DIY Keyword Research

Firstly it is important to know that keyword research is the foundation of a good SEO campaign. Keyword research isn’t just about choosing high volume search terms, building links, and ranking for that single keyword alone.

Keyword research is the process of discovering words and phrases that people use in search engines with the ultimate goal of optimising content around those terms.

In 2017 Ahrefs studied 3 million random search queries and found that a #1 ranking page will also rank for nearly 1,000 relevant keywords in the top 10 search results. This showed that there was not a fixed number of keywords a page could rank for. When it comes to analysing a single term, you can’t do much better than the features found in Ahrefs Keyword Explorer.

The best way to start your keyword research is to brainstorm a list of topics. I run a digital marketing agency so the below topics come to mind:

• Social Media

• Email Marketing

• Website Traffic

• Content Marketing

• Blogging

• PPC

Now that I have a list of topics, I type each one of them into Google and see what terms Google suggest to me. These suggestions are great to add to your list as google only suggest terms when it is a popular topic.

You can also make use of the same strategy using YouTube suggest.

Another cool way to find keywords is to check out the “Searches Related to” section at the bottom of Google’s search results. If you scroll to the bottom of the page. You’ll find a list of 8 keywords that are closely related to your search term.

Chances are your target audience hangs out on Reddit or Quora. You’d head over to Reddit or Quora, search for a broad topic that your target audience is interested in… and something that’s related to what you sell.

Wikipedia is an often-overlooked goldmine of niche research. Where else can you find articles curated by thousands of industry experts… all organized into neat little categories?

1. First, head over to Wikipedia and type in a broad keyword.

2. That will take you to the Wikipedia entry for that broad topic.

3. Then, look for the “contents” section of the page. This section lists out the subtopics covered on that page.

4. And some of the subtopics listed here are awesome keywords that would be tough to find any other way.

5. You can also click on some of the internal links on the page to check out the Table of Contents of other, closely related entries.

6. When you click on that link, you’ll notice that the table of contents for the Coffee Preparation page has even more keywords that you can add to your list.

Keywords Everywhere might be my favorite free keyword research tool. It shows you keyword ideas from different places around the web (including YouTube, Bing and Google Analytics).

All you need to do is install the Chrome extension. And the next time you visit one of the sites that Keywords Everywhere integrates with, you’ll see a list of keyword ideas… and data on each keyword.

Ubersuggest got a massive upgrade and overhaul. Ubersuggest still generates keyword ideas from Google’s search suggestions. But it also gives you data on each keyword (like search volume, CPC, keyword difficulty and more).

Google’s Keyword Planner is THE most reliable source of keyword information online.

SEMrush shows you the exact keywords that a site already ranks for! So if you have a site that you’re competing against in Google, just pop it into SEMrush and steal all of their keywords. SEMrush is a paid tool but totally worth it.

How do you know if a keyword is too competitive to rank for? If you choose a keyword that’s super competitive, you can find your site buried at the bottom Google’s third page.

Head Terms: These are usually single-word keywords with lots of search volume…and competition. Examples of head terms are keywords like “insurance” or “vitamins”. Because searcher intent is all over the place (someone searching for “insurance” might be looking for a car insurance quote, a list of life insurance companies or a definition of the word), Head Terms usually don’t convert very well.

Body keywords are 2-3 word phrases that get decent search volume (at least 2,000 searches per month), but are more specific than Head Keywords. Keywords like “life insurance” or “order vitamins online” are examples of Body Keywords. These almost always have less competition than Head Terms.

Long tail keywords are long, 4+ word phrases that are usually very specific. Phrases like “affordable life insurance for senior citizens” and “order vitamin D capsules online” are examples of long tail keywords. These terms don’t get a lot of search volume individually (usually around 10-200 searches per month). But when you add them together, long tails make up the majority of searches online. And because they don’t get searches for that much, long tail terms usually aren’t very competitive.

Search Volumes Are Misleading! You can have a high search volume for a keyword, but this doesn’t necessarily mean you get a high number of clicks.

Search intent is always a winner when identifying which keywords to target. One question you should ask when doing research is:

What is the searcher looking for and can I fulfill that intent?

There are four main categories for almost any search query with clear intent:

1. Informational: How tos, Whats (i.e., how to design a website, type of content would be a guide)

2. Navigational: Branded Queries (i.e., facebook, BOA login)

3. Commercial investigation: Specific Attributes, “vs”, “best” (i.e., best laptop for a social media manager, this would be comparison)

4. Transactional: Buy, Download, etc.

Search volume only gives you part of the story. To get a full estimate of how many clicks you’ll get from a first page Google ranking, you also need to estimate organic CTR.

Here are two simple ways to do it…

First, you can look at the SERPs (Search Engine Result Page) for your keyword.

If you see a lot of stuff on the first page (like a Featured Snippet and multiple Google Adwords ads), then you know that you’re not going to get a ton of clicks… even if you rank #1.

Second, you can use a tool. Ahrefs and Moz pro both estimate organic CTR.