Keyword research basics

When approached correctly, keyword research is a simple way to ensure that your content reaches and helps the people it’s intended to inspire or inform.

1. Identify a ‘seed’ keyword

Consider the topic you’re writing about or the item you’re trying to promote. Think of a broad concept that relates to this topic to find the seed keyword. Typically, this would be the first thing a user would type into a search engine.

For example, if you need to produce stories about Paris, ‘Paris travel’, ‘visit Paris’ or ‘travel to Paris’ will likely be good keywords to start with. 

Once you have your seed keyword, finding more targeted keywords becomes easier. Next, you can use an SEO tool (Moz and Ahrefs are two popular examples) to identify more specific keywords.

2. Search for specific keywords

Use your seed keyword as the jump-off point for finding more specific keywords. Search this phrase and inspect the keyword ideas, looking at phrases and terms that include your seed keyword, questions related to the seed keyword, as well as other phrases or terms that pages containing your keyword rank for.

Note: The average top 10 result on Google’s search engine results page (SERP) ranks for 1,000 keywords. So it’s imperative to include a main keyword along with a variety of supporting keywords on each page.

Think about questions that you might ask in relation to your keyword as well as long-tail keywords that include your term. Long-tail keywords are phrases that consist of three or more words. 

These are both great for targeting, as they’re more specific than general terms (like ‘travel Paris’) and allow you to target more niche demographics of users who are likely more engaged than those searching for broad terms. 

For example, someone searching ‘When to travel to Paris’ or ‘How to get to Paris’ is likely to be further along the marketing funnel than someone simply searching ‘travel Paris’.

Type the phrase into Google’s search bar for the auto suggest options, or use keyword research tools like Answer the Public; Google’s Keyword Planner, Search Console, or Trends; Questiondb; Keyword Sheeter and others.

3. Account for search intent

When selecting a keyword, it’s important to consider what the user is searching for.

For example, while the keyword ‘travel and leisure paris’ has a relatively low difficulty and a good search volume, it’s unlikely that a searcher using these words is looking for articles about travel and leisure activities in Paris. More likely is that they are looking for pieces published by Travel + Leisure, and wouldn’t click on results not produced by this outlet.

Also think about the type of content that a user is looking for (e.g. guides, products, resources), the format they want (e.g. listicle, how-to, itinerary), as well as the angle they want (e.g. secret spots, not-to-be-missed sights).

4. Prioritise your keywords

Possibly one of the most important steps in identifying keywords, this stage requires you to consider the various metrics attached to the keywords you are researching. 

Important considerations here are: keyword difficulty (KD), keyword volume, clicks and cost per click (CPC). All of these factors should be considered alongside and weighed against one another when making decisions about keywords.

Keyword difficulty

Keyword difficulty (displayed as KD on Ahrefs and most other keyword tools) is a measure of how much competition there is to rank for a particular keyword on a search engine. Ratings range from 0 (easiest) to 100 (most difficult).

While it’s preferable to choose a keyword with a low difficulty rating, these are also less likely to have a decent search volume.

Keyword volume

This metric reveals how many times a specific keyword is searched within a particular time frame. Selecting a keyword with a low volume – relative to similar keywords around the same topic – likely means that your content won’t be seen by many searchers. On the other hand, high-volume keywords are likely to be more difficult to rank for.

While high-volume keywords are likely to drive many impressions, they don’t necessarily translate into website visits. Which is why it’s important to consider clicks.

Clicks

The number of times a keyword drives a click through to a web page is indicated by the clicks metric. When determining which keyword to pick, compare the volume and clicks. This will indicate the traffic potential and give you an idea of how likely a keyword will be to lead searchers to your website.

Note: Be sure to take note of where there is any cost-per-click (CPC) data attached to a certain keyword. If your research platform is showing a CPC, you’ll be competing with advertisers and, if you’re not going to be putting money behind this keyword yourself, it’s likely a better idea to target a different one.

5. Perform competitor research

Next, look at what your competitors rank for. Use an SEO or competitive intelligence tool to figure out which keywords your competitors rank for, where opportunities exist, and to perform a gap analysis.

6. Avoid keyword stuffing

The name of the game is optimization. While it may be tempting to pack multiple keywords into a single sentence, this will likely result in a poor reading experience and cause users to navigate away from your page quickly. Low on-page times and high bounce rates signal to Google and other search engines that a post does not meet user needs and will affect its ranking.

Always favour natural language and informative materials over a ‘gamified’ SEO approach.

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Keyword research is an integral part of any SEO strategy and goes a long way to helping your content be seen on SERPs. And it can be relatively easy.

Use keyword research tools like Moz or Ahrefs to identify opportunities by considering how users are searching around your topic as well as what your competitors are targeting. Remember to consider the keyword difficulty and volume, plus the number of clicks your keyword drives to get a better understanding of its potential.

Then all that’s left is to get writing – just remember to use your keywords naturally.

Created by McGrath Creative Agency © 2024