Cheсking Keywords Data

Checking keyword`s data

Keyword Metrics for SEO

Let’s start with a rundown of the metrics that will make the biggest difference. Good keyword research needs to cover all of the following:

1. Search volume
2. Trends
3. Search value over time
4. Difficulty
5. CPC
6. SERP features

1. Search volume

It’s a measure of how many searches are made for a given set of keywords.

Researching the search volume will help you find out if your keyword is even worth pursuing. If you discover a low search volume, it may be a clue that there’s no market, or that you’re using the wrong terms. Many SEO tools provide search volume as part of their data. You can also get it directly from Google’s Keyword Planner.

This search shows that there’s a healthy interest in this term, but on its own, that’s not a good metric. We need to know a lot more. Looking at trends will help us get a better picture.

2. Trends

Trends refers to a set of data you can collect from Google Trends, though some SEO tools have their own ways of calculating this kind of information.

For each keyword, you want to consider the trends of:

• Interest over time
• Interest by region
• Related queries

All of these come up with a simple search on the Google Trends home page. Here’s what we see if we look for “SEO Services”:

Now we know that the term has some staying power, at least over the year provided here. We also know where the term gets the most attention.

The combination of the first and second metrics can tell you a lot, but you’re still a long way from being able to confidently act on a keyword. For now, let’s add some more depth to our understanding of the keyword over time.

3. Search volume over time

Search volume over time is another metric that you can source from Google Trends. The records go back to 2004 when the search engine first began collecting data.

That’s farther than you’ll need to look for most keywords. All you need to do with this metric is to make sure that your keyword isn’t on a downward trend. 

There’s another metric that can tell you if a keyword isn’t worth your time. Let’s look at what it means to measure keywords difficulty.

4. Difficulty

The difficulty is a metric for how difficult it is to rank for top positions in SERPs. Many tools have their own way of calculating difficulty. Most of them will build a score after analyzing search results to determine:

• The domain authority of competitive domains
• The number of strong links held by top pages
• How often the top positions change

Here’s an example of how the Ahrefs tool interprets the difficulty of our example.

That is a lot of backlinks. It would require a big initial investment and probably a few years of link building. Rushing link building will attract scrutiny from search engines, and possibly penalties.

This isn’t a keyword you can rank for unless you’re in it for the long haul.

Links are only one way to measure difficulty, though. If a search reveals a high difficulty score often means that the top pages will be hard (expensive) to dislodge for many reasons.

For example, the difficulty may reflect that top sites are well-aged, busy, or loaded with high-quality content.

5. CPC

Cost-per-click is another metric that you should check before you try to rank for a keyword. Even if you aren’t running ads, you need to know what it’s worth to the competition to jump the line in SERPs.

We can find this information in the Keyword Planner.

The right side columns to the original search that we performed show the competition level, along with the price that advertisers are paying to get a click on an ad.

 A high CPC reflects that there is a large pool of advertisers who are working to beat the organic results. You’re going to have a harder time getting organic results to rank if the market is influenced by a lot of advertising.

6. SERP features

SERP features have played a far more prominent role in recent years as Google has begun to focus on the searcher intent of each keyword (more on that in a bit).

Ads blocks were the first feature to appear above organic results, but now searchers may be accompanied by a snack pack of local businesses, a series of FAQs, structured content, or other information that lets the searcher collect their answer without leaving the SERPs page.

As you can see, a search for SEO services turns up 2 ads, and a map of nearby businesses that offer these services. For different searches, you may see far more ads, Q&As, shopping results, or other features. You need to know what features dominate a search. You’ll need to compete for the features in addition to your other organic work.

Important keyword metrics and definitions

• Target keyword is a word or phrase that you are optimising a particular page on your site to rank for. The goal of keyword research is to make decisions about a page’s target keywords, determining which terms will be emphasised in the copy in the hope that it will rank for them.

• Search intent is the reason why a user would search for a keyword. It reflects the goal that a searcher is trying to achieve. When a search engine provides someone with a list of results, it is attempting to satisfy the search intent behind their query. Broadly speaking, keywords can be informational (looking for an answer to a question); navigational (trying to reach a particular site); commercial investigation (researching a product or service), and transactional (wanting to buy something).

• Search volume is the average number of times that users search for a keyword each month. When looking for this data, it’s helpful to know how many monthly searches there are in a particular country – with this information, we can target keywords that will attract as many users as possible from our chosen market. You can discover the volume behind a query by using keyword research tools (more on this below). 

• Clicks refers to the average number of times users click through to sites from the SERPs for keyword each month. Some search terms will attract multiple clicks per user whilst others tend to see limited numbers of people clicking through.

• Head term or keyword is a highly popular and competitive query that has plenty of search volume behind it. ‘Keyword research’ is an example of a head keyword with 7,100 monthly searches in the UK. The process of keyword research begins with a short head term or seed keyword like this, after which you’ll discover lots of other related terms.

• Long-tail keywords are terms with low search volumes – they tend to be longer, more specific, and less competitive than other keywords. ‘How to conduct keyword research (10 monthly UK searches) is an example of a long-tail keyword.

Free tools for keyword analysis

Free tools might be your best bet to begin with. Although their features may be limited, there are several platforms out there that will allow you to start discovering keywords straight away.

• Google Ads Keyword Planner
• Wordtracker
• Keyword Surfer

Paid keyword research tools

Once you know that you’re serious about SEO and content creation, it’s worthwhile investing in some more advanced software to support your keyword research. These platforms come with useful investigative features that enable you to expand your search and discover new high-opportunity keywords.

• Ahrefs
• Semrush
• Moz