looking at the top pages domain authority (DA), or domain rating (DR) if you’re using Ahrefs. Let me explain.

If a keyword has a difficulty score of 8, but the top ranking pages are all DR 80+, ranking your site for those keywords may be difficult if you have a low DR, despite the low difficulty score.

My advice is to aim for keywords with a 30 KD or lower if you’re under a 40 DR, then branch up as you build more links and gain a higher authority. As your DR climbs, your internal links are worth more “link juice” (or pass more “page authority” depending on what source you listen to).

But this isn’t an article on technical SEO, so I’ll leave it at that for now!

Step 3: Determine Search Intent

At this point, you should have a pretty decent list of keywords with a difficulty you’re comfortable tackling and a search volume potential you’d be happy to capture. Now it’s time to figure out what people actually want when they search for these terms and whether or not it fits in with your marketing and revenue goals.

This part is as simple as Googling each keyword on your list and looking at the top 3-5 results. Review their meta title and description, click on them to view the page, and check out the angle they took on the page.

• Are they mainly listicle posts? How-tos? Ultimate guides ? A landing page? Something else?
• How do they seem to be monetizing the page ? Are they using display ads ? Selling products as a solution to the problem? Affiliate marketing ? Just capturing emails and not actually selling anything?
• Take a look at the comments. Are people asking questions that weren’t answered in the article? Do they seem happy, angry, or neutral?

All of these questions will help you dial in on the type of post/page you need to create, how you can monetize it (or use it to capture emails/push notification subscribers/social followers), and what you can do to improve it.

As you’re going through each keyword, keep your answers to these questions in a spreadsheet or word document to keep track of which ones you’re interested in pursuing. Your final list is the list you can start pursuing!

To give you a better idea of how to determine search intent, here are a few examples courtesy of this Moz post :

Informational Intent:

• [product name]
• what is [product name]
• how does [product name] work
• how do I use [product name]

Commercial Intent (AKA Research Intent):

• best [product name]
• [product name] reviews
• compare [product name]
• what is the top [product name]
• [colour/style/size] [product name]

Transactional Intent (AKA Buying Intent):

• how much does [product name] cost
• [product name] in [location]
• order [product name] online
• [product name] near me
• affordable [brand name] [product name]

This graph from Ahrefs may also help:

Now take your list and go crank out some content! Or, you can follow one last step.

Step 4: (Advanced) Find & Utilize Keyword Silos

If you really want to do well, you can optionally take it one step further and look for keyword silos to create corresponding content silos on your site.

A keyword silo is a list of highly related keywords that you can create content around to interlink between on your site (also called the “hub and spoke” method). Here’s a visual I created to help you understand:

Essentially, you create a hub page targeting the primary head term you want to rank for, then create “spoke” pages based on related and long-tail keywords.

For example, while doing keyword research for my wife Kayla’s vegan food blog, I found a series of related keywords asking “Is ___ vegan”. People wanted to know if common foods, such as bagels, donuts, or Oreos are vegan.

To rank for these keywords, we created this hub page which links to all of her “Is ___ vegan” articles. These articles all link to one another, as well as back to the main hub page.

This inter-linking is called content siloing, and it works so well for two reasons:

• Because all the pages interlink to one another, if you build links to any of the pages, it improves page authority across all of the other pages.
• Google uses relevancy in its algorithm, and since these topics are all highly relevant to one another, it can improve your rankings further.

So how do you find keyword silos? There is no silver bullet solution — you have to be good at picking up on patterns and noticing relevancy. However, there is one trick you can use to try and find them: books.

Look for books on your topic on Amazon and browse the table of contents. Oftentimes, books are full of keyword silos: that’s what makes them a book! Think of the binding as the hub page and the chapters as the spoke pages.

Of course, as you can see in the example above, these keywords aren’t exactly what people are searching for on Google. People aren’t typing “vegan out in the world”, but rather “how to eat vegan at restaurants” or “how to eat vegan at family gatherings”. So you may have to do some sleuthing to figure out the keyword that corresponds with the chapter title in the books you find.

Once you find a potential silo, be sure to run the keywords through steps 2 and 3 before you commit to it! Just because you found a silo, doesn’t mean you should pursue it. Think logically about how all that content will fit into your business and how you can expand on it in the future.

What Is The Best Keyword Research Tool?

There are dozens, if not hundreds of keyword research tools on the market today. Some are extremely unique, but most are just slightly different takes on the same idea. So what’s the best one? Let’s break it down by free and paid tools.

Free Keyword Research Tools

There are two free keyword research tools I’ve used and recommend:

Ubersuggest

Keyword shitter.

Let’s put on hold all the conversions about Neil Patel for a second. This tool does its job and, if you’re on a budget, it can work to get you started with SEO.

Ubersuggest is basically a free, scaled-down version of Ahrefs or Moz. It lets you spy on competitor’s backlinks, see what keywords they’re ranking for, and do some decent keyword research. If you’re doing SEO on a budget, it can get the job done.

Keyword Shitter is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. You type in a keyword and get hundreds of keyword suggestions. It’s great if you just need tons of ideas, but it mostly only spits out related keywords to the one you typed in, not unique, separate ideas.

Paid Keyword Research Tools

Now we’re getting into the big-boy (or girl) tools! If you’re serious about SEO and you have the budget, these are the tools you want to use.

Keyword Insights

Keywords everywhere.

Ahrefs is hands-down my favorite SEO tool; not just for keyword research, but also for link-building, rank tracking, coming up with content ideas, and more. It has all the bells and whistles and is easily the best all-around SEO tool on the market. However, it comes at a steep price, with just the basic tool being $99 per month.

SEMrush is another great keyword research tool. It’s more affordable than Ahrefs, but it doesn’t have quite as many features. It’s more geared towards search engine marketing and PPC (thus the SEM in SEMrush). However, if you want a great paid tool but don’t want to pay the premium on Ahrefs, it’s a valid option. It even lets you try out the product for free!

Keyword Insights claims to be “the smartest way to group keywords and classify search intent at scale”… and with good reason. The tool utilizes geo-specific, live search engine result page data to cluster keywords into similar groups whilst also working out the search intent behind them.

A user simply uploads a list of keywords (as many as you’d like) and the tool will spit out a preformatted Google sheets document with the clustered keywords and the intent pulled through. Its most recent update also sorts the grouped keywords into “top-level themes” so you can see what their content hubs should be and what their spoke content might look like. The insights will also tell you which keywords you can target a single page with, or which need to be broken into multiple pages.

Keywords Everywhere is an awesome tool that used to be free and now is credit-based. The tool shows you search volume, competition, and average CPC right on Google whenever you type something in. It also shows you stats on related keywords and the “people also search” keywords. Regardless of which other tools you use, I highly recommend grabbing this one.

Want more SEO tools? Check out Kinsta’s list of must-have SEO plugins for WordPress .

Suggested Stack

So what keyword research tools should you get? My suggested stack is Ahrefs and Keywords Everywhere. Ahrefs is a complete SEO software that will help you rank your site, not just find keywords. And Keywords Everywhere lets you see search volume and keyword ideas any time you’re searching something on Google. Plus it’s free, so what’s not to like?

Here’s a quick recap of everything we’ve covered:

• Keyword research is extremely important to any SEO campaign and should not be skipped or taken lightly.
• Search volume and keyword difficulty can be deceiving. Do some deeper research by typing the keyword into Google and reviewing the results before you make a decision.
• Don’t be fooled by low search volume. Check the true search volume by reviewing the top pages search traffic using Ubersuggest or Ahrefs.
• Search intent is king. Make sure the content you’re creating matches the content people want to see (and what Google is already showing).
• Look for keyword silos. They’re can be a shortcut to ranking your pages faster.

And that’s all there is to it! If you have any questions, feel free to drop a comment below or shoot me an email. For more help with SEO, click here to read my step-by-step guide and this awesome in-depth guide on how to drive more traffic to your website.

Bill is a content marketing and SEO expert with over 6 years' experience. When he's not nerding out over Google, he loves traveling, playing video games, and spending time with his wife.

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Keyword Research is predominantly a statistical analysis of trending interests that are expressed by internet searches.

Although I realize the importance of said statistics, I am “right brained” and have struggled with being interested in numbers, all of my life. When I look at a keyword research result, the numbers tell me nothing in terms that I can understand. In fact, I’m totally bored by the concept.

I have read many posts, papers, and websites about the subject, and although not many agree with the same approach, they basically are saying the same things. b-o-r-i-n-g!

What is stopping a keyword research tool (once the stats have been gathered) from asking what it is that you sell, and then saying… well, to sell that, try concentrating on this…, and spare me the statistical analysis.

Really helpful article. Especially for the newcomers who want to be an SEO expert.

Thanks, Eva! Glad you enjoyed it. :)

What if I’m a business owner with a brand new site with no blog posts yet? How would I start this if I’m new to KW research? Are there services (real people services) that help with this or do it with me?

Hey, Johnny!

No problem! The steps with the content gap analysis are the same – you just have to manually find your competitors rather than using a tool. To do that, Google some keywords you think you want to rank for and grab the URLs of the top-ranking sites that monetize their sites similarly to you (whether that’s through ads, affiliate marketing, or selling similar products).

Paste those URLs into the content gap tool and follow along from there! Hope this helps! :)

Awesome! i am using this article to share with my students while i m teaching keyword research.

Lots of great information here ! Just wanting to introduce to a free alternative to Keywords everywhere, a chrome extension – WhatsmySERP.com/everywhere it gives you unlimited searches for volume and CPC.

Our team has launched this tool and it already has 5 star reviews and 20k+ users. I’d love for you to try it and see what your thoughts are.

