Keyword Research and Analysis

Keyword Research and Analysis

Keyword research is an important part of SEO. It can help you determine which keywords to target and how to optimize your content so that it ranks higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).

This guide will show you how to do keyword research and analysis to get the most out of your SEO efforts:

Quick Links

What is Keyword

The keyword is a word or phrase searched for on search engines like Google. This helps people find what they are looking for on the internet. Marketers also use keywords to target their audience with the right content and ads.

Some of the most common keyword terms include:

  •  “How to make a sandwich.”
  •  “How to cook chicken.”
  •  “What is SEO?”

Types of Keywords

Keywords are used in SEO to help search engines understand what your content is about. There are many different types of keywords, and they can be categorized as below:

Informative Keywords

Informative keywords tell the search engines what your content is about without trying to sell anything. 

We usually create a blog for them, and it contains only information. 

For example, how to make pizza? How to write an article? What is the time now?

Selling keywords

Selling or commercial keywords are tell the search engines what you want to sell or buy. 

We mostly create pages for them and it consists pricing and features.

For example, cheap pizza in California, article writing service, best seller watches online.

Traditional Keywords

Traditional keywords are typically found in the main body of text and are not as flexible as semantic keywords.

They can usually only be used once in an article, and the writer or editor cannot modify them. We copy-paste from Keyword research tools.

For example, we use “best” or “new” in traditional keywords methodology to describe quality. 

Semantic keywords

Semantic keywords can be used for a wide range of purposes. 

They are used across different industries and can be used in multiple ways. That is why they have become a popular keyword type over the years.

For example, we use Best,” “New” “Fresh” “Trending” in traditional keywords methodology to describe quality. 

Short Tail keywords

These are keywords with general search queries consisting of one or two words. They are generally hard to rank for.

For Example, Best Life Insurance Plan for You, the Top Three Tips for Content Marketers that work, Is SEO legit or should we avoid it, and The best beneficial car financing scheme for US Citizens.

Long Tail keywords

These are keywords with specific search queries consisting of three or more words (phrases). They are generally easy to rank for.

For Example, Best Life Insurance Plan for You, the Top Three Tips for Content Marketers that work, Is SEO legit or should we avoid it, and The best beneficial car financing scheme for US Citizens.

Short and Long Tail Keywords

Primary keywords

The primary keyword is what would be used when someone searches for a specific term. 

Primary keywords are the ones that appear in the title, subtitle, and first few sentences of your content. Their placement in content plays pivotal role to rank your blog.

For example, if you are writing on Keywords Research. The primary keyword would be “Keyword Research” or “What is Keyword Research.”

Secondary keywords

Secondary keywords are generally more generic terms that would be used in a larger scope of the content. 

Secondary keywords are those that appear later on in your text, and they help readers find more information about your topic.

If you are writing on Keywords Research, the secondary keywords may be as below:  How to conduct keyword research by Ahref or Types of Keywords etc. 

How to Choose Keywords

The success of any SEO project depends on how well you choose your keywords and which keywords you target. This is because it’s not just about picking the right words and phrases but also about choosing related phrases with many searches on Google.

To choose the right keywords, you must know what your business does and what people are searching for when looking for products or services like yours. A good way to start is using Google Trends – this tool shows how popular certain terms or phrases have been over time.

You can also use other tools like WordTracker or SEMrush to help you find out which words people are searching for about your business niche.

How to Choose Keywords

Keyword Tools

Keyword research can be the most tedious task for content creation, which often takes hours and hours. However, with new technologies and tools like Ahref, anyone can easily find powerful keywords relevant to their niche.

SEMrush, KWFinder, Google Keyword Planner, GrowthBar, Long Tail Pro, Majestic, and Serpstat are the best tools for finding appropriate and relevant keywords for writing.

There are two ways to find a bunch of relevant keywords by applying tools:

Competitors’ Websites

The best way to know what keywords will work is by analyzing your competitors’ websites and finding their most popular keywords and phrases.

Search Competitor’s websites in the keyword search software, and it will generate a report or show details of the top keywords the website ranked on. 

