How to do keyword research for SEO

Hi, welcome to this article where you will find an extensive guide on how to rank and target the best mixture of best keywords for your niche.

This article is divided into two parts – theoretical and practical. If you are totally new in the digital world and you don`t have a lot of experience in keyword searching and all this stuff I strongly recommend you to start with the theoretical part. I know it might sound a bit boring (who likes to read about the theory ) but trust me it will give you a lot broader look at this topic.

So, without further ado, fasten your seatbelt and let‘s go down to the business.

Part 1. Keyword reseach – boring but important theory

What are the keywords and how do they impact the seo

Keyword research for SEO is the process of finding and analyzing search terms that people enter into search engines and then strategically place them in your content so that your content appears on a higher position in the search engine results pages (SERP).

Keywords are not just individual words, but they consist of the whole phrases. Users type them in Google to search anything in the web – like for example your products.

Because keywords are crucial if it comes to the positioning websites in Google ( SERP) they should be smartly included in every content that you produce. Not only in the main text but in the headers from H1 to H6 meta titles or meta descriptions but don’t overdo it so you don’t put your site into the danger of keyword stuffing which is a shady technique of black hat SEO.

Keyword research as a practice has been evolved a lot since 2005. Now the focus doesn`t go to the keywords density anymore (how often you place a keyword in the text), but search engines priorities well – written content aligned with search intent while SERP ranking.

Usually, keyword research is taking place in the very early stage of the project and for many times this is basic for future campaigns or content.

Keyword research can help you to ideate around a new content or name your business or optimize your site. One undoubtedly fact is that without keywords, there’s no such thing as SEO!

What are the types of keywords 

Are you aware of the number of different types there are for Keywords?

There are several types of keywords in SEO that you need to learn if you want to be proficient at it. Starting from the most used and commons ones, like short-tail and long-tail keywords to the more technical and skilled ones like LSI keywords.

Short-tail keywords

As the name indicates, short-tail keywords are those made up of up to three words or less. Occasionally, they are also called the head keyword. Short-tail keywords are like a double-edged sword. They possess an outstanding high search rate and volume but have a highly competitive market to beat.

Short-tail keywords characteristics:

• High search volume
• High competitive rate
• Broad search intent
• Low conversion rate: Use it as a theme keyword that appears consistently throughout your website

Long-tail keywords

They consist of more than three words. They are as well much more complex and specific than short-tail keywords

They possess a much lower search volume and rate compared to the previous with the advantage of being a lot less competitive

Long-tail keywords characteristics:

• Low search volume
• Low competitive rate
• Specific search intent
• High conversion rate: use this for targeted pages especially product page and blog post

By including long-tail keywords, that you will like to rank for, you will be creating content that feels natural and is not forced into the public. This keyword poses as well as inherent benefits; longer words offer more user intent, and are usually less competitive.

Even Long-tail keywords usually have low search volume, they have a higher conversion value because they are more specific. So if you know how to use them wisely you can you will be able to gradually get more traffic and reach the new and motivating audiences.

But be aware and restraint yourself to not choose the long tail keyword as the main keyword of your article. The article should be optimized for a more popular phrase, while long-tail phrases should be used to saturate the content of the article.

Short-term fresh keywords

When trying to understand Short-term keywords, just think about anything that has been hyped or trended on different communication channels recently

Short-term fresh keywords characteristics:

• Exponential search volume
• specific search intent
• medium competitive rate
• high conversion rate: use it to create up-to-date content for view

Long-term evergreen keyword

This specific type of Keywords is marked by those that are relevant all the time. It might face some fluctuations over any given time but they won’t be extreme changes

Long-term evergreen keywords characteristic:

• Moderate search volume
• medium competitive rate
• specific search intent
• high conversion rate: use them to create detailed and informative stripes that can be updated regularly or can age well

Product defining keyword

These type of keywords will be in charge of describing and explaining your product itself

Product defining keywords characteristic:

• Low search volume
• low competitive rate
• specific search intent
• high conversion rate: use it on your product pages to stand out from the generic crowd and match your customer searching intentions

