Meaning

Keyword Research and Analysis is a high return activity and an important part of the SEO. Right keywords can place your website on the first page of search results and irrelevant keywords can increase the gap between users and your website.

Keyword Research and Analysis enables you identify the information your target audience is searching and the keywords they are using for their queries. After researching and analyzing the keyword demand you not only get the relevant terms and phrases for SEO but also understand the users in a better way. It helps you build a better website with relevant keywords and phrases.

Your webpage has to compete with millions of web pages to achieve the higher ranking. So, optimizing your content by incorporating the right keywords in the pages is a necessary SEO practice. If you are not using the right keywords your website might never be on the first page of search results.

What Is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is the process of understanding the language your target customers use when searching for your products, services, and content. It then involves analyzing, comparing, and prioritizing the best keyword opportunities for your website.

Why is keyword research important?

Keyword research is the only way to figure out what people are typing into search engines. You need to know this to avoid creating content about things that nobody is searching for. Many website owners make that mistake, and it’s likely a big part of the reason why 90.63% of pages get no traffic from Google, according to our study.

Keyword research provides valuable insight into the queries that your target audience is actually searching on Google. The insight that you can get into these actual search terms can help inform content strategy as well as your larger marketing strategy. However, keywords themselves may not be as important to SEO as you may think.

More and more, we hear how much SEO has evolved over just the last 10 years, and how unimportant keywords themselves have become to our ability to rank well for the searches people make every day.

And to some extent, this is true; using keywords that exactly match a person's search is no longer the most important ranking factor in the eyes of an SEO professional. Rather, it's the intent behind that keyword, and whether or not a piece of content solves for that intent.

Keyword research tells you what topics people care about and, assuming you use the right SEO tool, how popular those topics actually are among your audience. The operative term here is topics -- by researching keywords that are getting a high volume of searches per month, you can identify and sort your content into topics that you want to create content on. Then, you can use these topics to dictate which keywords you look for and target.

By researching keywords for their popularity, search volume, and general intent, you can tackle the questions that the most people in your audience want answers to.

Keyword research also helps you to answer questions like:

• How hard will it be to rank for this keyword?

• How much traffic am I likely to get if I rank for this keyword?

• What kind of content should I create to rank for this keyword?

• Are people searching for this keyword likely to become my customers?

Finding the right answers to these questions will help you pick your battles wisely.

How to find keyword ideas

Keyword research starts with thinking about how potential customers might be searching for your business or website. You can then use keyword research tools to expand on those ideas and find even more keywords.

It’s a simple process, but two things need to be true to do it well:

• You need to have good knowledge of your industry.

• You need to understand how keyword research tools work and how to get the most out of them.

Now, we’ll run through a few actionable ways to improve your knowledge in both those areas and discover potentially winning keywords for your website in the process.

1. Brainstorm ‘seed’ keywords

2.See what keywords your competitors rank for

3.Use keyword research tools

4.Study your niche

1. Brainstorm ‘seed’ keywords

Seed keywords are the foundation of the keyword research process. They define your niche and help you identify your competitors. Every keyword research tool asks for a seed keyword, which it then uses to generate a huge list of keyword ideas.

If you already have a product or business that you want to promote online, coming up with seed keywords is easy. Just think about what people type into Google to find what you offer.

For example, if you sell coffee machines and equipment, then seed keywords might be:

• coffee

• espresso

• cappuccino

• french press

Note that seed keywords themselves won’t necessarily be worth targeting with pages on your website. As the name suggests, you’ll use them as ‘seeds’ for the next steps in this process. So don’t obsess too much over your seed keywords. It should only take a few minutes to find them. As soon as you have a handful of broad ideas related to your website’s topic, move on to the next step.

2. See what keywords your competitors rank for

Looking at which keywords already send traffic to your competitors is usually the best way to start keyword research. But first, you need to identify those competitors. That’s where your brainstormed list of keywords comes in handy. Just search Google for one of your seed keywords and see who ranks on the front page.

If none of the top-ranking websites for your seed keywords are like your site (or where you’re trying to take it), try searching for relevant ‘autosuggest’ queries instead. 

For example, if you sell coffee equipment, you might find more actual competitors in the search results for “cappuccino maker” than “cappuccino.” That’s because it’s mostly ecommerce stores like yours ranking for the former, and blogs ranking for the latter.

Either way, you still need to use your best judgment when determining competing websites. If you see huge brands like Amazon or The New York Times ranking for your seed keyword, you shouldn’t necessarily treat them as competitors. Always look for websites that resemble your own—or where you’re trying to take it.

Once you find a few websites that fit the bill, you can plug these websites into a competitive intelligence tool like Ahrefs’ Site Explorer one by one, then check the Top Pages report. You’ll then see their popular pages by estimated monthly search traffic. The report also shows each page’s “Top keyword.” That’s the one sending it the most organic traffic.

Here are a few interesting keywords we discovered for our hypothetical coffee store, just by analyzing one competing website with Site Explorer:

• how to use a french press

• turkish coffee

• moka pot

• how to make coffee

• neapolitan coffee maker

As you can see, even if you’re quite familiar with your industry, you can still find plenty of unique keyword ideas by studying your competitors that you probably wouldn’t have found from brainstorming alone.

