Keyword research is the first step in the SEO writing process and an essential part of your SEO strategy. SEO. Before you create your website content, you need to know what search terms your audience is using. Their search terms are your keywords.
Based on these keywords, you can start writing high-quality, useful content. Here, we'll take you through the many steps involved in keyword research.
What is keyword research?
Keyword research is part of SEO (search engine optimization). It's the work that someone does to come up with a long list of keywords that one would want to rank a website for. To get such a list, website owners need to research their audience and search engines:
- What search terms do people type into Google when looking for their product, service, business, or type of business?Organisation ?
- And what are they waiting to find?
With this list, website owners can create content that will attract more high quality traffic. Keyword research is never over: repeat it regularly to stay up to date!
Why is keyword research important?
Proper keyword research is important because it will narrow down the search terms your audience is using. At BlogPasCher, we've often come across business owners who use one set of words to describe their products, while their target audience uses a completely different set of words. As a result, potential customers could not find these websites, due to a lag in word usage.
For example, sometimes a marketing department decides to give a product a not-so-common name. This peut be a smart marketing decision: People might remember your product more easily. If you are renting vacation cabins instead of vacation homes, you might stand out. But beware: Very few people are looking for [holiday chalets].
If you optimize your text for these terms, you will likely rank well on those specific terms. However, you do not not generate a lot of traffic with these terms and you'll miss a lot of your potential audience because your audience uses other words.
You will understand that it makes no sense to optimize by words that people don't use. Thorough keyword research helps make sure that you are using the same words as your target audience, which makes your website optimization effort much more worthwhile. In addition, looking at research intention, you will find out exactly what your audience is looking for. These queries should be answered in the form of quality content.
Essential concepts of keyword research
Before switch to keyword research, we will soon explain some essential concepts of it:
Un keyword or an key phrase is the word or phrase you want a certain page on your site to be found in Google. You will determine a set of phrases by doing keyword research.
If you want to easily optimize a post or page for one of your keyphrases, you need to enter that phrase in the focus key entry field for a post or page with the Yoast SEO plugin. It will provide you with feedback on how to optimize your content for that phrase to improve the chances of ranking.
Long tail keywords are more specific and less commonly searched than, so called, head keywords. They focus on a niche. The longer and more specific the search terms, the easier it will be to rank them since there will be less competition. Even if there are fewer people searching for these terms, they might be more motivated to buy, subscribe, subscribe, or whatever else you'd like them to do.
Your keyword strategy is about the decisions you make based on your keyword research.
For example, what content will you create first? Are you going to focus on the head or the tail? How and where will you publish it? Are you going to create a piece of writing, an article or a product page, a video tutorial or an infographic?
Dig in research intention is the key here: you have to find out what a researcher really wants or needs. You're not just looking at the keywords, but the underlying goals of what a searcher wants to know, do, or buy. Your content should provide a solution to the searcher's "problem". It's also called content design.
How to do keyword research?
We believe that there are eight crucial steps while performing keyword research. Here, we'll walk you through this step-by-step process, and give you practical tips on how to easily start your own keyword research.
Determine your mission
Before you start anything, think about your mission. Think about questions such as:
- What is the main purpose of your business or your Organisation ?
- What makes it special?
- Who exactly are you trying to reach?
- And, what promises do you make on your website?
Take your time and literally write down your mission. Once you've been able to answer these questions in detail, you'll have taken the first and most important step in your keyword strategy. The market you are in determines whether your mission will be great enough to rank high. Some markets are very competitive, with large companies dominating the search results.
These companies have huge budgets for marketing in general and SEO in particular. Competition in these markets is difficult, so ranking in these markets is also going to be difficult.
Maybe you sell Hawaii cruises. You offer excellent facilities for children, which makes cruises particularly suitable for young parents or single-parent families. Offering the best Hawaii cruises for young parents could very well be what makes your service unique.
So look for the thing that sets your product apart from the competition. This should be your mission, your niche - and that's what you have to offer your audience.
If you are entering a competitive market, your best bet is to start
small. Once you start to “earn” a small portion of that niche and become a bigger name in Hawaii cruise companies, you could try leveling up and selling your cruises to a larger (more general) audience. . Your mission will then become more general.
Make a list of keywords
The second step is to create a list of your keywords, preferably in a spreadsheet, such as Google Sheets or Excel. With your mission in mind, try to get into the minds of your desired audience.
- What are these people going to be looking for?
- What kind of search terms could they use while searching for your amazing service or product?
- Which of their “problem” does your product solve?
Write down as many answers as possible. If your mission is clear, you will have a pretty clear picture of your niche and unique selling points (the things that set your business apart from others). These are the terms you want to be found for.
Search for your keywords
Once you've created that first list, it's time to dive a little deeper into your keywords. Fortunately, there are tools that make your keyword research a bit easier.