I’d love to know your thoughts :)

This article is really really helpful for the newcomers. specially the one who recently started a blog or a website and Also, wants to Learn SEO.

The thing with the search intent is really important!

This was really what i was searching. perfect timing, thanks Bill such an valuable post.

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• On-Page SEO

The Ultimate 2024 SEO Keyword Research Guide

If you’re familiar with search engine optimization (SEO) , you’ve probably heard of keywords — the phrases that users type into a search engine when they want to find something.

Choosing the best keywords is vital to the success of your SEO efforts. That’s why we’re bringing you this complete SEO keyword research guide! This can be a daunting, yet profitable, task. Don’t be afraid to reach out to an SEO company for assistance. Otherwise, keep reading to dive in and learn how to do keyword research for SEO!

What are SEO keywords?

What is keyword research for seo, why is seo keyword research important.

• How to do keyword research for SEO

SEO keywords are words and phrases you add to your online content to improve your website’s rankings for those terms. The goal is that when a user searches for that keyword on a search engine like Google, your website will appear as one of the top search results.

Why are SEO keywords important?

SEO keywords are vital to your SEO efforts because you need to use them in your content in order to rank in the search results. When a user searches for a term related to your business online, you want your website to be one of the first results. And to achieve that goal, you must incorporate those terms throughout your content and website.

“Our systems analyze the content to assess whether it contains information that might be relevant to what you are looking for. The most basic signal that information is relevant is when content contains the same keywords as your search query.”

Keyword research for SEO is the process of identifying the words or phrases your target audience searches for online so you can target them for your SEO strategy. It can involve using various tools and platforms to create a list of the best phrases to target in your content.

Keyword research is important because it helps you identify which phrases your target audience uses to find your products or services on search engines like Google.

Once you know these phrases, you can incorporate them into your content and help your website rank at the top of the results each time someone searches for those words.

In other words, you’ll be able to reach more of your target market and increase your online visibility.

That means that with the right keyword targeting, you’ll drive more web traffic, high-quality leads, and sales for your business.

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How to do keyword research for SEO: Best practices for choosing the best keywords

Now you know what SEO keyword research is and why it’s important, but how exactly do you research keywords and find the right ones to target?

Here’s how to do keyword research for SEO in 10 steps:

• Use SEO keyword research tools to start off your keyword list
• Use Google Suggest and Google Trends to discover keywords
• Find out what keywords your competitors rank for
• Look at keywords you already rank for
• Create a list of your keyword ideas
• Look out for long-tail keywords
• Analyze keyword volume and competition
• Look at the search intent
• Determine target and related keywords
• Finalize your keyword list

1. Use SEO keyword research tools to start off your keyword list

One of the best ways to research keywords is to use SEO keyword research tools to make your job as easy as possible.

We recommend using SEO.com’s keyword research tool to generate a list of possible keywords to target for your SEO strategy. You can even save and export the list for easy access later.

There are a number of other helpful keyword research tools you can try, too, like:

• Keywords Everywhere
• Ahref’s Keywords Explorer
• Semrush’s Keyword Overview

Most of these tools operate by simply entering a starting phrase. The tool then generates a list of related phrases, terms, and questions that people search for online.

While you will need to weed through these lists to pick out the best phrases for your content (more on that later), these tools are a great starting point for your SEO keyword research.

2. Use Google Suggest and Google Trends to discover keywords

Another great way to discover keywords for your SEO strategy is to use Google Suggest and Google Trends .

Google Suggest is the list of suggestions that appear when you start searching for something on Google. These suggestions are perfect candidates for potential keywords to target.

And as a bonus, these suggestions are usually long-tail keywords.

In the example above, for instance, you can see examples of short- and long-tail HVAC keywords .

Long-tail keywords , as the name suggests, are longer keywords that contain multiple words or a longer phrase and are usually more specific. For example, “brownie” is a short-tail keyword, while “chocolate brownie recipe” is a long-tail keyword.

Long-tail keywords are usually less competitive and easier to rank for than short-tail keywords.

Google Trends can also give you lots of potential keyword ideas. This tool shows you what searches are currently trending on Google.

Using this tool is a great way to get an idea of which keywords related to your business are currently popular, making it easy to target keywords your audience is searching for repeatedly.

3. Find out what keywords your competitors rank for

Next in our guide for how to do keyword research for SEO is to scope out what keywords your competitors currently rank for.

After all, the goal is to outrank your competitors in the search results so you can drive more traffic and leads. Plus, your competitors already offer some of the same products or services as you, so there’s a high probability the keywords they rank for will be relevant to you.

So, what better way to outrank your competitors in the search results than to research the keywords they already rank for?

You can use a tool like Ahrefs to accomplish this.

Simply copy the URL of a page on your competitor’s website and enter it into the Ahrefs Site Explorer tool. Then, click on the Organic Keywords tab from the menu on the left-hand side to see which keywords that page is currently ranking for.

You can also look up the keywords for an entire domain using the Ahrefs Site Explorer tool.

Once you’ve identified the keywords your competitors rank for, you’ll have the ultimate list of keywords to target in your content.

4. Look at keywords you already rank for

It’s also a good idea to check out the keywords your site already ranks for.

You might be thinking, “But wait, I’m already ranking for them, so why do they matter? Shouldn’t I be trying to rank for new keywords?”

Yes, you should try to rank for new keywords, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore the ones you already rank for. In fact, by looking at your existing keywords, you’ll probably also find some new keywords you can optimize for.

The best way to check out your current keyword rankings is to head to Google Search Console and navigate to the Search Results report . From there, look at your current keyword rankings under the Queries tab.

Odds are, lots of these will be familiar to you, but you may be surprised to find some that you haven’t optimized for. Google has already deemed your website a good candidate for ranking for those terms.

If you aren’t already ranking on page one, and these keywords make sense for your SEO strategy, it’s a good idea to optimize for them and boost your rankings and traffic even more.

5. Create a list of your keyword ideas

Now that you’ve used some SEO keyword research tools and scoped out your competitors’ keyword rankings along with your own site’s rankings, it’s time to create a list of all the keyword ideas you’ve accumulated.

You can create a list in any format that works best for you. Maybe you type up your keyword ideas in a Word document or in an Excel spreadsheet.

Whatever you choose, make sure you list all of your ideas in an organized fashion because you’ll need to look at this list again in the future or likely share it with other team members.

6. Look out for long-tail keywords

Once you’ve compiled your list, it’s time to analyze it and narrow it down.

While you likely have some great keyword ideas jotted down, it’s possible that not all of them will be a good fit for your SEO strategy, so it’s important to take the time to go through the entirety of your list and weed out the less desirable keywords.

The first thing you’ll want to include in your final list is long-tail and out-of-the-box keywords. As we mentioned before, long-tail keywords are usually less competitive and easier to rank for than short-tail ones, so it’s a great idea to include these in your SEO strategy.

Keep an eye out for phrases like “chocolate chip cookie recipe” vs. “cookie” or “HVAC technician in Cleveland” vs. “HVAC technician.”

7. Analyze keyword volume and competition

You’ll also want to analyze the search volume and competition for the keyword ideas on your list.

The search volume refers to how many people search for that keyword. The higher the search volume, the more people are typing that word or phrase on search engines.

The keyword competition, sometimes called keyword difficulty, refers to how challenging it will be to rank for that keyword in the SERPs. The higher the keyword difficulty, the more challenging it will be to earn a top spot in the search results.

You can view metrics like keyword difficulty and search volume by using tools like Ahrefs.

The goal is to choose keywords that have a high keyword volume and low competition.

But this can be easier said than done. In fact, you might notice that keywords with a higher search volume also have more competition.

Try to choose keywords that fall somewhere in the middle. You should pick keywords with a decent search volume and a lower keyword difficulty, so you have a better chance at ranking at the top of the search results and can drive a decent amount of traffic to your site.

8. Look at the search intent

Now that you’ve narrowed down your keyword idea list using long-tail keywords, search volume, and search difficulty, it’s time to look at search intent.

Search intent is the reason why a user types a particular word or phrase into a search engine. When someone searches for something online, they want to solve a problem, answer a question, or get more information about a topic.

If your content doesn’t match the search intent of your keyword, it won’t rank. Even more importantly, you want to make sure that answering the search intent makes sense for your business.

For example, if you run an HVAC company , it wouldn’t make sense to match the search intent of a keyword like “plumber near me” because you don’t offer those services.

It’s important to analyze the search intent of the keywords on your list to ensure that you can (and want to) answer the search intent for your keywords.

9. Determine target and related keywords

Another important step in the SEO keyword research process is determining target and related keywords.

A target keyword is the main keyword you want to target in your content. Related keywords, as the name suggests, are related to your target keyword. They aren’t your core keyword, but you target them secondarily on your pages.

For example, let’s say your target keyword is something like “Italian restaurant.” Some related keywords you can also target could be “local Italian restaurant,” “Italian restaurant near me,” and “Italian restaurant in Philadelphia, PA.”

It’s important to group your keywords into target and related keywords to ensure you don’t create duplicate content. This strategy also helps you create content that will appear in multiple relevant search results, maximizing your online visibility.

Take a look at your keyword list to determine which words and phrases are target keywords and which are related keywords. You should also brainstorm and research any target and related keywords that are missing from your list.

10. Finalize your keyword list

Now that you’ve analyzed and brainstormed target and related keywords, it’s time to finalize your keyword list.

Take one last look through your list to ensure that the keywords are a good fit for your company in terms of search intent, search volume, and keyword difficulty.

