Search engines are a popular method for individuals to obtain solutions to their frequently asked queries via the internet. Approximately 68% of website traffic is derived from organic search.
Organic traffic refers to the situation when a chance internet user or a prospective customer discovers your website via a search engine. Enhancing your organic traffic can greatly benefit your business despite the user’s objective. Several professionals in the field have asserted that organic search generates higher ROI in comparison to other advertising channels.
If you’re looking to enhance your organic traffic outcomes, what’s the solution? Search engine optimization (SEO) is the key.
SEO involves aligning your website and digital content with the criteria that search engines such as Google take into account. This encompasses identifying the phrases people in your desired audience use when looking for information online and incorporating those terms into your website and other materials.
Keywords
Keywords refer to the main focus of a webpage and are the words or phrases that individuals use when conducting searches on a search engine. As per Semrush, all words or phrases used in a search engine are regarded as keywords, regardless of whether they consist of a single word or a lengthy phrase.
To attain higher ranks in search engine results, it is important to understand that one of the key strategies is placing impactful keywords in the content of a webpage when conducting SEO keyword research.
It is essential that the keywords in the type of content you produce align with what your intended audience is searching for online. Doing so increases the likelihood of your content being found by users and maximizing its potential for your business.
Effective Keyword Research
Now that you have a solid foundation, it’s time to delve deeper and find high-quality keywords. Keep in mind that there isn’t a single formula for conducting keyword research, as there are numerous methods to choose from. However, most keyword research strategies follow a similar sequence of steps.
Now, it’s time to proceed with practical implementation.
1. Begin With A Seed Keyword
In order to initiate your search, you require a starting phrase referred to as a seed phrase. This term is entered into Google or any other keyword research tool to uncover additional keyword concepts. Obtaining a seed phrase is uncomplicated, as it only requires a bit of brainstorming.
- Begin with a question.
- What is your website about?
- What your customer might be looking for?
- If you have a blog, what will your readers be seeking?
Assuming you own a website dedicated to ‘laptops,’ you have the option to utilize;
- Student Laptops
- Gamers laptop
Have you grasped the concept? No need to fret, as we are only beginning. These expressions merely mark the commencement.
A useful tip is to analyze your competitors in order to discover potential keyword ideas.
Using a reputable SEO tool such as Semrush or Ahrefs to analyze your competitors’ domains can provide you with an abundance of keyword ideas. These tools display the specific keywords your competitors’ webpages rank for, which you can easily copy and compile into an Excel sheet. This will give you a comprehensive list of potential keywords to utilize for your own site.
2. Analyze the Core values of Keywords
We have earlier talked about keyword values to evaluate a keyword. Well, now is the time to apply them. You have a list of keyword ideas or phrases. Now enter them in the SEO tool like AHREFS or Ubersuggest. The tool will offer you insights about particular phrases.
To gain an overall understanding of the potential of specific keywords, pay attention to their keyword difficulty, keyword volume, and keyword CPC. A way to make this task easier is to organize the relevant matrices for each keyword in an Excel sheet.
3. Narrow Down The List
After obtaining a plethora of keywords and their matrices, it’s crucial to sift through and identify the ones that hold true value. For optimal results, prioritize keywords with substantial search volume but minimal competition.
Finding those terms through Google search will reveal that many reputable websites are currently ranking for them. The key is to strike a balance that is specific to your website’s authority and the topic at hand.
4. Search Related Keywords
Once you have identified several keywords through your research, do not limit yourself. The way a user may undertake a specific search cannot be predicted. Consider alternative words, incorporate lengthy, detailed phrases, and include additional relevant keywords.
If we use the example of Laptops mentioned earlier, we could find the ‘top laptop for nursing students within the budget of $500.’ This is what you can gain:
Your probability of achieving a high search ranking for multiple terms has significantly multiplied.
Despite the low search volume of individual related keywords, their cumulative impact significantly boosts traffic volume. Therefore, a single post can generate substantial traffic.
Discovering the most fitting keywords that effortlessly rank and generate abundant traffic is the ideal approach. You can now employ the outlined measures to unearth all categories of keywords (such as informational, navigational, and transactional) and employ them according to your requirements.
Ideas To Do Deep Keyword Research
When there’s a set standard, everyone might apply the same steps. You can differentiate yourself by going ultra-deep into keyword research and tapping opportunities that are hard to find but ridiculously easy to exploit. Here how;
1. Understand your Audience
A crucial factor for improving search ranking in the age of intent-based keyword searches is audience understanding. For effective SEO, relevant content must be provided to users, which requires comprehending their internet search behavior when seeking specific information.
2. Think Beyond Traditional SEO Tools
It is true that SEO tools are highly effective in identifying keywords that have a low level of difficulty to rank for. Nonetheless, a large number of SEO professionals are already employing these tools. Rather than using them, you could go for less apparent ones that pull information from various origins such as social media channels.
There is a possibility that individuals are searching for knowledge on social media. By examining their searching behavior on social media platforms, important keywords can be obtained. Similarly, trendy hashtags can uncover current topics and offer numerous keyword suggestions.
