Knowing how to do keyword research for SEO is an essential part of search engine optimization. It involves finding and analyzing the words and phrases that people use when searching for products or services online. By understanding the language and terminology that your target audience is using, you can create content that is more relevant and more likely to rank highly in search results. In this article, we will provide a comprehensive guide on how to do keyword research for SEO and explain the steps involved to help you maximize the effectiveness of your efforts.
Step 1: Identify Your Target Audience
The first step in knowing how to do keyword research for SEO is to identify your target audience. This will help you understand the language and terminology that they are using when searching for products or services like yours. To do this, you should create a buyer persona. A buyer persona is a fictionalized representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.
To create a buyer persona, consider the following questions:
- Who is your target audience?
- What are their goals and challenges?
- What are their pain points?
- How do they prefer to receive information?
By answering these questions, you can create a detailed profile of your ideal customer. This will help you understand their needs and preferences, which will inform your keyword research.
Niche Is Key
The more distinct your audience is, the more success you’ll have. Also, the more tightly defined your audience is, the more success you’ll have in finding lower difficulty keywords that you’ll actually be able to rank for. We’ll explain this and go into more detail below, so keep reading.
Step 2: Identify the Keywords and Phrases That Your Target Audience is Using
Once you have identified your target audience, the next step is to define your keyword goals and identify the keywords and phrases that your target audience is using when searching for products or services like yours. This means determining what you want to achieve through your keyword research efforts, such as driving more traffic to your website in order to improve your ranking in search engine results pages or to increase the number of conversions on your website. There are several ways to do this:
Use keyword research tools
There are several tools available that can help you identify the keywords and phrases that people are using when searching for products or services online. Some of the most popular tools include Ahrefs and SEMrush. These tools provide data on search volume, competition level, and cost-per-click (CPC) for different keywords.
Another good option is to use Ubersuggest by Neil Patel. It’s basically a less expensive version of SEMrush.
Wordstream is another free keyword tool that can help you discover new keywords and performance data to use in your site content, Google Ads campaigns and more. The only catch is you’re not going to see a keyword difficulty score, which we will get into below, so keep reading to learn about that. WordStream’s free keyword research tool is intended as a complementary tool to Google’s keyword planner.
You can also use Google’s Keyword Planner as well as long as you connect it to a Google Ads account.
Additionally, you can conduct a brainstorming session with your team to generate a list of potential keywords.
Analyze your competitors’ keywords
Another way to identify the keywords and phrases that your target audience is using is to analyze the keywords that your competitors are ranking for. You can use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, Ubersuggest, and Wordstream to see which keywords your competitors are ranking for and how much traffic they are getting from those keywords.
Use Google’s “Suggest” feature
When you start typing a search query into Google, it will provide a list of suggestions based on what other people are searching for. This can be a good way to identify popular keywords and phrases related to your product or service.
Use social media
Social media platforms can also be a good source of keyword ideas. For example, you can use Twitter’s “Trends” feature to see what topics are popular and relevant to your business. You can also use tools like Brand24 or Mention to track mentions of your brand or industry on social media.
Step 3: Analyze the Keywords and Phrases That You Have Identified
Once you have identified a list of potential keywords and phrases, the next step is to analyze them to determine which ones are the most valuable for your business. There are several factors to consider when analyzing keywords:
Search volume
One of the most important factors to consider when analyzing keywords is search volume, which is the number of times a keyword is searched for in a given time period. Keywords with high search volume are more competitive, but they also have the potential to drive more traffic to your website.
Relevance
It is important to choose keywords that are relevant to your business and the products or services that you offer. If you use keywords that are not relevant to your business, it will be difficult for you to rank for those keywords and generate web traffic to your site.
Keyword Difficulty
Keyword difficulty is a measure of how difficult it is to rank well in search engine results pages (SERPs) for a particular keyword. It is a relative metric that takes into account the difficulty of ranking for a keyword compared to other keywords. For example, a keyword with a high difficulty score may be more difficult to rank for than a keyword with a low difficulty score. Keyword difficulty can be an important factor to consider when choosing keywords to target in search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, as it can help you understand how much work will be involved in ranking for a particular keyword.
In general, keywords with a keyword difficulty of 29 or lower are going to be easier to rank higher for in search engine results.
Using tools like SEMrush or Ubersuggest, they’re going to be identified with a green color rather than a yellow, orange, or red color.
Step 4: Prioritize your keywords by creating a list of primary and secondary keywords
After you have identified a list of potential keywords, you need to prioritize them based on their relevance and importance to your business. Your primary keywords are the most important and should be used in your website’s main content and metadata (such as the title tag and meta description). Secondary keywords are less important but can still be used in your content to provide additional context and information.
Step 5: Create compelling content
Once you have identified your target keywords, the next step is to create compelling content that is optimized for these keywords. This means using your primary keywords in the title, headings, and body of your content, as well as in your meta tags and descriptions. It’s important to create high-quality content that is useful and informative for your target audience, as well as being optimized for search engines.
There are a few key places where you should include your keywords:
Page titles
The title tag of a webpage is one of the most important places to include your target keywords, as it tells search engines what the page is about.
Headings and subheadings
Use your target keywords in headings and subheadings to give search engines an idea of the content of your page.
Body content
Use your target keywords naturally in the body content of your page. Don’t stuff your pages with keywords, as this can actually hurt your rankings.
Meta descriptions
The meta description of a webpage is a short summary that appears in search results. Including your target keywords in the meta description can help improve the click-through rate of your listing.
Step 6: Monitor and optimize your keyword performance
Keyword research is an ongoing process, and it’s important to regularly monitor and optimize your keyword performance. This means analyzing the traffic and conversions generated by your keywords, and making adjustments to your content and website structure as needed. You can use tools such as Google Analytics to track the performance of your keywords and identify areas for improvement. You’ll be able to see how your website’s traffic and rankings are improving over time. This will help you understand what’s working and what’s not, and allow you to make adjustments as needed.
Some tips for maximizing the effectiveness of your keyword research efforts include:
Focus on long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords are more specific and typically have lower search volume, but they can be more effective at driving targeted traffic to your website.
Use related keywords
In addition to your primary keywords, be sure to include related keywords in your content to provide additional context and information.
Use a variety of keyword types
In addition to single keywords, consider using phrases, questions, and even misspellings in your keyword research to capture a wider audience.
How To Do Keyword Research For SEO Summary
So to summarize, you’ll want to find keywords with higher search volume and lower keyword difficulty and generate your content around them. Generally speaking, a keyword difficulty below 30 will provide you with the best opportunities for generating traffic to your website. You’ll have a much easier time ranking higher in search results for keywords with a difficulty of 29 or below than you will with higher difficulty keywords.
By following these steps, you can do effective keyword research for SEO and improve the visibility and traffic of your website in search engine results pages.
And of course, all of this goes hand in hand with PageSpeed optimization, which you can learn more about by checking out the rest of our blog articles or by scheduling a FREE CONSULTATION by using the form below. Happy creating!