Once you’ve finalized your list, all that’s left is to start targeting your keywords by creating valuable, helpful, and optimized content and watch your rankings and traffic soar.

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Table of Contents

• What Are SEO Keywords?
• What is Keyword Research for SEO?
• Why is SEO Keyword Research Important?
• How to Do Keyword Research for SEO

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Track rankings, analyze competitors, and audit your content faster with SEO.com.

Related Resources

• SEO Title Tags: What Are They? [+ 5 Tips to Optimize Yours]
• Should You Target Misspelled Keywords in SEO?
• Should You Target Zero-Volume Keywords? (And How to Find Them)
• The Basics of Registered Trademarks & Symbols in Title Tags
• What Are Internal Links? A Guide to Internal Linking Basics
• What is an SEO Score? Definition, Factors, and How to Improve
• What is First Link Priority? (And Does It Affect Rankings?)
• Why is Google Ignoring My Title Tag and Meta Description?
• 100+ Best SEO Keywords for Ecommerce Businesses
• 100+ Best SEO Keywords for HVAC Companies

Home » Grow Online » Future-Proofing Your SEO: How to Do Keyword Research

Future-Proofing Your SEO: How to Do Keyword Research

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Written and researched by:

Without good SEO , people won’t be able to find your website or online store. That’s why SEO keyword research is so important, no matter if your site is built using a website builder or a CMS. People search for a specific word or phrase and search engines direct them toward related content. And, hopefully, that’s your website’s content.

In this article, we’ll go over the keyword basics, learning what they are, why they’re so critical to websites, and how to do SEO keyword research yourself. Let’s get started!  

What Is Keyword Research?

Keywords are the words and phrases people type into search engines to get information. They help search engines understand the content on a web page so that they can decide if it’s relevant to the query.   

When you strategically use these keywords in your website content, you drive up your site’s visibility. This helps search engines drive traffic to you.  

SEO keyword research is simply the act of finding and analyzing the search words that people enter into search engines, then using those terms in your website, content-making, and marketing. SEO keyword research helps you immediately understand what your potential customers are looking for online, and target them to guide them back to you. 

Why Is Keyword Research Important?

Keyword research can guide your content strategy. If done properly, you’ll get insight into the habits, choices, and preferences of your audience . This helps you get a better idea of how to get your audience’s attention and best solve their problems.  

Keyword research can guide your content, product development, and marketing. Your business should be creating products and content that your target audience will find valuable.  

There’s so much noise online, so we understand it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd. But by using the most relevant keywords, you help users find your content. You’re speaking their language, and you’re making a roadmap that leads them straight to your website.  

When Should Keyword Research Be Used?

Once you understand how to find keywords for SEO, you have a lot to gain. The great thing about keyword research is there there are plenty of applications for it, including:   

• SEO Optimization: When you use the right keywords in your website content, meta descriptions, and tags, those rankings go up, and so does organic traffic to your site.  
• Content Strategy: Keyword research can tell you about the topics that interest your audience. You can create content around these keywords, attracting even more visitors. Targeted content means relevant information that keeps your audience on your site, and that means more visibility on your pages and a higher chance of conversion.  
• Paid Campaigns: When you’re ready for paid advertising campaigns like Google Ads or social media ads, keyword research gives you the best words to use. This expands the reach of your ads and ups the return on investment (ROI).  
• Long-Tail Keywords: These are longer and more specific phrases that have less competition. When you go for long-tail keywords, you’ll rank higher for specific queries. Generally speaking, the more specific a product search query, the more likely the visitor is to convert. For instance, “best website builders” is fairly broad, but “best website builders for food delivery businesses” is a specific query that leans toward a purchase.   

How To Conduct Keyword Research: The Main Steps

By now you might be chomping at the bit to get into how to find keywords for SEO. Here’s a handy step-by-step list to walk you through the process of SEO keyword research:  

Finding Keywords  

Of course you want to find keywords for SEO! You can begin by brainstorming possible keywords that are relevant to your business and audience. If you were searching to find your business or looking for related information, which keywords would you naturally use?  

Analyzing Keywords  

Once you’ve formulated a list of possible keywords, it’s time to use tools to analyze them (we’ll discuss these in more detail in the next section). Pay attention to search volume (how many people search for the term), difficulty (how competitive is the keyword), and relevance to your business.  

Considering User Intent  

When choosing your SEO keywords, consider the audience’s intent behind using them. For example, if people search for “best website builders”, are they looking for an expert opinion or are they ready to sign up to a platform? The keywords you prioritize can depend on the user journey and the stage the reader is at.  

Comparing Keywords  

Have a look at which keywords your competitors are using and ranking for. What are they missing? Are there any gaps in the market that you can take advantage of? What is everyone talking about? What’s trending? Where can your content rank highly?  

Targeting Keywords  

After finding and analyzing your keywords, the next step is to pick the most promising keywords to use in your content. With your research, you should be able to determine which keywords work best for your audience and website.  

Prioritizing and Optimizing Keywords  

Go beyond just picking the right keywords. Prioritize those keywords depending on their SEO impact. Some terms will perform better than others, so we recommend tailoring your content around these.   

Verifying Search Intent  

Now, make sure that your keywords match the audience’s searches by regularly reviewing your keywords. Popular keywords change over time, so adapting and targeting new search terms will help your website rank well and meet your audience’s needs.  

Tools for Keyword Research

You might be wondering how to do keyword research for SEO – as in what type of help is available?   

For accurate SEO keyword research, we recommend using a dedicated SEO tool to help determine and analyze your targeted terms. Here are a few of the most popular options:  

Ahrefs  

Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO keyword tool with a huge keyword database and accurate search volume data. Its “Keyword Explorer” tool gives you keyword data including keyword difficulty, search volume, and clicks-per-search.   

You’ll also get the top-ranking pages for a specific keyword and insights into how many backlinks would help your pages rank better.  

Semrush  

Semrush has robust SEO keyword research capabilities, a user-friendly interface, highly-detailed keyword reports, and competitor analysis (to help you analyze your competitors’ keywords and strategies).   

We recommend using its “Keyword Magic Tool”, which will cover all of your basic keyword research needs. It helps you find the right keywords by showing the broad match, phrase match, and exact match keywords, along with their search volume, trend data, and difficulty score.    

Google Keyword Planner  

Google Keyword Planner is not only a free tool, but it’s extremely powerful because its insights come directly from Google, the world’s most popular search engine.   

Though it’s technically meant for paid search campaigns, it finds keywords related to your business or industry and gives search volume and competition-level info for each keyword.  

Moz Keyword Explorer   

Moz’s Keyword Explorer is a great tool for SEO keyword research thanks to its predictive metrics, which can let you know which keywords are worth targeting in the first place. No more wasted time!   

It gives you a wide variety of data, including monthly search volume, difficulty, priority, and click-through rate. And it also suggests related keywords and which websites are high-rankers for the target keyword.  

KWFinder  

Are you a small business with limited resources? KWFinder has a user-friendly interface and focuses on finding less competitive keywords . That means you can be a big fish in a smaller pond instead of competing against the big sharks.   

KWFinder finds those long-tail keywords with low SEO difficulty so that you can spot good opportunities. On top of that, it will give you keyword suggestions, search volume data, and information on trends.   

How To Maintain Keyword Rankings

SEO keyword research isn’t a one-time thing. Once you’ve done the hard work of finding, analyzing, and implementing your keywords, you’ve got to keep your rankings as high as possible.  

That means part of how to do keyword research is to regularly revisit your SEO keyword research , lightly (or completely!) refresh your content, keep checking out what your competitors are doing (and what they’re missing), and stay on top of SEO trends.  

As we’ve discussed, knowing how to do keyword research for SEO is an essential part of a successful SEO strategy. You want to drive appropriate visitors to your website – all it takes is knowing the best keywords to target them effectively, and how to use them across your website and content.  

SEO keyword research is a goldmine of information that every website should tap into, giving you all the insights you need to target your ideal audience.   

When you understand your audience’s language and meet them where they are, you can boost your visibility, drive traffic to your site, and ultimately, grow your online business.  

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Find Keyword Ideas in Seconds

Boost SEO results with powerful keyword research

How to Use Google Keyword Planner

Written by Brian Dean

Google Keyword Planner is a keyword research tool used by advertisers based on Google-suggested phrase terms as the primary foundation. It helps one discover relevant keywords for search campaigns to ensure ads get to the right audience. Importantly, the tool provides estimates for search volumes and costs to target the respective terms.

This is the ultimate guide to using Google Keyword Planner.

In fact, I’ve used the Google Keyword Planner (formerly known as Google Keyword Tool) to help grow my site’s organic traffic to 360,408 visits per month:

And in this guide, I’ll show you how to get the most SEO value out of this awesome tool.

• Step #1: Access the Google Keyword Planner

Step #2: Choose Your Tool

Step #3: filter and sort the results, step #4: analyze the keyword ideas section, step #5: choose a keyword, bonus step #1: get exact keyword search volume data, bonus step #2: the gkp hack.

Try the FREE Backlinko Keyword Research Tool . Discover new keywords and performance data to use in your site content, SEO campaigns, and more.

Step #1: Access Google Keyword Planner

Yes, Keyword Planner is a free tool.

But there’s a catch:

In order to use the Google Keyword Planner, you NEED to have a Google Ads account.

If you don’t have a Google Ads account already, you can set one up in a few minutes:

(Just follow the prompts, enter some information about you and your business, and you’re in. Note: You don’t have to run an active campaign to use the Keyword Planner. But do need to at least set up a Google Ads campaign.)

Next, log in to your Google Adwords account. Click on the “Tools” menu item to the left of your screen.