It will give you a clear picture of which keywords are related and significant for your business and possible difficulty.

Software Suggested

The simplest way to find hidden keywords for your website is using a keyword research tool. 

These software programs are designed specifically for finding new, unoccupied, and high-volume keywords and applying filters to them so that you can narrow down your selection.

The most popular keyword tools are Google AdWords Keyword Tool, Wordtracker, and Ahrefs for generating keywords.

Auto Suggested Keywords

Google or Youtube’s auto-suggest keyword is a useful feature that can help you find related keywords.

Google will provide a list of auto-suggested keywords when you type “keyword research” into the search bar. These are some of the most popular and useful keyword suggestions that Google gives you, so they should be good starting points for your keyword research.

Auto-suggested keyword checking is a great way to help generate keyword ideas. But they can only provide suggestions based on the keywords that people have searched for in the past.

Google's Suggested Keywords
Youtube's Suggested Keywords

Think Out of the Box

“Think Out of the Box” is a noun that means thinking creatively and creating something new. It is most often used in advertising and marketing campaigns.

By utilizing keyword search, the right keywords are brought to the surface, and the job is done. This search method effectively finds what a company or individual is looking for by using different words to find the desired result.

You can brainstorm with the writing department, use the semantic keywords approach, or read books, articles, and blogs to find new keywords.

Prioritize Keywords

To write effective content, it is important to prioritize keywords. This is because the more you focus on a particular topic, the more likely you are to get traffic from that topic.

There are many different ways you can use keywords in your content. For example, some people might create a list of keywords they want to rank for, while others might find out what their competitors are ranking for.
Let us discuss a few tips on prioritizing keywords for your content.

High Traffic
Low Competition
Usable and Relevant
Trending

A)- Traffic Volume

The first step is to identify keywords with high traffic volume and then determine the content they are associated with. This will help determine which content you should write about and how to write it.

Choosing the high-traffic keywords you would like to target is the best strategy. High-traffic volume keywords are those that have a lot of traffic and are still relevant today. They will give your website or blog a boost in the SERPs.

B)- Difficulty and Competition

To optimize your content marketing strategy, you must choose low-competitive keywords that are relevant and have the potential to get traffic.

It is easy to rank for Low Competitive Keywords if you know how to use them correctly. However, if you are a startup or have a low budget, then never go for short tail high competitive keywords as it requires a lot of resources to rank for them.

Less competitive keywords may have low traffic volume compared to the highly competitive ones, but they are easy to rank, thus boosting your confidence when observing your website traffic.

C)- Usability and Relevancy

There are many factors to consider when choosing keywords for your content. First, it is about finding the right keywords and ensuring they are “useful” and “relevant.”

Keyword research is all about understanding what your audience searches for and what they want to find on Google, Yahoo, Bing, or other search engines. This involves analyzing keyword statistics and conducting surveys with your target audience.

Many factors affect the usability and relevance of keywords. These include:

The number of searches performed on a keyword;

  • The number of people searching for a keyword;
  • The frequency at which a keyword is searched;
  • The location; and
  • The time of year

When a user enters a query, our machines search the index for matching pages and return the results we believe are the highest quality and most relevant to the user. Relevancy is determined by hundreds of factors, which could include information such as the user's location, language, and device (desktop or phone).

Google Guidelines

D)- Trending Keywords

You can use a keyword analyzer to help you find the most popular keywords in your industry or niche. You can also use Google Trends to see which words have been trending recently.

The main reason why this strategy works is that it allows you to get in front of a larger audience using less effort. This makes it more cost-effective than creating content for every keyword you want to rank for.

Organize Your Keywords (Google Spreadsheet)

Arrange your keywords on a Google Spreadsheet in a column and provide other details like difficulty, traffic volume, and potential traffic. Ahref will allow you to export the Keyword sheet in excel by applying different filters.

You can choose difficult and traffic as the two most important factors, which help us to choose the best keywords.

Apply filter and arrange rows in a way that shows the lowest difficulty with high-traffic volume keywords, it will bring a clear picture, and now you can pick the keywords which are easy to rank for with quality content and backlinking.

