Keyword Research

Keyword research

What is keyword research?

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.

Why is keyword research important?

Keyword research also helps you to answer questions like:

• How hard will it be to rank for this keyword?
• How much traffic am I likely to get if I rank for this keyword?
• What kind of content should I create to rank for this keyword?
• Are people searching for this keyword likely to become my customers?

Keyword research benefits:

• 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 there need 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 — 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 — by researching keywords that are getting a high volume of searches per month, you can identify and sort your content into topics that you want to create content on. Then, you can use these topics to dictate which keywords you look for and target.

There are three main elements to pay attention to when conducting keyword research.

• 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. 
• 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, information content and promoting that content to earn social signals and backlinks.
• Volume — 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. Volume is measured by MSV (monthly search volume), which means the number of times the keyword is searched per month across all audiences.

How to do a keyword research

Keyword research starts with thinking about how potential customers might be searching for your business or website. You can then use keyword research tools to expand on those ideas and find even more keywords.

It’s a simple process, but two things need to be true to do it well:

• You need to have good knowledge of your industry.
• You need to understand how keyword research tools work and how to get the most out of them.

How to discover potentially winning keywords for your website in the process.

• Brainstorm ‘seed’ keywords
• See what keywords your competitors rank for
• Use keyword research tools
• Study your niche

1. Brainstorm ‘seed’ keywords

Seed keywords are the foundation of the keyword research process. They define your niche and help you identify your competitors. Every keyword research tool asks for a seed keyword, which it then uses to generate a huge list of keyword ideas (more on that shortly).

If you already have a product or business that you want to promote online, coming up with seed keywords is easy. Just think about what people type into Google to find what you offer.

For example, if you sell coffee machines and equipment, then seed keywords might be:

• coffee
• espresso
• cappuccino
• french press

Note that seed keywords themselves won’t necessarily be worth targeting with pages on your website. As the name suggests, you’ll use them as ‘seeds’ for the next steps in this process. So don’t obsess too much over your seed keywords. It should only take a few minutes to find them. As soon as you have a handful of broad ideas related to your website’s topic, move on to the next step. 

2. See what keywords your competitors rank for

Looking at which keywords already send traffic to your competitors is usually the best way to start keyword research. But first, you need to identify those competitors. That’s where your brainstormed list of keywords comes in handy. Just search Google for one of your seed keywords and see who ranks on the front page.

If none of the top-ranking websites for your seed keywords are like your site (or where you’re trying to take it), try searching for relevant ‘autosuggest’ queries instead. Google’s ‘autosuggest’ queries pop up as you type your query.

Either way, you still need to use your best judgment when determining competing websites. If you see huge brands like Amazon or The New York Times ranking for your seed keyword, you shouldn’t necessarily treat them as competitors. Always look for websites that resemble your own — or where you’re trying to take it.

Once you find a few websites that fit the bill, you can plug these websites into a competitive intelligence tool like Ahrefs’ Site Explorer one by one, then check the Top Pages report. You’ll then see their popular pages by estimated monthly search traffic. The report also shows each page’s “Top keyword.” That’s the one sending it the most organic traffic.

Data via the Top Pages report in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer.

As you can see, even if you’re quite familiar with your industry, you can still find plenty of unique keyword ideas by studying your competitors that you probably wouldn’t have found from brainstorming alone.

3. Use keyword research tools

Keyword research tools all work the same way. You plug in a seed keyword, and they pull keyword ideas from their database based on that keyword.

Google Keyword Planner is perhaps the most well-known keyword tool. It’s free to use, and although it’s mainly for advertisers, you can also use it to find keywords for SEO.

Let’s enter a few of our seed keywords and see what it kicks back:

You’ll notice that Google Keyword Planner is smart enough to show you relevant keyword ideas, even if they don’t contain your seed keywords. Take “k cups,” for example. Unless you’re a hardcore coffee connoisseur, you probably wouldn’t know this relates to coffee.

4. Study your niche

Everything we’ve discussed so far is enough to generate an almost unlimited amount of keyword ideas. But at the same time, the process kind of keeps you “in the box.” It’s limited by your seed keywords and by the size and freshness of your chosen keyword tool’s database. Because of this, you’ll almost certainly miss some good ideas.

You can solve this by studying your niche in more detail. And a good starting point is to browse industry forums, groups, and Q&A sites. This will help you find more things that your prospective customers are struggling with that didn’t show up in keyword tools and that none of your competitors bothered to cover.

For example, if we use “aeropress” as a seed keyword and check the “Phrase match” report, we see thousands of keyword ideas.

Thousands of keyword ideas in the “Phrase match” report in Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer.

Beyond browsing forums, your customers can also be a fantastic source of keyword ideas. Remember, these are the people you’re already doing business with. You want to attract more people like them to your site.

Here are a few ways to extract insights from clients or customers:

• Chat with them face to face
• Look through past emails
• Look through customer support requests
• Try to recall common questions that came up in past conversations

Make sure to pay attention to the language they use when doing this. It will often differ from the language you might use. For example, if you sell coffee machines online, maybe your customers search for comparisons of specific machines.