The first is Google itself. As you type in the keywords you've come up with, Google suggests them to you as you do so. These are the questions people actually asked on Google! You can also check out “similar searches” on the Google results page. Or, take a look at Answer The Public. This tool provides you with all kinds of variations of your key phrases, synonyms and related key phrases.
In our article on best competitive research tools for marketing pros, you will find more details on how to use these and other tools.
Don't forget the long tail
When people start out with keyword research, they tend to focus on the very popular “head” terms. Unfortunately, these keywords are mostly taken by big companies.
Long tail keywords, on the other hand, get less search traffic, but there is less competition too. Therefore, it is easier for you to rank for these keywords. Also, long-tail keywords even have a higher conversion value because they focus more on a specific product or topic: a niche or niche!
A long-tail keyword is often longer and more concentrated than a
head. If your head term is [puppy training], a long-tail keyword might be [positive puppy training for Labrador in Amsterdam]. Using the tools mentioned in step 3 will also help you find more long tail variations of your keywords.
Remember to add the long tail keywords to your spreadsheet. Put the leading terms in the first column and add (more) columns for long tail keywords. This will help you create a proper website structure later. The longer your search term, the further down you go in your website structure.
Analyze the competition
If you have to go for long tail keywords, you should also know that they are largely dependent on your competition. If the competition in your niche is high, you will have a hard time ranking against the competition. If you have little competition, you will even be able to rank on the top terms. So you will need to do some SEO benchmarking.
- Search Google for the keywords that came out of your search. Start with your "shortest" term. Check out the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). These are the websites that you will be competing with once you optimize your content for such a keyword. Take a closer look:
- Do you see professional websites?
- Corporate websites?
- Are you "equal" to these companies?
- Does your website fit into these?
- Is your business similar in size and does it have as much influence in your niche?
It is harder to rank when you are competing against websites with strong
brands. If the brands are known from TV or radio commercials, your chances of ranking high become even smaller. But it won't hurt to take a look at their contents. Is their content well written and well optimized? If your competition really has poor content, you might have a chance to outperform them!
Also, take a look at the ads on Google. Are there any?
If you have a Google Adwords account, you can verify pay per click. Search terms that have a high click-through rate are generally also more difficult to rank in search engine results.
Be sure to take notes in your spreadsheet on your keyword results that you have studied!
Take a closer look at the search intent
The strategies of SEO Today's business should, for the most part, revolve around answering questions people have or providing the best solution for their "problem." Every time someone enters a search query into a search engine, they are searching for something. Each type of question needs a specific answer.
- Try to find out what your audience's intention is when they type a certain key phrase into Google: Does it have an informational intention (try to find information on a specific topic), browsing intention (wishes is he accessing a specific website), business intent (is he looking for something before buying) or transactional intent (is he looking to buy something right now)?
You can learn more about the search intent of certain queries by taking a close look at the type of pages that are already ranked for that query. - Do you mostly see the product pages?
- Do you see a lot of informational blog posts?
- Do you see videos?
- Or, do you see a mixture?
These are all clues that Google assumes as the search intent of a certain query.
Find out what types of intent apply to your keyphrases and, again, add your results to your spreadsheet!
Determine a keyword strategy
Based on the data you have gathered, you can determine a keyword strategy. If you've followed the steps above, you should have a spreadsheet with a substantial amount of keyphrases, and information about your audience's research intent for those keyphrases.
Now think about this question: How does my website hold up, compared to websites in the SERPs?
Are you of equal size and on the same marketing budget: go ahead and focus on those top terms.
If not: try long tail keywords first. Focusing on a whole bunch of long tail keywords combined could very well attract a lot of traffic. Once you've managed to rank among those long-tail keywords, aiming for leading terms will become a bit easier.
When you've decided, think about the type of content:
- What was the search intent for my key phrases?
- What is my audience looking for?
- But also, what content can I create that is not yet there, and how can I stand out, in terms of quality or the proposed solutions?
This will help you decide what type of content you are going to create.
Start creating landing pages
In theory, this step is beyond the reach of keyword research itself. However, creating awesome landing pages is, of course, essential if you want to get traffic to your website. So, you'll need to create landing pages for your search terms, but you don't have to create all of those pages right away – it can take a long time. Your keyword strategy will help you prioritize.
Create a good landing page and use the Yoast Duplicate Post plugin to copy them to quickly make new ones. For your most important key phrases, you'll create cornerstone content articles;
Create the best possible content on this keyword - authoritative. All of your long tail articles will be linked to this cornerstone content. It should be part of your strategy internal link, which Yoast SEO Premium can help you implement.
Keyword Research Tips
It might sound simple enough, but we know it's a lot of work and easier said than done. When put into practice, you might run into some common issues or questions. Here we will give some tips to make it work!
Prioritize your keyword list
How many keywords should you have?
Well, we can't tell you the exact number of keywords you should have, but we can tell you that you need a lot of them - as many as you can think of. However, over 1000 keywords are probably too many! Even if you are a reasonably small business, you will probably need a few hundred keywords.