If you checked all the competitors in the search results but still want more keywords, you can find more competitors in the Competing Domains report in Site Explorer. Just plug in one of your known competitors, and it’ll suggest other similar sites based on the number of the overlapping keywords that they rank for Google.

You can repeat the process above over and over for near-unlimited keyword ideas.

3. Use keyword research tools

Competitors can be a great source of keyword ideas. But there are still tons of keywords your competitors aren’t targeting, and you can find these using keyword research tools.

Keyword research tools all work the same way. You plug in a seed keyword, and they pull keyword ideas from their database based on that keyword.

Google Keyword Planner is perhaps the most well-known keyword tool. It’s free to use, and although it’s mainly for advertisers, you can also use it to find keywords for SEO.

Let’s enter a few of our seed keywords and see what it kicks back:

• barista

• macchiato

• irish coffee

• americano

• flat white

• cold brew

• percolator

• turkish coffee

• arabica

• k cups

• frappuccino

You’ll notice that Google Keyword Planner is smart enough to show you relevant keyword ideas, even if they don’t contain your seed keywords. Take “k cups,” for example. Unless you’re a hardcore coffee connoisseur, you probably wouldn’t know this relates to coffee.

Beyond Keyword Planner, there are quite a few other free keyword research tools. These are great if you’re on a budget, but you’ll quickly realize that they’re all very limited in their data and functionality since their goal is to convert you to a paying customer.

If you’re serious about keyword research, you may as well skip the free tier and use a ‘professional’ tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer right off the bat.

Let’s enter a few of our seed keywords and see how many ideas it generates. 3.7 million ideas. And that’s just from the “Phrase match” report. Other keyword ideas reports match keywords ideas in different ways.

You’ll notice that Google Keyword Planner is smart enough to show you relevant keyword ideas, even if they don’t contain your seed keywords. Take “k cups,” for example. Unless you’re a hardcore coffee connoisseur, you probably wouldn’t know this relates to coffee.

Beyond Keyword Planner, there are quite a few other free keyword research tools. These are great if you’re on a budget, but you’ll quickly realize that they’re all very limited in their data and functionality since their goal is to convert you to a paying customer.

If you’re serious about keyword research, you may as well skip the free tier and use a ‘professional’ tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer right off the bat.

Let’s enter a few of our seed keywords and see how many ideas it generates. 3.7 million ideas. And that’s just from the “Phrase match” report. Other keyword ideas reports match keywords ideas in different ways.

Here’s how the reports in Keywords Explorer match keyword ideas:

• Phrase match: Keyword ideas that contain the ‘seed’ keyword as is. For example, if your seed keyword is “computer chair,” then “black computer chair” would be a match. However, “black chair for computer” wouldn’t, even though it also contains both words.

• Having same terms: Keyword ideas that contain all the individual terms from the ‘seed’ keyword in any order. For example, if your seed keyword is “computer chair,” then “black chair for computer” would appear in this report.

• Questions: Keyword ideas that contain each term from the ‘seed’ keyword in any order, plus a “question word” like “how,” “what,” “where,” “when,” or “why.” For example, if your ‘seed’ keyword is §  “computer chair,” then “what is the best chair for computer work” would appear here.

Now, that might seem like an overwhelming amount of ideas, and it is. But don’t worry. You’ll learn how to narrow these down right in the tool in the next section.

4. Study your niche

Everything we’ve discussed so far is enough to generate an almost unlimited amount of keyword ideas. But at the same time, the process kind of keeps you “in the box.” It’s limited by your seed keywords and by the size and freshness of your chosen keyword tool’s database. Because of this, you’ll almost certainly miss some good ideas.

You can solve this by studying your niche in more detail. And a good starting point is to browse industry forums, groups, and Q&A sites. This will help you find more things that your prospective customers are struggling with that didn’t show up in keyword tools and that none of your competitors bothered to cover.

For example, here’s just one popular thread from the /r/coffee subreddit:

This person is asking a question about a coffee maker called Aeropress. If we plug that topic into Keywords Explorer, we see that it gets 61,000 monthly searches in the US, on average 

We might not have found these using tools because it doesn’t include any of our seed keywords.

Here are a few other interesting topics from that subreddit that which might be worth covering:

• pour over without a hario filter

• how to make a carajillo

• growing coffee at home

• ethiopian coffee

• coffee subscriptions

If you notice any trends among these keyword ideas, you can use those as new seed keywords in Keywords Explorer to find more ideas. For example, if we use “aeropress” as a seed keyword and check the “Phrase match” report, we see thousands of keyword ideas.

Beyond browsing forums, your customers can also be a fantastic source of keyword ideas. Remember, these are the people you’re already doing business with. You want to attract more people like them to your site.

Here are a few ways to extract insights from clients or customers:

• Chat with them face to face

• Look through past emails

• Look through customer support requests

• Try to recall common questions that came up in past conversations

Make sure to pay attention to the language they use when doing this. It will often differ from the language you might use. For example, if you sell coffee machines online, maybe your customers search for comparisons of specific machines.