Keyword Sheet

The Content Hub Model

The Content Hub Model is a framework for creating and managing content and placing keywords on pages and posts in the best possible way

The model helps you create a content strategy to help you achieve your goals. It also provides tools and resources for measuring the success of your content marketing efforts.

Pillar Content

Create a home or hub page with the broad or short tail keyword on a general content title. 

This page’s content should hyperlink many related phrases and long-tail keywords. Every clickable link should lead customers to the relevant sub-page.

Cluster Content

Create a sub-page on each long tail and related phrases and link with the hub page. 

Cluster content is supposed to provide in depth and detailed knowledge on a particular long tail keyword or phrase.

You can create the most engaging content, which will also reduce your bounce rate because the customer will click on related keywords and phrases for more detail and stay on your blog. Meanwhile, it will be very helpful in ranking the pages in search engines.

Example of Content Hub Model

Example: If you want to create content on the primary keyword “On-page Optimization.” You need to create a hub page on the core keyword and then write a sub-page on “Search engine ranking, a guide to quality content, What is keyword research, methods of image optimization, etc. Finally, interlink the hub page with sub-pages and offer the customer a complete package or ultimate guide. 

Final Thoughts

Keyword research is a crucial part of the content marketing process. It helps in identifying the trends and choosing the right keywords that will help you increase your visibility and conversions.

It assists you in generating high traffic, establishing your brand, and creating a loyal audience. They are considered the building blocks of SEO.

Keywords may be an informative, commercial, short tail, long tail, primary or secondary. However,  placement is pivotal in grabbing the audience and getting a higher rank in search engines.

While choosing keywords, you can get help from different tools and software for better and more accurate results. In addition, pick the least competitive and high-traffic volume keyword, which should be relevant to your blog, product, or service. Producing content on trending keywords is a result-oriented approach, but it is short-lived.

The content hub model is considered the best technique to arrange content in a way that gives maximum value to the customer as it offers details, in-depth guidelines, and ultimate pieces of information on a given topic or subject.

FAQs

A keyword is a word or phrase people use to search for information on the internet. You can think of it as a keyword you would type in your browser’s search box.

Nowadays, we are more likely to find what we want online using keywords rather than browsing through thousands of pages. Therefore, it’s important to know how to optimize your website and blog posts, so you get more traffic from Google and other search engines.

The importance of SEO has increased with the advent of technology and social media. Users have become accustomed to finding what they want online without going through thousands of pages.

A semantic keyword is a tool that allows marketers to find the keywords most relevant to their business. This can help them decide better which keywords to focus on for their campaigns.

SEO specialists also use semantic keyword analysis to identify new opportunities and trends that traditional keyword research methods may not detect.

Semantic Keyword, or Semantic Analysis, uses natural language processing (NLP) to extract meaning from your website’s content. It then ranks these keywords based on how closely they match what you’re trying to do with your site.

Keyword research is a popular marketing technique that helps marketers understand what people search for and how they search.

There are three ways to find out what people search for using keyword research:

1. Search Engine Keyword Research

2. Monitor Your Competitors’ Keyword Research

3. Find Similar Topics to Your Product or Service

Keyword research is a crucial part of the SEO process. It helps search engine optimization professionals choose the most effective keywords for their sites. Keyword research can also help marketers identify and target their audience more effectively.

The importance of keyword research has been highlighted by recent surveys, which show that over 70% of all online searches are done using keywords and that more than half of all online searches are done from mobile devices.

Keyword research is important for SEO success because it helps marketers identify the most effective keywords to use for their site and target their audience with an accurate understanding of what they are looking for.

There is a difference between semantic keywords and traditional keywords. Semantic keywords are words that are used to describe a specific topic and the content of that topic.

Semantic keywords are a new type of keyword made up of words with meaning. They help search engines understand what the user is searching for.

For example, if someone searches for “Porsche,” they might also search for “car” and “automobile.” Semantic keywords can help you find more relevant results to your search query.

Traditional keywords are the old way of finding relevant content online. They only contain words and phrases with no meaning and are used to find content on a specific topic or niche.

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