Then, choose “Keyword Planner”:

You’ll see 3 different tools within Keyword Planner: “Discover New Keywords”, “Get search volume and forecasts”, and “Organize keywords into ad groups.”

When it comes to SEO-focused keyword research , the first two tools are enough to generate thousands of potential keywords.

To be clear:

This tool is designed with PPC advertisers in mind. So there are a lot of features in the tool (like keyword bidding features) that won’t be useful if you’re using this tool to find keywords for SEO.

With that, it’s time for me to show you how to find SEO keywords using each of the tools built into the Google Keyword Planner.

There are two main tools inside of the GKP.

And now I’m going to show you how to use these two tools to help you create a massive list of keywords for your SEO campaigns .

1. Discover New Keywords

Like the name suggests, this tool is ideal for finding new keywords.

As you can see, the field above this tool says: “Enter products or services closely related to your business”.

Quick Note: The value you get from the Keyword Planner is largely based on the information that you enter here. So you want to be VERY strategic about what you enter into this field.

So to help you get the most out of this tool, I’ll break down each of the two main options.

“ Start With Keywords ”: These words and phrases describe your business (for example, “weight loss” or “coffee”). This allows you to access Google’s internal database of keywords for different industries.

Pro Tip: You can enter multiple keywords into this field. Just put a comma after each keyword and press enter. For example, if you run an eCommerce site that sells cookies, you’d want to enter terms like “gluten free desserts” and “low carb cookies” here.

“ Start With a Website ”: This is designed for Adwords users. But you can sometimes find a few solid keywords here using your site’s homepage… or an article from your site.

(More on that later.)

Once you’ve entered your information into one (or all three) of the fields, click “Get Results”.

Next, you’ll see the Keywords Results Page. I’ll show you how to use that part of the Keyword Planner later in the guide.

For now, let’s dive into the second tool in the GKP: search volume and forecasts.

2. Get search volume and forecasts for your keywords

This feature is only really useful if you already have a long list of keywords… and just want to check their search volume. In other words, this tool won’t help you generate new keyword ideas.

To use it, copy and paste a list of keywords into the search field, and hit “Get Started”.

You’ll also see the same Keywords Results Page you see when you use the “Find new keywords” tool.

The only difference is that a) you only get data on the keywords you entered and b) Google will predict how many clicks and impressions you’ll get from the keywords you entered:

No matter which tool you ultimately used, you end up in the same place: The Keywords Result page.

And now it’s time for me to do a deep dive into how that page works… and how to get the most out of it.

Now it’s time to filter the list of keywords down to a smaller list of terms that are best for you.

Both the tools I just described will take you to the “Keywords Results Page”, which looks like this:

Here’s a breakdown of the page:

At the top of the page, you’ll notice four targeting options: Locations, Language, Search networks and Date range.

Here’s what these four things mean:

“Locations”

This is the country (or countries) that you’re marketing to. Simple.

This is the language of the keywords you want to see information on.

“Locations” and “Language” are automatically set to target English-speaking people in the United States. If that’s your target audience (in most cases it will be), you can leave these options as-is.

But let’s say you’re based in Germany. You’d want to change the Location to “Germany” and choose “German” as the language.

“Search networks”

This is whether or not you want to advertise only on Google… or Google and their “search partners”. Search partner sites include other search engines and Google properties (like YouTube).

I recommend leaving this set to just “Google”.

“Date range”

Leaving this as the default “12 months” is usually fine.

The next important feature of the Keywords Results Page is called “Add Filter”:

This feature gives you a decent amount of filtering options. So let me quickly break down each of the options for you.

Keyword Text

Here’s where you can have the tool ONLY show you keywords that contain a certain word or phrase.

Why would you want to include certain keywords?

Let’s say that you just launched a new line of blue t-shirts. In that case, you’d want to make sure the keyword “blue t-shirt” appears in all of the keywords that the Keyword Planner suggests to you.

Exclude Keywords in My Account

This excludes keywords that you’re already bidding on in Adwords.

Exclude Adult Ideas

Self-explanatory (I hope).

Avg. Monthly Searches

This is helpful for filtering out keywords with lots of search volume (after all, these terms tend to be really competitive). You may also want to filter out keywords that don’t get that many searches.

For example, let’s say that you get a big list of keyword ideas:

You can click on “Avg. Monthly Searches” to sort the results.

That way, you ONLY see keywords with lots of search volume.

You can also do the opposite. Click “Avg. Monthly Searches” again and you’ll get a list of low-volume terms:

Competition

You can have the Google Keyword Planner only show you keywords with “Low”, “Medium” or “High” competition.

This feature trips a lot of people up.

Remember: the Google Keyword Planner is designed 100% for Google Ads… not SEO.

So the “Competition” score here ONLY refers to Adwords competition (not how competitive the keyword is to rank for in Google’s organic search results). So I recommend leaving this blank.

Ad Impression Share

Again, this setting only applies to Adwords. So for the sake of SEO, we can ignore this filter.

Top of Page Bid

This is how much you’d expect to pay for your ad to appear at the top of the page for that keyword.

(This used to be called “Cost Per Click” or “CPC”.)

Top of Page Bid is a proxy indicator of commercial intent . So if you only want to target keywords that potential buyers search for, you can set this to a certain dollar amount.

As you can see, there are two options “high range” and “low range”.

I personally set the “low range” to a few dollars. That way, I can filter out keywords without any commercial intent.

Organic Impression Share

This is how often your site appears in the organic results for each keyword. (Note: to use this feature you’ll need to connect your Google Search Console Account to Google Adwords).

Organic Average Position

Where you rank (on average) for each keyword in Google organic. Again, you’ll need to connect to the GSC for this to work.

So that’s it for filtering.

The last feature of the Keywords Results Page to look out for is called “Broaden Your Search”.

This is a new feature that shows you keywords that are somewhat related to the terms you typed in.

For example, when you search for “Paleo Diet”, you get this list of suggestions:

Now that you’ve filtered the results down to keywords that are ideal for your business, let’s break down the terms that are left.

Specifically, I’m going to show you how to analyze the terms that show up in the “Keyword Ideas” section of the Keyword Planner.

Here’s what each of the terms in this section means:

Keyword (by relevance): This is the list of keywords that Google considers most relevant to the keyword or URL you typed into it.

Avg. monthly searches: Pretty self-explanatory. However, keep in mind that this is a range… and not a super-accurate indicator of search volume.

(I’ll show you how to get more accurate search volume data in a minute.)

Pro Tip: Watch out for seasonal keywords. That’s because seasonal keywords (like “Halloween costumes”) may get 50,000 searches in October and 100 searches in May. But the GKP will say that the term gets “10,000 searches per month”, which is kind of misleading.

Competition: Like I mentioned earlier, “Competition” in the Google Keyword Planner has nothing to do with SEO. Instead, “Competition” is simply the number of advertisers that are bidding on that keyword. But it IS useful to see if a keyword has any commercial intent (after all, the more people bid on a keyword, the more potential there is for them to become a lead or customer).

Top of Page Bid: This is another great way to size keyword’s monetization potential. The higher bid here, the more lucrative the traffic tends to be.

Now that you know how to use all of the tools, features and options within the Google Keyword Planner, it’s time for the last step: finding awesome keywords that you can optimize your site’s content around.

This is tricky.

Why? There are LOTS of factors that go into choosing a keyword . And it’s more art than science.

That said, I learn best from examples. So I’m going to help you choose a keyword from your list by walking you through a quick example.

(For this example I’m going to be using the “Discover new keywords” tool because this is the best way to uncover new keywords in the Google Keyword Planner.)

First, you want to think of a keyword that’s somewhat broad…but also describes your product, service or content idea.

For example, let’s say that you run an eCommerce site that sells organic food.

If you wanted to write a blog post about the health benefits of organic coffee, you wouldn’t want to use the keyword “coffee” (too broad) or “health benefits of organic coffee” (too narrow).

But a keyword like “organic coffee” would work GREAT.

So pop that keyword into the field and click “Get Started”.

And take a look at the keywords that come up:

So: how do you know which keywords to choose?

There are dozens of different factors to look at. But, in general, I like to choose keywords based on 3 main criteria:

Search Volume: Very straightforward. The higher the average search volume, the more traffic that keyword can send you.

Commercial Intent: In general, the higher the competition and suggested bid, the easier it will be to convert that traffic into paying customers when they land on your website.

Organic SEO Competition: Like commercial intent, evaluating a keyword’s competition in Google’s organic search results takes some more digging. You need to look at the websites that are ranking on the first page… and figure out how hard it’ll be to outrank them. This guide to SEO keyword competition covers everything you need to know.

The Google Keyword Planner will only show you exact search volume data if you’re running an active Adwords campaign. Otherwise, you see a range , like this:

To be honest, the range is actually fine by me. Keyword volume tends to fluctuate anyway. So even the “exact” average monthly search volume that you used to see in the GKP was a rough estimate anyway.

In other words, there’s nothing wrong with choosing keywords based on search volume ranges.

That said, there’s a nifty trick you can use to get exact search volume out of the GKP… without needing to run ads in a Google Adwords account.

Here’s how to do it…

First, find a keyword in the list of suggestions that you want to target:

Then click “add to plan”:

Next, in the right-hand sidebar of the page, click “Plan overview”:

And look at the number of “impressions” you’d get if you bid on that term:

That number is how many people search for that keyword every month.

(In this case, 2.1k searches per month.)

And just like that, you now have accurate search volume data for your keyword. Nice!

As you saw, the Google Keyword Planner is pretty cool.