Geo-targeting keyword

By using a geo-targeting keyword, you can aim at specific characteristics or common trends like a country, state, city or even a neighbourhood

Such type of keywords are of extreme importance for the local business that wishes to build and establish a local SEO

Geo-targeting keywords characteristic:

• Low search volume
• low competitive rate
• specific search intent
• high conversion rate; critical for local business, and delivery based business

LSI keyword

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords can be seen as thematic keywords that are closely related to your main keyword

LSI keywords become handy when you want to create topics to fit a broad theme and target all the smaller branches based on one root keyword

LSI Keywords characteristic:

• Low search volume
• low competitive rate
• specific search intent
• high conversion rate: boost the ranking signal for the main keyword and good for content creation

Low-Hanging Fruit keywords

These keywords are referring as the most easily achieved keywords These are keywords you can make a few updates to and see measurable improvements fairly quick.

A low – hanging fruit should meet two principles under its belt to be accurate:

• High demand
• Easy to do

The high demand is something driven and pulled by the customer.

Even though it might be easy to do, while in higher hierarchy companies and more complete structures, this might affect.

High demand is something that should be determined by our customer and is not a bad practice to work on the low hanging fruits and releasing them on the first stages.

By doing so, you can take the future pressure off from you, or a possible working team, and allow for the right amount of time to be invested into still important but more complex tasks. To make this the clearest possible, working solely on low hanging fruits won’t take anyone to completion, but completing them early can take us closer to the end goal much faster.

Let’s now take a look at how to identify low hanging fruit

Specific characteristics of low-hanging fruit keywords

While looking at your list of potencial keywords, you will need to identify the following three characteristics to consider the keyword as low hanging fruit.

1. Lower competition

Take Bottom ones. Nonetheless, as a principle, the lower competition there is, the better.

Take a look into the Keywords competition and identify those with the lower competition but perhaps not entirely the Low traffic volume

Any keyword that you find with a low search demand is also great to aim for and rank. As a general thumbs rule, keywords with at least 100 searches or less per month are a good option, but you can go even lower than that.

2. Lower difficulty level

The are many tools, like Ahrefs or Semrush out in the market that will easily help to find the ranking difficulty of each keyword. Check here (ADD HERE LINK TO POST KEYWORD TOOLS) to find a more insightful guide on SEO Tools.

It’s really up to you to choose which of the keywords you listed match your targets. As guidance for new bloggers, it’s important to know that the internet is filled with blogs about different niches and explains why it’s better to target lower competition keywords first. 

Google search engine algorithm, or any other search engine algorithm for that matter, contains a really deep and complex environment, which can make other characteristics a bit complicated to aim for at the moment, but eventually, you’ll see better results once you’ve established your authority on your chosen topic.

3. Lower traffic volume ( are not so popular)

I the ideal world we need the traffic volume to stand as high as possible. But typically keywords that have lower search-demand are also very easy to rank. Those with at least 100 searches per month or even lower. They are keywords that have low competition ( less than 50) and search ( between 130 to 400) which is ideal for any website.

Low-Hanging fruit Keywords and good ROI

With all these ideas in mind, you need to find that sweet spot, realistic and achievable keywords with some commercial value but not up enough to take the chance to rank for them.

Aim for terms (ROI subsets that fit the low hanging strategy) always try to find the keywords that are already working for you, but aren’t ranking in the top 7 positions in Google for your target geographical market. Their position could be anywhere in between 11, 12 and 13. These are keywords that rank at the top of Page 2 and are poised to roll onto Page 1. This terms can be later be upgraded to page #1 without so much effort.

Keywords that convert some even with a low search demand, can be 10 x more valuable than those with none or rather a low conversion (Bear in mind that low competition keyword that only receives let’s say 50 searches per month it is still a good deal). Especially if your website is new with no authority yet it can be extremely difficult to get ranked for strongly competitive keywords (that getting high traffic but with much higher competition as well.)