But you don't need to create pages for all of these keywords right away. You can add content little by little. Think about the keywords you want to rank for right now - maybe the longest-tailed ones? - and which are not as important right now. Understand your priorities and plan the creation of your content.
A touch of focus and its synonyms only need one page
In the past, each of the keywords you wanted to be found had its own landing page. Today, however, search engines are so smart that they mainly use search intent to give searchers the best answer to their questions. The page that best answers these questions will rank at the top.
See also: Can we use the main keyword multiple times?
Search engines also understand the subtle differences between keywords so that you don't have to create landing pages for all the subtle variations, like synonyms, of a keyword.
This doesn't mean you shouldn't use synonyms! In fact, synonyms can really improve the readability of your copy, so use them in your text! The Yoast SEO Premium plugin can help you with this; it allows you to optimize your content with synonyms and related key phrases.
Related keyword phrases are words and concepts that deepen and broaden the understanding of your keyword. They even help Google better understand the topic you are talking about. By using synonyms and related key phrases in your text, you can paint a complete picture of your out of focus key phrases in your article.
View results for singular and plural keywords
Should you aim for the keyword in the singular or in the plural?
Well, it depends on the query. Because Google can learn more about the search intent of your query, it can better guess what you're looking for. For example, if you are looking for the book, you get a different result than if you search for Books.
Also discover our guide on How to create better keywords for your content on WordPress
Apparently Google thinks that in the first case you are looking for a definition or certain stories, in the second case, he believes that you intend to buy a book. So make sure you know what you are offering on your page and that it matches the query and the results Google is giving on it.
Yoast SEO Premium Word form supports, so it automatically detects all the different forms of your keyword phrase (known as keyword derivation). So you no longer have to optimize your post for a specific word form. Optimizing your post will become a much more natural process.
However, there are reasons why you will always want to optimize a very specific word form of a keyword. In that case, you can put your focus key in quotes: "best books of all time." Yoast SEO will now only consider this exact focus keyphrase when verifying your content.
Use a key phrase only once
Be careful, you shouldn't use your exact focus keyword more than once. If you do, your ranking could suffer from keyword cannibalization. Google has a hard time distinguishing content that looks a lot alike. Therefore, it might rank very similar posts or lower pages.
Have you found that you have used the same or very similar keywords on various posts and pages before?
It probably makes sense to audit your content and maybe merge / remove / redirect part of it.
Try, evaluate and try again
Once you've done a thorough analysis of your chances of ranking on a specific term, the next step is to write an amazing article and optimize it accordingly. And to publish it, share it on social networks and in your newsletter.
Make sure that you will attract some backlinks.
- See your ranking. Does your article appear?
- Is it on the first page of Google's SERPs?
- Or is it hidden on page 2 or 3?
Make sure you rate the terms you've optimized your articles for in the Google SERPs. Check whether your efforts are paying off or not!
Read also: Some WordPress Tips to Improve Your Blog's Indexing
If you aren't able to rank on the first page, try writing another post, focusing on a (still) longer-tailed keyword. Make it a little more niche specific. And see how it goes. Evaluate again. Continue this process until you reach that first page of the SERPs!
Quick keyword research
In an ideal world, you would do your keyword research, make a nice table, and create landing pages for each one. Your website structure will be impeccable and you will blog and post every day which will rank your website higher and higher on Google. But, we live in the real world.
Also check out our tutorial on: Can we use the main keyword multiple times?
Of course, your keyword research won't always be so extensive. And some posts or articles aren't written as part of an awesome strategy, but just because the topic is in the news or something inspired you to write it. That's how it works. But that doesn't have to be a problem.
If you write something that doesn't exactly fit your strategy, that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to rank that content. You can still use it to rank for something related to your keyword strategy's list terms.
To discover also: How to automatically link keywords to affiliate links on WordPress
Use the tools mentioned in step 3 and Google Trends to quickly check the keyword you want to rank for. At least take the time to think about how to make your article or blog fit your strategy. After all, if you write valuable content, you might as well get it ranked!
Ready ? Start writing!
Keyword research should be the start of any marketing strategy. SEO sustainable. The result will be a long list of keywords you want to be found for. But the hardest part remains: writing all this content.
You need to write blog posts on each keyword you want to be found for. It's quite a challenge.
Recommended Resources
Find out about other recommended resources to help you build and manage your website.
- How to Rename Categories in WordPress
- 5 WordPress plugins to add restaurant menus to your Blog
- How to "steal" your blogging style to succeed on the internet
- 10 WordPress plugins to manage a multi-site network
- How to Moderate Comments in WordPress: The Guide
Conclusion
Here ! That's it for this ultimate guide that helps you explore keyword research. If you have some Comments or suggestions, do not hesitate to tell us in the section reserved for these.
However, you can also consult our resources, if you need more elements to carry out your projects of creation of Internet sites, by consulting our guide on WordPress blog creation or the one on Divi: the best WordPress theme of all time.
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