That said, the Google keyword tool has two major flaws…

Flaw #1: It only gives you keywords ideas that are VERY closely related to what you type in.

For example, let’s say your business sells organic food for pets.

So you type “organic dog food” into the tool. Here’s what you get:

As you can see, these are VERY close variations of “organic dog food”, like:

• “natural dog food”
• “dog food brands”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t need a fancy tool to come up with a keyword like “dog food”.

And it’s the same story for most keywords. The GKP is good at coming up with long tail versions of your keyword . But it’s not great at generating outside-the-box keyword ideas.

Flaw #2: You get the same set of keywords everyone else does.

Needless to say, the Google Keyword Planner is an insanely popular keyword tool.

This means: the keywords that you find in the GKP tend to be SUPER competitive.

Fortunately, there’s a simple way around both of those frustrating issues: The GKP Hack.

Here’s how it works:

First, head over to the Discover New Keywords area of the GKP. Then hit “Start With a Website”.

But instead of entering a keyword, you enter a URL from another website in your niche.

For example, instead of entering “organic dog food” into the field, let’s use PetSmart’s dog food category page.

You get a laundry list of keywords that most of your competitors will NEVER see.

It gets better…

There are LOTS of other pages that you can use for the GKP Hack, including:

• Press releases
• Conference agendas
• Bio pages of influencers in your industry
• News stories
• Podcast transcripts

Basically: any page that has text on it is fair game for this technique.

I hope you enjoyed my guide to the Google Keyword Planner.

Now I’d like to hear from you:

Do you use the Keyword Planner to help you come up with keyword ideas?

Or do you mostly stick to other keyword research tools (like SEMRush)?

Let me know by leaving a comment below right now.

Although this says it was last updated a few weeks ago, I find that it is actually outdated. I’m unable to access the keyword planner without creating an ad. The screen captures in the article are no longer the same as what Google Ads is showing a new user. The icons on the top right are no longer there and the only options is to finish your first ad.

Hey June, we just updated all of the screenshots. I’ll look into what might have recently changed.

OK so I did look into this. And like I mentioned in the post, you need to setup a Google Ads account (including cc info). But you don’t need to actually run a campaign.

I ran into exactly the same issue…It won’t let you create an account unless you create a campaign. When you do that, the campaign is in PENDING state. I immediately PAUSEd the campaign which I hope stops any billing! Then you need to click the gear and switch to Expert Mode which will give you access to the WRENCH (tools and settings) to launch the keyword tools. I hope this helps.

Click the ‘skip guided content’. Then there is no need to fill in any cc or payment method detail.

But that you can only do 1st time while setting up new account and 1st time if you didn’t skip then there no option even you press go back button

Great article!

I’m having the same problem as June though.

I’ll bet someone at Google has spotted your article and decided to change it, so that people aren’t using the tool for free 🙁

I was really excited about this too, it was a great read!

I was initially having the same issue, but you have to click on the settings gear icon in the top right of the page and select “expert view” or something to that effect. Then the screenshots will match the ones in the article.

Great article, Brian! I’ve been running around trying to just “figure out” the GKP and gotten nowhere. This was exactly the straightforward tutorial I needed to get a good handle on how to make it useful 🙂

Yup, Google makes it kind of tricky to access the GKP. But, as you pointed out, it’s doable if you follow the steps from this guide. Thanks Katherine!

Did this, but no ‘expert view’ to see. I tried almost everything, followed the steps of Google itself, clicked on the link to the key word planner and it automatically sends you to the campaign builder…. Very frustrating.

April 2019 – unfortunately I am also unable to get past the ‘Create an ad’ stage. It’s requesting I put in payment information for an ad I don’t want, and there are no other routes out of this page. Anyone know of any similar keyword planners that I could use please?

Hi Lozzy, you need to setup a Google Ads account (which includes payment info) to get access. But you don’t need to actually run the ad.

Earlier GKP had option of choosing exact match and broad match keywords; couldn’t find any such option now. Could you help on this?

Hmmm. Maybe they removed that feature? I’ll look into it.

Hi, Brian – I’m writing this comment on April 6, 2019 (in case this is relevant to answering my question). Per your post, I created a Google Ads account and also a Google AdWords campaign (and entered my CC info). Now, I don’t intend to run any campaign – just want to use the Google Keyword Planner tool. So what I did is that right after I finished creating the AdWords campaign, I immediately went to the dropdown that says “Enabled” (green color) and clicked “Paused” (tan color) instead. So, my question really is: Is that all I need to do to make sure this ad campaign (which I created only because I had to to use Keyword Planner tool) NEVER runs? In other words, will Google at some point “enable” the AdWords campaign without asking me? Thanks in advance! And thanks for creating this G. Keyword Planner guide (this is my first time using this tool).

Thanks Kevin. Yup, you should be good to go. But you may want to reach out to Google Ads support to double check.

Hi Brian! and thanks for your post. I couldn’t come up with the same results as you in the Bonus Tip #1, basically my filter doesn’t take into account the item I selected and also I didn’t get why do say 120K impressions when it shows only 2.1K Anyway, hope you can answer, and thanks again man! Flo

Hi Flo, you’re welcome. That was actually a typo. It should be “2.1k”. Fixed!

Question, so if I start this Google journey, will doing all this adding words, etc cost? Does everything cost to add words?

Can you explain the difference between Volume and Average monthly searches in Keyword planner in detail

I can’t access keyword planner in order to play with it. This page https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/Home redirects me to “creatre a campaign”. On this one too https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/

I don’t want to create campaign, I want to use keyword planner.

How? Something changed?

Hi Alex, You don’t have to run an active campaign to use the Keyword Planner. But do need to at least set up a Google Adwords campaign.

I don’t want to create an ad for now. It requires my bank card anyway. Is this necessary? How can I use the keyword tool withthout all that?

You have to enter your billing details. You can’t use it without that.

Hi Brian, My question is as per the “old” GKP, you could add a word to your keywords and it would link the 2 together. Example: spa, facials, massage, then we would be able to add in maternity and it would only search for Maternity massage, maternity spa etc. Is this feature gone in the new version? Just makes our keywords easier to manage if w have more than one word to add (maternity was one but pregnancy with the same keywords as above.) any advice?

Hi Erika, you can still enter multiple keywords (separated by commas). But I don’t think you can do what you outlined above anymore.

Hey Erika, I think I know what you mean. You would want to use broad modified and phrase matches to have google fill in your desired blanks. E.g. +maternity +massage or “maternity massage”

There is also another method when setting up your ads, you would add in a piece of code in one of the 3 headlines. Type: Keyword, and it will give you one of three options. Select keyword and enter your keyword, such as massage, and when somebody searches X massage, google will fill in their keyword before you keyword “massage”.

Hope this helps

Thanks for your guidance. But I couldn’t start any ad campaign without filling out the payment method. Once I give my credit card number to Google, I suppose it’ll incur ad costs? How can I get around this problem? Thanks.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge on the Keyword research for SEO The Definitive Guide it really helpful. But I can search with URL to get the list of keywords my competition ain’t seeing, Error: Invalid characters such as \][`/, Is there a hack to that? Thanks in advance.

Hello Brian,

This an awesome guide for the GKT, and I am so happy with the results I got when I followed all your instructions on this guide. TBH, your blog is the best blog ever I’ve read and applied it easily without any difficulties. There’s a new update on GKT I expect you noticed when you enter your phrases and your words on the “add new keywords” box there will appear another section below called: “Other keywords to try” includes keywords related to the searches results I think we can try these keywords in this section in our keyword research, what do you think?

Thanks again for creating this guide for us! Best of luck!

Thanks Rayan. I’ll check that feature out!

Brian – great info a usual! This is a somewhat related question to GKP, but what has happened to ‘Competition’ just being listed as Low, Medium or High? Realize they changed to this awhile ago but even then I used to be able to get the number when I exported it to CSV.

I use SEO Powersuite’s Rank Tracker and I can see the number in their software – only hovering over it but it won’t export with number. When I do export still get the Low, Medium, High. It pulls directly from GKP so the number is still being generated.

Multiple Questions:

1 – I was wondering if there’s anyway to get the number? I’m creating algorithms as an additional check for keyword selection.

2 – Is Google just tightening up in order to offer it in paid plans – just like they did with search volume

3 – Is their competition calculation really a good number to consider with keywords? Does it really have/present useful information to consider in regards to keyword selection? (Guess this should be the 1st question – lol)

4 – Does the “Competition (indexed value)” number have the same value as the old competition number or serve the same purpose? This number is found when you export GKP info to CSV.

Sorry for the deluge of questions! Thanks again.

Thanks Andy. I noticed that too and I need to dig in, check out the new layout and features in the GKP and update that post. Right now, I’m not sure how to answer those questions outside of #3. And that’s basically: that’s not a great way to figure out which keywords to go with. Here’s more info on that: https://backlinko.com/keyword-competition

Through and insightful. Thank You for posting. The new GKP tool requires: 1) register ads account. 2) start a campaign 3) activate campaign then pause. 4) follow along your article.

Thank you Brian, What is the figure under Comp(Au) e.g. a value of 0-1 (e.g. .89). Is this the competition value? e.g. if its .45 vs .8 the .45 would easier to get than the one with .8?

Hey Brian. The guide is cool. However, I did not quote find the answer to something. When choosing a keyword for PPC (and low budget; new business with new Ad account), what combination to use: 1. High Volume + High Comptt 2. Low Volume + Low COmptt or some other combination? Or also use low bid range?

https://backlinko.com/hub/seo/choosing-keywords

Thank you for this useful content. There is a mistake in the beginning of your article where you say:

Note: You don’t have to run an active campaign to use the Keyword Planner. But do need to at least set up a Google Adwords campaign.