Always make sure to have an insightful perspective on what is your business value and your expectations. This relief the decision-making when compiling and prioritizing a low-hanging keyword list

Once you are aware of this, make sure to have a well-balanced mix of keyword strategies. That is because, as mentioned above, the more frequently searched keywords are head terms, making them much more advantageous and harder to rank for than long-tail terms.

What is the SEO Keyword Research Process

There is an easy structure to follow named PIE method (  protect, improve, and expand), developed by Conductor company . This method describes the interesting approach of the keyword research process.

PIE Method includes 3 stages of the keyword research process where you focus either on the keywords that are already ranking or that one you want to rank for.

1. Protect – focus on late-stage brand, product or service related keywords that you are already rank on, to maintain the good SERP visibility and boost the conversion.
2. Improve – focus on low hanging fruits
3. Expand – main focus on PPC driving terms, lack of SERP visibility.

How to Find Keywords for SEO Strategy Tailored to You

Step 1: Find the best “empty bottles keywords”

Although this might be short notes, is important to enlist all relevant and proprietary data you have gathered about your business. Some lines will suffice for a start. It will bigger later on.

To boost off this process, just think about the topics you would like to rank for in terms of “empty bottles”. Try to find 5 to 10 empty bottles you think are important for your business and then use this overall empty bottle (topic) idea to help come up with some specific keywords.

Step 2: Fill in those bottles with keywords.

Now that you have some empty bottles to focus on, is just about identifying a few keywords that fit into those bottles. Remember each is labelled with an identifying topic. These keyword phrases are those you deem important to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs) like google, based on what your target customer might think. Knowing your market will allow you to come up with terms the customer will type in. They are already conducting searches for those specific words.

Step 3: Research similar search terms.

You might have thought about this on the previous steps. If not, it is an efficient way to fill out those bottles.

Whenever you see yourself struggling to come up with further keywords that potential customers might be searching about, direct yourself to Google.com and check on the related search terms that appear when you type in a Keyword.

Give an overall look to the titles and selected paragraphs that appear as description. It might give you extra ideas for Keywords. Once you do this, scroll to the bottom of Google’s results. You will find some suggestions for related searches to your initial request. Is a great habit to keep yourself open to different suggestion over a specific topic. People might be looking for the same answer on many different “slangs”.

Step 5: Check how competitors are ranking for these keywords

Being aware of what type and which keywords your potential competitors are trying to rank for is an outstanding help to add and mix up some more your current list of keywords. Allows you to have a fresh perspective and varied scenarios.

Many great things come from checking your competitor. And as a business and product strategies, you should do so regularly. It will enlighten your search and guide on the correct path. If you find the competitors are using similar or same keywords that you have fill in your list, it means you are heading on the correct way and is important on improving your ranking for those. Furthermore, take a healthy peek on those keywords your competitors seems to not care about. There could be a great hidden opportunity for you to own a greater market share on important terms.

The main purpose is to come up with a not only useful and accurate list of keywords that provide quick wins but as well as sustained progress towards bigger and more ambitious SEO goals. 

Step 6: Use any tools available like Google AdWords Keyword Planner to cut down your keyword list

Now that you have gotten the perfect mix of keywords that fits your need, it can be a good idea to narrow down your list with some quantitative data. There are several tools out there that will help you accomplish this like Google AdWords Keyword Planner, Google Trends, or tools such as LiveKeywords (free alternative to Keywords Everywhere) 

This tools alongside quantitative data will boost your accurate keywords and lead towards an optimal SEO search. Going through these steps will help you not only with your content strategy but in your brand marketing strategy as well.

How to choose the right keywords 

As discussed before on a previous post, Keyword, in terms of SEO, stands for words and phrases that searchers enter into a search engine (Like Google or Bing). They also need to be dynamically related to your content and describe you are going to write about

Although knowing the type of keywords is a great step towards any optimization of your site, is only a portion of what has to be done to rank for that high conversion and optimized keywords for your content.

Therefore, there have to be several factors to be taken into account while hunting for suited keywords for you.

• Stage of your page or project
• Authority sites on first pages
• Keyword Intention
• Keyword assessment

1. Stage of project

While seeking for the most lucrative keywords on the internet, it is imperative to always have a clear idea and concept of your business-niche target and the stage you are in.