Demographics pro, Social Searcher, and similar tools fall into this category.
3. Explore YouTube to Find Keywords
YouTube has evolved into a search engine in its own right, with individuals entering various search queries on the platform. VidIQ and Kparser are useful tools for discovering keyword ideas when exploring YouTube.
4. Go With The Trends
Trending topics could give a real boost to your search ranking. To do that, you have to identify trending keywords. Google Trends could be a massive help in this regard. It allows you to understand what people are searching on that particular instance, explore regional searches, and compare popular trends. Google trends is a gold mine to extract relevant high-traffic and easy-to-rank keywords.
5. Don’t Search Keywords, Search Questions
As online users seek answers and solutions, it is recommended to view keyword research as a means of addressing their inquiries. By doing so, one can effectively comprehend their intentions and draw more traffic. Luckily, there are various tools available to aid in this process, such as Answer the Public, AlsoAsked.com, and Question Analyzer.
Advance Techniques In Finding Techniques
Scour Your Competitors’ Website For Low Competition Keywords
The simplest way to discover unused, less competitive keywords is to obtain them from your competitors’ or already ranked websites. This method remains the easiest to investigate suitable keywords for your specific area.
By entering your competitor’s URL into the Ahrefs Site Explorer bar and hitting the enter key, you can easily accomplish this task. Then, choose the top pages feature to obtain a list of all the pages that are generating the majority of traffic for that particular website.
Now go to the keyword difficulty tab and set the value to 5. Once you apply the changes, Ahrefs site explorer will show you only the keywords with a KD of 5, along with their search volume and the actual traffic the terms are getting.
After scanning the URL slug, you’ll discover the targeted keywords for the page. Those low-competition keywords are associated with a respectable search volume and traffic.
Search For Modifiers That Significantly Changes Search Results
Modifiers are additional words or phrases that can be attached to a keyword for further specification or clarification. For instance, if the keyword is ‘laptop,’ modifiers could include ‘top’ or ‘best.’
Although ‘Top laptops’ and ‘Top laptops 2023’ may not produce contrasting outcomes, the search results for ‘Top laptops graphic designers’ and ‘Top laptop architects’ will differ greatly. Our objective is to identify distinct descriptors that influence the search engine results page (SERP) significantly.
By using this method, you can exclude reputable websites and locate low-competition possibilities. Experiment with various modifiers alongside the foundation phrase, then input it into Ahrefs to evaluate its difficulty level, CPC, and search volume.
Use Keywords Throughout Your Business
Up until now, we have explored the utilization of keywords within the context of executing an SEO strategy. While this is a significant purpose for conducting keyword research, there are additional benefits to utilizing keywords. Given that you have dedicated time to researching and identifying optimal keywords, it would be worthwhile to implement them in other facets of your business beyond SEO.
Social Media
Businesses often utilize their preferred keywords on their social media platforms.
- To start, you can include your keywords in your social profile, such as in your username or profile description.
- After that, you can include keywords within your social media posts. On some occasions, social media posts can rank highly in search results if they match the keyword, giving you another chance to rank.
- Finally, you can make use of hashtags on social media platforms. Hashtags are keywords (with the “#” symbol) that allow users to find all posts that use that hashtag. For example, you could share your recent blog post titled “The 10 Best Coffee Shops in Seattle” on Twitter and include the hashtag “#SeattleCoffee”. Now your post will appear in the search results either when someone clicks on that hashtag through another post or when they search for that hashtag specifically.
External Content
One approach to content marketing used by certain companies is to distribute content on external websites. One way to employ this technique is by crafting a guest post for a blog within your industry, which features a backlink to your own website and incorporates a fitting keyword.
Ensure that the anchor text for your links contains your keyword when producing this material. The anchor text is the visible text in the content that directs you to the URL when clicked. The utilization of keywords beyond your website is referred to as off-page SEO.
There are two advantages of utilizing keywords in content outside of your website:
- First, Google examines the anchor text of links that point to your website. The more high-quality links that point to your website with related keyword phrases, the better your rank in search results.
- Second, people reading the external content will associate your business with the linked keywords. Even if they don’t click on the link right away, this can be very beneficial in the long run.
Online Advertising Campaigns
Using keywords in online advertising campaigns is a prevalent practice among businesses. They can opt to display their website at the top of search results or relevant websites’ advertising spaces by paying for it. In deciding which business to show for a specific keyword, advertising platforms like Google take into account which business pays the highest for that keyword.
Using Google Ads can help you achieve the goal of having your website rank high on Google search results for the keyword “roofing services in Florida.”
Nonetheless, similar objective is pursued by other enterprises. To promote your desired keyword through the Google Ads system, you must enter it and check the advertising expenditure. The greater the competition for the same keyword, the higher the expense you have to bear. Therefore, it is advisable to strike a balance between the search volume and the level of competition.
Side notes
Keyword research is a process that can consume a lot of time, but it can greatly benefit your business when executed properly. Although discovering the correct SEO keywords for your website may require some experimentation, it is an investment that will reap rewards in the future.