We can use google keyword planner without setup camping. In starting steps (what is your main advertising goal), below 3 options there is a link with this anchor text: “Experienced with google ads?”, by click on it, we can access google keyword planner without setup any campaign.

Hello Brian, this was great and I really liked the way you simplified everything and broke it down. It is a great content for first time users. However, I tried to use the “add to plan” part but in the plan overview I only get your plan in empty. could you maybe troubleshoot what I am doing wrong?!

If you have paid version of Ahrefs, Semrush or smth else I don’t think that you need to have GKP. Even if you’re lack of budget there is another tool – Ubersuggest. However, all of these tools don’t show volume for exact cities, states and other areas. At that point, GKP is better for local SEO and your language. Another cool features are comparing mobile and desktop traffic. Some keywords are completely mobile or desktop. It’s better to consider when you create content.

Great post Bryan Thank you for the explanations 👍

Thanks Bryan, im planning to put up an eCommerce site, and, coming to your post was a very good find, cheers!

So I made an account with google ads and I am in the dashboard area and I’m not seeing what is in the screenshots. I tried switching to expert mode but it doesn’t actually change what I’m seeing in smart mode. Is the expert mode only available on desktop?

Thank you for providing this very helpful guide on the Google Keyword Planner tool. I have been using Google Ads for 7 years now, and never took the time to do keyword research. Great article!

Has the “suggested bid” information gone? Can’t find it anymore in my keyword stats.

I can’t manually filter The “Average Monthly Search Value” In “Google Keyword Planner”

I can’t either, still trying to figure that out.

You said,”But do need to at least set up a Google Adwords campaign!”. But for this I need to pay right? So how come this Adword tool is free? If I’m wrong then correct me please…

It is asking for a campaign set up and I can’t find any other way to skip it. I think it is not free anymore.

As per the comments above, great descriptive article, but the information is no longer correct. On the final page of set up (in Aust. at least) it has a note about the amount for your ad campaign being deducted automatically. Although reasonably tech savvy, I have been unable to find any pages similar to the ones you are diplaying, no wrench icon, not even in “expert mode”… so beyond spending the $$, Im pretty sure you cant access it.

Great article. I always thought competition meant ranking competition -____-“. Thanks for sharing.

I struggle with SEO so just starting to use Google keyword tool. I appreciate the detailed post. I’m gonna check out more of your stuff. I’m excited to get into the SEO stuff.

I am going through the process of setting up a Google Adwords account, but it gives me no other option but to create an active campaign, and my website is still under development. How do I bypass this and get to Google Keyword Planner?

This guide is thought out, but actually outdated. Almost none of the screenshots match up. It appears Google changed everything up. So, if someone could muster up the courage and rewrite this whole article based on the new google format and use the SEO tactics, they could take advantage – no-one really has an updated guide out yet.

I just signed up as a guide. There is nothing expect a page that says to create a campaign. I am not able to access the keyword planner without creating a campaign.

Is there any solution to access a keyword planner without creating a campaign?

Looking forward for your answer.

Hi Brian, Thanks for the Awesome guide about keyword planner & keyword research. How can i find question related keywords in keyword Planner.

Hey Brian, this is a really nice guide and I use keyword planner for all my keyword research. But there is one thing that I’m not sure about, from what I know the impressions you talked about shows how many people will see my website if I rank in top results (as in PPC form), so how close are these numbers to the actual search volume? Thank you

Got it to work! Not really sure how, though. I was having issues with the requirements in the set up, but now it’s working. It was asking me for a url and an active website, but I bypassed it somehow. I opened a new tab and accessed google keyword planner like that. Went to try another account set up and it actually took me to the dashboard that’s shown in this article. Thanks!

Thank you for the post, Brian. I’m just getting started out, so I am very appreciative of people like you who put this information out there.

By the way, I found that when I was entering keywords into the “Discover New Keywords” line, you can just press enter without the comma to add more. Alternatively, you can use the space bar after a comma.

Nice tip there. Thanks Jason.

Wow that was convoluted, I managed to get into Expert mode without putting in my card/billing details or starting a campaign.

You have to RIGHT back to the beginning where you first put in your website name….if you are already in a Campaign, click BACK until you see the very first screen.

At the bottom in small print there is an option to “Skip Guided Content”.

(From here it gets a bit vague because I did a lot of clicks…)

From there find an option to Switch to Expert Mode. Either on the page or on the top bar (there might be a wrench icon).

In fact, I had to Switch to Export Mode twice.

At some point I ended up with “All Campaigns”, this is good, because now you’ll see the Tools & Settings option > Planning > Keyword Tool.

Now bookmark it so you never have to tear your hair out again.

This doesnt work anymore does it?

1. go to search bar, type “google keyword planner tool” 2. sign in with your google ads account 3. if google is requesting you to make a campaign first, just hit the “back” button several times until you don’t see it anymore. 4. click the tiny blue phrase “switch to expert mode” 5. click the tiny blue phrase “Create an account without a campaign” 6. click the “submit” button 7. click “explore your campaign” button 8. click the wrench icon which says “settings” 9. click “switch to expert mode” 10. confirm by clicking one last time “switch to expert mode” 11. click the wrench icon which says “tools and settings” 12. there ya go, click “keyword planner”

What happened to the blue graph that used to be beside the numbers on the average monthly searches column? It was a great indication of seasonality and now it seems to have disappeared.

People here are saying that they can’t use Google KWP anymore, but that’s not true, I can use this, just by signing up for Google Ads with no campaign!

Hi Brian, After getting thru “Discover new Keywords”, I’m not getting exact monthly searches and graphs. I’m simply getting the range. How is this so???

Hi Brian, Thanks for this brief information. I am curious to know, the data shown in the keyword research is a real-time data or how to check the last updated date.

Am I missing something? I’ve used Google’s keyword planner in the past and came back here in September 2020 because now it just gives me results based on EUR1 of spending, rather than the search volume data you can see in Step 3 of this guide. Is there any way to get to the old volume view?

Hi Brian, thank you for your great content!

I’m reading your guide in Sep, 2020 and I have just realized that there’s no more “Add to plan” button.

The UI of GKP is changed, too. We can’t see the exact search volume without running ads campaigns.

Please have a look and update your guide so it can be the most updated for everyone 🙂

Once again, thank you and I admire you a lot!

This is super useful! It’s a lot to take in, but step by step I’m getting there. Especially the part about entering a link to a website of a similar brand or product website. Maybe I haven’t been paying enough attention, but I am not sure what my next step can be once I have all these awesome insights in keywords from another website. How can I use this to my advantages? (It’s such a massive list).

Many thanks!!

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• How to Do Keyword Research for Your Blog or Website

The Beginner’s Guide to Finding The Best Keywords for SEO

There are many critical elements that must be considered when starting a blog or building a website , and to be successful online, you need to make sure that all of them are done right. 

One of those essential elements is keyword research because choosing the right keywords is one of the main factors to increasing the number of visitors your website will get.

This guide will provide tips on properly structuring your keyword research, and you can adjust it to your specific needs.

Why do you need to do keyword research?  

A lot of new bloggers don’t even consider doing keyword research, and because of this, they struggle to get visitors to their blog, no matter how hard they try. Others simply go after keywords that are the most popular (but also very competitive) and end up failing to rank well in Search Engines. 

The keyword research process will also help you to answer the following questions:

• What information are people searching for? 
• What keywords do they use to find that information? 
• How many people are using certain keywords?
• What type of information do they want (searcher intent)? 

Skipping over this part is not an option, as you won’t be able to grow your blog as fast as you want to without these steps. You have to do keyword research to find keywords that will work well and help your blog rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs). It’s not a simple thing to do, as all blogs and target markets are different.

You will need the right SEO tools and accurate knowledge that will help you to start this process correctly and go through it smoothly. 

First of all, you need to understand why you need a strong keyword strategy for your blog. The keywords you target are an extension of your organic traffic that will allow you to attract readers with a genuine interest in what your blog has to offer. 

Organic traffic can be the most valuable asset for your blog, and you need to get as many visitors as you can to grow your blog.

Initial keyword research (find seed keywords)

If you are familiar with your niche you can skip this step and go right into finding the core keywords process.

Brainstorm to find niche topics and main keywords

Without thinking about anything else, start your niche decision process by writing down all of the things that interest you. These can be personal interests or professional interests.

• Start by thinking about the things you enjoy doing, or would enjoy doing if you had the chance. For example, you are an amateur photographer. Photography blogging could be a great niche. You can share your photos, your detailed knowledge, or your experience with camera technology.
• Next, think about the things you would enjoy learning. For example, you’re interested in taking up cooking classes. Even if you don’t have the time or budget to start cooking classes, you can start a food blog where you analyze recipes you find online. You could also discuss how to choose the perfect ingredients, and weigh the benefits of organic versus GMO ingredients.
• Finally, think about the things you are already diving deep into. For example, let’s say that you are an adult that is going back to finish your college degree. You’re going to do a lot of research about on-campus versus online degree programs, which university to choose, how to get back into the swing of studying, and so on. These are great topics for a niche blog about higher education.

Picking a niche is a challenging process. But, during this exercise, you will get a better sense for the topics that resonate with you. The ones that you are most passionate about are the best candidates for your niche blog .

For example, let’s say you are starting a blog about golf. The first keywords that come to your mind are ones that you would use in a Google search:

• golf for beginners

These would be your seed keywords and broad topic ideas. Next, you will have to find more specific keywords that offer attractive opportunities.

Discovering core keywords: What people search for? 