Assuming you are starting fresh or searching for non-competitive Keywords, it is recommended to start the search with Long-tail-Keywords due to its less competitive nature. As explained in the previous article, Long-tail-Keywords are much less competitive but has as well a lower search volume. Nonetheless, we are seeking for really well optimized and assess Keyword for our specific niche.

As good SEO practices, it is suggested to divide your Keywords mixture into batches or categories:

Head Terms (20%):

These Keywords are comprehended usually of single-words with great high competition and great search volume. Therefore is good management to categorize a portion of your Keywords batch with some of them. Some examples can be “Vehicles” or “Publicity”.

People searching for such terms have a none clear searching intent. Therefore some can be wanting to buy a ‘vehicle; while others will like to seek for ‘Vehicles law important’. Head terms usually don’t convert well.

Body Keywords (25%)

Keywords made up from 2 to 3-word phrases, with a fair amount of search volume and less competition. Is a good practice to keep a category and portion of keywords here. “Car Insurance” or “get good publicity” are examples of such type. 

Long-Tail-Keywords (55%)

This is long keywords made of 4+ words phrases and is in most cases really specific. “Best vehicle insurance for young adults” or “Get a cheap publicity stand” are great examples of them. These combinations of Keywords don’t get much search volume individually, but once you manage to add some of them together, long tails can make the majority of the searches done online, they have a low competition a greater chance for conversion.

2. Authority of Sites on Google’s First Page

Following with best SEO practices and optimization techniques, it is imperative that you first make a general search to evaluate a keywords competition level before digging and putting all your valuable effort into it

This fair easy steps:

• Direct to Google Search Engine
• Place in the search box the Keywords you want to check.
• Check the sites that rank on the top of the page 

If your search throws uber authority pages (Wikipedia) all over the first ranking pages, you might want to reconsider the keywords as this is a highly competitive and possibly low conversion phrase.

However, if the main page in Google is comprehended of smaller blogs on page 1, it’s a sign that you have a great opportunity to rank with them

3. Search Intent

As all strategic development of a product, it is important to analyze its market behaviour. Search intent holds an important role while seeking for the golden egg of Keywords. 

To better get a grasp on what Search Intent means, simply ask yourself: What does the seeker of this keyword want to see? Does the user seek to buy, consume information or targeting a company page?

There are 4 categories that subdivide all user searches avoiding you to target appealing but endearingly bad conversion keywords.

• Navigational

This type of search intention targets specific pages the user wants to land, therefore there will endearingly direct themselves and rarely will click on anything other than the first google offers. This is a type of keyword you should avoid even though it might have a great volume or CPC. Just think of a user wanting to land at YouTube, Facebook, Twitter.

• Informational 

This is the type of intention you want to go chase. Users motivations are driven by consuming and gain information, therefore a piece of content optimized around that term could do GREAT. Imagine yourself searching for terms like ‘How many calories in orange’ or ‘Strategies to improve link conversion’

All users will be driven to obtain data and are where you should focus a good part of your effort.

• Transactional or Commercial

This keywords intention suggests that the searcher wants to make a purchase or some sort of transaction to exchange goods. For example, If it includes the word “buy”. then is a strong indicator of commercial intention. Searches like “Business Insurance Quotes”, Quebec to New York or Buy books online. 

Keep an eye on these if your business model is based on E-commerce or selling goods. As well as for any intention to sell something directly to a consumer. As well remember you can always sell goods or services applying non-direct-purchase strategies, which we will see later on this post

4. Keyword assessment

To perform an optimal assessment of a Keyword it is mandatory to perform several and interconnected steps that will filter down the best options at your disposal. Please bare to mind the User Intention discussed on the previous step. To make this process optimal, please perform each step and once you have a bigger picture, go back once again on each of them. There might be a tight relation among terms which can turn out to be a great boost or a massive pull down.

Search Volume

In definition, this comprehends to simply traffic volume. The more people searching for an specific Keyword, the more volume traffic you could get a share off.

However, this might be trickier than it looks. So what is a good search volume then? Sadly there is not short answer for it as this might vary a lot among industries. It is why is so important to have, at the best possible given the circumstances, to have your niche market identified and its industry eye spotted.This will make your process a lot smoother and, evidently, more accurate.

You need to figure out what a “high” and “low” search volume number is in your niche. Then, choose keywords based on what’s “normal” for your industry. 

You can achieve this by investigating different volumes search for similar keywords and for companies that you consider a competition. They might map you the read on to what is a good or bad search volume. 

Organic Click-Through-Rate

It is well known that organic google searches ar a pull down for the potential number of clicks you might be able to get. Therefore an accurate volume search will give you one side of the coin. You must take into consideration Organic CTR.

What is Organic CTR

throughout simplified solutions and special snippets that will feed you with a short maximize headline containing the vital information you are seeking for, Google has made the need to click on any page drastically reduced by its minimalistic orientation.

To easily illustrate this, think at one moment you have gotten to google and searched for some information, and the result where display right there on the results Try this by searching any well known cooking recipes or biography of an important figure. you will find on the first Google search results a rather expanded box which might contain the recipe itself and its timing or summed up biography information from Wikipedia.

This trend is getting worse within time, while google is scraping your webpage and outlining the main content on the google search page, this inescapably creates a problem on the number of click you get to your site to read the complete post. 

Now that you know what Organic CTR is, you must include this into your plan and strategy alongside with your Search Volume ratios. 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.

SERPs

The first step is to take a look on the result pages for your Keyword. If you can spot many google ads for featured snippets providing short non-click answers, then you can know for sure you will not get many clicks from them, even if you rank in the top 1 for the page.

Third-Party Tools:

Like everything, it exists third party software solutions to help you make this all process a lot easier. Some of this software out there like Semrush or Ahrefs provide high-end solutions to estimate more accurately Organic CTR for given phrases.

Nonetheless and as word of advice, is recommended always to double-cross information. Don’t avoid a keyword just because it has a low CTR. If lots of people search for that term, it might still be worth going after.

Difficulty

If you are starting a new page or have a rather new business. It is strongly recommended to target at first low-competition terms. You don’t want to compete on a red sea full of experienced players at this point.

Once you have successfully applied the different strategies and the site is showing signs of growth. start targeting a bigger portion of competitive terms

It is not a crazy strategy to put all your baskets at the beginning by using only long-tail keywords. However, and like all projects, you shall never put all baskets in one place. Although is good you place the majority of them as long-tail. Leave a small percentage space to target a few slightly more competitive ones (5%-10%). this portion ration will be shifted alongside your business growth.

CPC

Cost per click or CPC is a metric introduced to answer several important questions. Perhaps the most important one is Do people searching for this term is spending any money?

So once again, We must see this step as an overall interconnected one. Search volumes and CRP analysis alongside CPC provides you with a more complete picture of a good golden egg keyword.

Let’s say you have found a Keyword which has a great search volume for your niche and does not provide high Organic CPR but has a really low or almost null commercial intent. there is no much sense to target such words

Many times you can have a generous ROI from a Keyword that does not get many searches but has a high enough CPC

Business fit

At this stage, you will start analysing an assessing the specific keywords you have filtered. Here you will focus on how likely is that someone searching for a Keyword, that is on your list, will become a customer. Although you have analyzed this before within its CPC, this applies more to an alignment of good search volume, Organic CRP and CPC to the business model you have.

Let’s say you you want to use a Keyword with great CPC, low Organic Search and good search volume for the business. however, if such keyword is invoking a tendency to get a particular software tool or service, and you do not offer such services, you might not be getting the best deal out of the optimization of the word-phrase. Perhaps use this insight to invoke Keywords that not only combine a balanced mixture of steps and advocates the user to consume what you have to offer.

Keyword trends

As mentioned trough all the steps, there is a mutual connection among them which will force you to come back and forth to analyze each individually.

you might have found a great Keyword, with an optimal assessment mixture and good business fit. However, what happens if such word is on a decaying state?