There are a number of ways to do keyword research to discover core keywords for your project. I will cover a few options including using free and paid tools.

Keyword research: Using Google Keyword Planner to find keywords (free)

The Google Keyword Planner will be a great help when you start creating a list of keywords that you want to target. This tool can help you to quickly create a large keyword list.

Here are the steps you need to take:

Note: You don’t have to run a real or an active ad campaign in order to use this tool. 

Step #1 : In order to use Google Keyword Planner:  You need to log in to or create a new Google Ads account (you need to have a Gmail account in order to log in).

Step #2 : Find the “Keyword Planner” tool. 

Once you login into your Google Ads account, on the main page menu bar click “Tools & Settings” and click the “Keyword Planner” link.

Step #3 : Select the “Discover new keywords” tool. 

You will see two different options: “Discover new keywords” and “Get search volume and forecasts”.

These two tools can generate thousands of keywords. But, keep in mind that these tools are designed for advertisers, not for SEO purposes. They have a number of features that you won’t need. 

Click on the “Discover new keywords” tool, and you will see a screen where you can start entering your main keywords to generate some more keyword ideas. 

Step #4 : Enter the main keywords you’ve selected. 

This is where you enter “seed keywords”, and this is the primary field that you will use. You can enter one or more keywords here.

Let’s enter “seed keywords” (golf tips, golf swing, golf clubs) that we used in the example above and look at the results.

Step #5 : Generate results to get the list of keywords. 

This tool will give you results based on the keywords you inputted into it. You can review the list of generated keywords and, if necessary, change your searched keywords.

Inside the results page, you will see more information such as “Avg. monthly searches”, “Competition”, and more. I’ll talk about these points later.  

Now, you can download the list with keyword ideas to sort them later.

This is a bread and butter tool that you will use to generate your keyword ideas.

Keyword research: Using Ahrefs or any other tool to find keywords 

You have more tools that you can use to find more keyword ideas. Some of them are free, freemium, or paid.

I believe that by using Google Keyword Planner, you can get a list of keyword ideas that are more than enough to explore. But, in case you want to check other tools, I’ll show you how you can do it with Ahrefs. This keyword research process will look similar to other premium tools. 

Here are the steps you will need to take:

Step #1 : Visit Ahrefs and create an account. 

If you don’t have an account on Ahrefs, you will have to create one. They offer a free trial period of 7 days for $7.

Step #2 : Log in to your account.

Once you log in, you will see the Keywords Explorer main page with a field where you can enter your seed keywords similar to Google’s Keyword Planner tool. Hit the search button.

Step #3 : Explore all of the features of this tool. 

Inside the results page, you will see different keyword research options. 

An Overview screen will show you parameters for the keywords that you enter. You can click and check available options. For example, by clicking “Search suggestions”, you will get a huge list of keywords to explore.

Step #4 :  Review and download a list of keywords. 

Inside the “Search suggestions” tab, you will see a bunch of new keywords that the tool has generated for you. You can also download that list by clicking the “Export” button.

This list should give you plenty of keyword ideas to look into and consider. 

Keyword research: Getting keyword ideas by checking competitors

This is an effective advanced tactic that you can use to find the right keywords within your niche. This option is offered with paid tools such as SEMrush and Ahrefs site explorer .

As an example, I will demonstrate how to check your competition with Ahrefs and discover keywords that they rank for. These results will give you a clear idea about which keywords you can go after and what type of content you need to create.  

Step #1 : Log in to Ahrefs and open Site Explorer . 

Pick a domain name (URL) of the website you want to check. In our case, we will check the golfdigest.com website.

Open the Ahrefs Site Explorer tool and enter the URL of the domain you want to check.

Step #2 : The tool will run a report and extract data. 

You will receive in-depth details of that website including their backlinks profile and search traffic. By clicking on the “Organic keywords” section, you can see the rankings of this site and keywords ideas.

This exercise will help you to find more keywords and determine what keywords you should go after. You can also download the list of all keywords that your competitor is ranking for. 

Note : This tool also comes in handy when you want to check what websites are ranking for certain keywords. Plus with this tool, you can dig deeper into your competitors. 

Gathering search volumes: How many people search for it?  

Similar to the keyword research process, you can access search volumes using different tools. 

I want you to understand that any tool you use will give you rough and estimated numbers of search volumes. However, it will give you a better idea of what keywords have higher search volumes and what keywords you should go after.    

Getting search volumes from Google Keyword Planner

As we mentioned earlier, Google Keyword Planner will show you the range of monthly searches (ex. 1k-10k). You can get exact search volume for specific keywords if you are running an active Adwords campaign (paid advertisement). 

But, even exact search volume fluctuates, and Google will show the estimated average number of searches. It’s helpful to see the exact number of searches. However, there is nothing wrong with using ranges to choose keywords.

Let me show you how you can extract the exact search volume from Google without creating an Adwords campaign for a specific keyword. 

Step #1 : Inside the Keyword Planner main page, select the “Get search volume and forecasts” tool. 

Step #2 : Enter your seed keywords into the tool and click “Get started”. 

Step #3: Get average monthly searches. 

The tool will run through your keywords and show you the average monthly search results for all of the keywords that you’ve entered. 

Step #4 : You can also click the “Forecast” tab. 

The tool will run a report for all of the keywords that you’ve entered and give you forecasted numbers. 

This tool works similarly to the “Discover new keywords” tool, except that it will also show you the forecasted number for your campaign where you can see the number of impressions  

As I mentioned earlier, this tool is not perfect and it was not designed to be used for SEO purposes. However, with this tool you can get some basic keyword research done. 

Getting search volumes from Ahrefs (or any other premium tools)

By now you know that there are some paid tools available online that can do a better job for SEO keyword research. You can use them to find keywords and check search volumes. These tools will show you numbers based on the algorithm they use, and they will be estimated figures.

For example, here is what you get if you try Ahrefs keyword explorer:

As you can see, these numbers differ from what you get from the Google tool. However, they give you a rough idea of the search volume.

More tools are available, and you can consider them from the list provided below.

Understand the importance of long-tail keywords

Before we get to the part about how you can determine the value of your keywords, first you must understand which keywords are the most valuable and why it’s all about long-tail keywords. It is true that you can choose keywords that have from 500 to 5,000 searches per day. However, these big terms account for less than 25% of the searches on the whole web.

Over 70% of the keywords that people search for are located in the “long tail” search. This long tail area has millions of searches that can happen a couple of times any day, but these searches make up most of the daily searches.

We will describe the three different categories that keywords usually divide into – head, body, and the long tail.

• Head – these are single-word keywords with huge search volumes (for example, “golf” or “food”). These terms are broad, and people might be searching for various things using these keywords (for example, someone searching for “golf” might be looking for golf classes, golf clubs, or the rules of the game).
• Body – these keywords are 2-3 word phrases that get decent search volume (1,000 to 2,000 searches per month) and are more explicit than the head (for example, “golf lessons” or “food classes”).
• Long tail – these keywords are 3 or 4+ words long and are very specific (for example, “cheap golf lessons for kids” or “food classes for Japanese cuisine”). These terms don’t have a lot of search volume, but statistically, they make up the majority of searches online.

As a rule of thumb, when you choose Body keywords and optimize your content around them you will usually rank for related long tail (4-8 words) keywords. That’s how you get natural traffic to your website.

How to find long-tail keywords

The easiest and probably the most efficient way to find relevant long-tail keywords is to use Google suggestions. Let us show you exactly how you can do it.

First, when you type selected keywords into Google search, look at the autosuggestions.

Second, when you perform the search, scroll down to the results page and look at the “Searches related to…..” suggestions.

You can perform this technique with different variations of keywords and pick the terms that are best suited to your needs.

Keyword research: Evaluate competition and difficulty

To further evaluate the keywords ideas, you will have to look at how competitive they are and how difficult it will be to rank for these keywords.

You can make an educated guess with the Google Keyword Planner tool by looking into two parameters: Competition and Suggested bid.

• Competition – this indicates the number of advertisers bidding on that keyword: Low, Medium, and High. Useful to evaluate how competitive the keyword is.
• Bids – great way to understand the idea of monetization potential for the keyword. This will also give you an idea of how difficult it might be to rank for these keywords.

With this data from Google, you can make an educated guess. If you want to get a deeper understanding of the competitiveness and difficulty of the keywords, you will have to use a paid tool such as Ahrefs Keywords Explorer.

Here is how this report will look:

• KD –  “Keyword Difficulty is an estimate of how hard it would be to rank in Top 10 Google search results for a given keyword. It is measured on a nonlinear scale from 1 to 100 (low difficulty to high difficulty).”
• CPC – Cost Per Click shows the average price that advertisers pay for each ad click in paid search results for a keyword.

Understanding searcher intent: What people search for  

Search intent (also called user intent) is known as the main goal users have when typing a query in search engines. 

There are 4 main types of searcher intents: 

• Navigational – people search for a specific page or website. 
• Informationa l – people search for specific information such as definitions or recipes.  
• Transactional – people search for something when they are ready to make a purchase. 
• Commercial investigation – people search for the comparison of products or reviews.  

Determine what keywords to focus on

If one of your goals is to make money online , it’s important that you select commercial intent keywords. 

These keywords can be divided into three classes:

Buy Now keywords

These are keywords that people use before making a purchase. Here are words that tend to be part of these types of search queries:

Product keywords

Product Keywords are searches that focus on a particular product category, brand name, or service. People using these phrases are in the early buying stage. Product keywords tend to include:

Informational keywords

The bulk of keywords online are “Informational keywords.” It’s natural for people to look for information before starting the buying process. Information keywords tend to include words like:

• Best way to

Popular keyword research tools

We’ve mentioned some instruments in this guide, but here we will give you a longer list of tools that you can test when doing keyword research.

• Ahrefs keywords explorer

Ahrefs is a refined SEO tool that comes with a state-of-the-art web crawler. The company’s crawler is optimized for speed, and it ranks just behind Google’s crawler. Thanks to this tool, Ahrefs can deliver detailed analysis reports in a matter of minutes.

• SEMrush keyword search

When it comes to the best SEO tools out there, SemRUSH definitely deserves a spot at the very top of our list. Its applicable use list is vast and ranges from analyzing content and discovering niche keywords to examining and understanding the competition’s SEO strategy.

• Moz explorer

Moz PRO is another all-rounder on our list. It is a great tool to help you boost your search engine visibility and rank. Moz PRO is advertised as a complete SEO toolset. We have to agree that this is an accurate statement. Moz PRO is all about crawling the web, gathering data, and compiling it into actionable reports.

KWFinder, the SEO software by Mangools, is your go-to keyword research tool. It is one of the easiest SEO tools to use on the market. Comprehensive software solutions can be hard to use when it comes to finding high volume and low, competitive keywords. With Mangools KWFinder, it’s easy to do.

• SpyFu  

SpyFu is a tool built for only one purpose – spying on your competition. This tool is very simple and easy to use. All you have to do is enter the competitor’s website URL and receive valuable metrics. You can see all of their keywords and filter out the most profitable ones. You can also use SpyFu to discover your competitor’s ads for paid and organic search.

• Wordtracker

Wordtracker is a tool that can easily fuel your keyword research efforts. It takes the keyword research game and steps it up by factoring in a number of relevant metrics including PPC, SEO, competition SEO strategy, and Google data. You can discover related terms to your initial keyword ideas, see if the targeted keywords are competitive or not, and combine data from different sources to get the most accurate reports.

SE Ranking is a complete SEO suite. It comes with all of the essential tools to devise data and result-driven SEO strategies. This tool was developed with ease of use in mind. All of the features are easy to find in their minimalistic and intuitive dashboard.

• LongTailPro

Discovering long-tail keywords is not as easy as it sounds. Finding the right tool to do so can prove even more challenging. LongTail Pro targets the long-tail keyword niche and does it successfully. This tool can help you find less competitive long-tail keywords with good search volume. With LongTail Pro, it’s all about profitability.

• Answer The Public  

If you have trouble coming up with content ideas, you should consider seeking advice from Answer The Public. This tool constantly keeps tabs on what people are searching for online. If you input the keyword that you are interested in, it will return useful questions or phrases people type into the search engines related to that keyword.

Once you’ve done all of the things mentioned above, you can set your keyword strategy in motion, but this doesn’t mean that your work ends there. A good keyword strategy requires an adequate follow-up which includes monitoring and tweaking things constantly.

These are the essentials that you need to know about creating a proper keyword strategy for your blog. Remember that choosing the correct keywords is essential for a blog to succeed, but this is just one of the aspects to work on, and you cannot neglect other important factors.

8 comments on “How to Do Keyword Research for Your Blog or Website”

That is the exact information I was looking for. Thanks Ogi for sharing your experience on keyword research.

You’re welcome Rajat. Hope it helps!

As a complete newbie to blogging, this information has been tremendously helpful! Thank you for helping me to think and see things in a different way.

You’re welcome Lili. Glad I was able to help!

Well, this is quite helpful as far as the content, blog and keywords are concerned but I was expecting a sample of content writing/blog. Nonetheless, it was informative. Thank you.

Thanks Nasira…glad that you found it useful!

This is super helpful! Thank you!!!

Thanks Kay. All the best!

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The Basics of Keyword Research

Many people talk about keywords and how they can be associated with your website, but what does this mean, and how is this done? This post will guide you to be more strategic about your website content and the traffic your site receives from search. 

Definition and value

Keywords in this context are words or phrases that people enter into Google when they are trying to find a helpful website or answer to a question.

Keyword research is done to identify the specific words or phrases that people commonly search for on Google so that you can strategically select which you want to target. 

Performing keyword research helps your website appear in more relevant search results. A relevant search result for your website is one that connects information you are presenting with a target audience that is searching for it. 

If Google thinks your website is the best match for a keyword or phrase, your website will appear, or rank, first. The higher your website ranks, the more traffic you can get to visit your website! Thus, the value of keyword research is more relevant visitors to your website. 

Performing keyword research

Brainstorm potential keywords.

For our example today, let's imagine you manage a departmental website.

The first step to performing keyword research is to put yourself in your target audience's shoes - so put your Crocs in sport mode and start thinking like a prospective college student. Make a list of as many keywords as you can that would be relevant to your website. 

• Statistics degree
• Statistics major
• Statistics minor
• What does a statistician do?
• Which college has the best program for statistics?
• Should I major in statistics?
• Jobs with a b.s. in statistics
• Salary of statisticians 
• Is a statistics minor useful?
• Can I major in statistics if I got a D in math?

You get the picture. 

Once you have your initial list, it is a good idea to test each keyword or phrase by searching for it in Google and reviewing the search engine results page (SERP). This process is sometimes called "search listening". It can tell you what type of content is ranking for these searches already (i.e., videos, other university websites or program pages, university careers pages, third-party career pages, etc.). This information will come in handy later when you begin optimizing your content. It is also a great way to add more keywords to your list! Check out what happens when I search for "Is a statistics minor useful?"

Often, you'll get a "People also ask" section. For this search, I see: 

• Is statistics a useful minor?
• Is a minor in applied statistics good?
• Is a statistics degree useful?
• Is Statistics a good minor for CS?

Most of these are great options to add to your potential keyword list, and you now have a better idea of your audience's thought process as they search. You can also review the SERP for other related searches and take note of anything that might be useful for your website content and keyword list.

Rank and organize your keywords

To ensure you're not spending time on unrealistic keywords, the next thing you'll want to do is prioritize your keywords based on those that provide the best opportunity for your website. This is often measured through search volume, difficulty, and search intent. 

Search volume - the average number of times this keyword is searched in a month (AMSV). For example, if a keyword only has 10 AMSV, you should spend less time trying to rank for it. 

Difficulty - how hard it is to rank for a keyword on a scale of 1-100. The higher the difficulty, the harder it will be to rank for the keyword. Smaller websites with less authority will have a more challenging time ranking for a keyword than more prominent sites.

Search intent - what searchers are trying to accomplish with this search. Intent can be navigational, informational, commercial, or transactional. Search intent is an important criterion because it lets you know whether or not your content is a match to answer the searcher's intent. Suppose you notice that most of your keywords fall under the same intent category, but you don't have a lot of great content on your site to fill that search. In that case, you need to construct more strategic content on your website that appeals to your audience and their goals.

You can use a free online service like the SEMRush.com keyword overview tool to find this data. After creating your free account, open the tool and type in the keyword you are researching. A dashboard like the image below will appear. The SEMRush keyword overview tool tells me that targeting a "statistics minor" keyword could result in a monthly search volume of 590 searchers from the U.S. It has a difficulty rating of 50%, and searchers are looking for information about the keyword and potentially looking to make a decision on whether that is a product or service they are interested in.

Note: SEMRush provides a great tutorial for beginners trying to navigate their platform . Skip to Building a keyword list + what to consider for more on the keyword overview tool.

Create a keyword map

Keep track of all your keywords and their ranking progress with a keyword map. Assign pages on your website to specific keywords that you hope to rank for along with their average monthly search volume, searcher's intent, difficulty score, and other notes you may need when optimizing content. Create a table or Excel document to keep track of your keyword efforts. 

Avoid mapping multiple pages to the same keyword. This is known as keyword cannibalization because your pages could begin to compete against each other in the SERP. If this happens, your pages will not get as many impressions or clicks, which are both important factors in Googles ranking algorithm, and could result in worsened rankings. Instead, try optimizing the pages into one more robust piece of content for your visitors. 

Note that the paid version of SEMRush allows you to see what your current URL rank is for a specific keyword. This can be helpful when deciding which keywords to pursue if your strategy focuses on keywords that your website already has a head start on. If you want this info, send your keyword list to [email protected] and we can support you!

Optimize and create new content

Once your keyword map is complete and you have prioritized which keywords will have the highest impact on your website, you can begin optimizing the target URLs. Back in the keyword listening section of this post, we mentioned taking note of what type of content is already ranking for the keyword. This knowledge is imperative for optimizing your content because Google is giving you the answer to what it thinks is the best result for the keyword. Take this information and put your own spin on it! Ultimately, Google will show the best content to the searcher, so your goal is to be better than what's already there. 

Dos and don'ts of optimizing

Do create new quality content that will fill any gaps the keyword research may have revealed on your website that will help you rank for popular keywords.

Do have your content reviewed by an expert in your field to provide suggestions and feedback on how to make the information more accurate or realistic.

Do continuously monitor your rankings and progress. Optimizing content and forgetting about it means you can't learn what does and doesn't work for your target audience.

Don't try to rank for keywords by adding them to your content in as many places as possible. This doesn't work, and Google will catch on. 

Don't target the same keyword with multiple pages on your website; you'll lose visitors in the long run.

Don't optimize for keywords that you don't stand much chance ranking for. It's important to be strategic about the keywords you select and finding the right balance between search volume and difficulty is key!

Improving your website through optimization can be a slow process, but as long as you optimize with your target audience's best intentions in mind you'll start to see a return on your timely investment!

Reach out to the CALS/LAS Web Team by emailing [email protected] with questions or for support in your keyword journey. We're here to help!