Specific Keywords might be on an upscaling or exponential growth rate, which is a great opportunity and a blue ocean to dive in. However, some of those keywords might be on a slow dying path which will make its usage not an optimal idea

Advance Strategier for assessing Keywords

Once you have a healthy list of Keywords which had been carefully analyzed and mixed. Is time to apply some advance strategies to bulletproof our effort and make sure only those high rate visit Keywords get out there.

Barnacle SEO

Barnacle SEO is a specific practice of using other sites’ authority to rank on the first page.

Let’s say your blog post ‘SEO techniques for 2020’ is ranking on the top 1 on a search page and is getting many visits. You can leverage on this by creating more content that will turn around such information like YouTube video expanding even further or visualizing in more intuitive terms all the information, and optimize this video around the Keyword used.

As a piece of advice, once you find a golden keyword, you want to take up as much first page as you can. Create the content on that topic on your site. Then, publish keyword-optimized content on authority sites, like YouTube, LinkedIn, Medium or any other. this will boost your visits from several flanks.

GSC Keyword Research

Google Search Console or GSC can be a gold mine if you know how to take advantage of it

You will need to have a GSC account linked with the Keywords. You just need to follow the instructions on the page and head to ‘Performance Report’. Here you will find a list of your Keywords. Please filter them by ‘Impressions’.

You will find here all the keywords that get a lot of impressions but at length not many clicks. Here you will find a great piece of information to perform growing strategies techniques.

Create additional content, or optimize a piece of existing content, that is super focused and specially optimized around those high impressions Keywords. you want to squish as much all the real visits you can get from each Keyword.

Synonyms and related Keywords

Is it definite that you want to optimize the page around the main keyword, but this does not mean you should stop there?

You will be able as well to get even more traffic to your page if you know how to optimize content around synonyms or closely related terms.

Imagine your main Keyword is ‘Increase customer satisfaction’. You can spice this up a little and add some related Keywords like ‘boost customer service’. As these terms are related, a user might be searching on one or the other way and you will be targeting both attempts.

Shoulder Keywords

it is a common practice that people only optimize their sites around Keywords that are only closely or directly related to what they sell or offer.

However, from a business point of view, this is a terrible choice. Here is why

• Product Keywords are mostly super competitive
• The are many Keywords that your potential user or customer is searching while they are not searching for what you offer.

In other words, Shoulder Keywords aren’t directly related to what you sell. But they’re keywords that your customers are searching for. Which makes valuable and worth going after.

Manage to create or build a piece of content and try to get it in front of their unintended search. A customer who finds a solution while they are not searching, and that feels it has provided value, will be a highlight potential customer to buy from you down the road.

Extra steps to take into account

Buyer’s Journey

Think about the journey that any potential customer has to take, starting from hearing about your product to making their first purchase. For many businesses, most people won’t make a purchase the first time they hear about your site. Instead, they might go through several different stages:

• Awareness:

during this stage, buyers identify their challenge or opportunity. They want to pursue this. They also decide whether or not the goal or challenge should be a priority.

• Consideration 

In this stage, buyers have clearly defined the goal or challenge and have committed to addressing it. They will evaluate different approaches and methods available to them to conclude the goal or solve their challenge. 

• Decision

In this stage, buyers have already decided on a solution category. For example, they could write a list of the pro and cons for a specific item they might want to buy, and they want to assess the price on them, warranty options and delivery fees and times.eventually they will decide on the one that best meets their needs.

In marketing jargon, this is known as the buyer’s journey.

Map Each Keyword on Your Website

An important organizational step in the process is to map each target keyword to a specific page on the website. The best way to keep your ideas organised is by using a simple content schedule.

A content schedule is most useful to effectively manage the site:

• A content schedule keeps you organised throughout a long campaign
• A content schedule can stop you from targeting the same keyword on two different pages on the website

In general, it’s a good idea to make sure that your web pages each target different keywords. Usually, you’ll want your products and services pages to target keywords with a lot of commercial intent. Your blog posts, on the other hand, can target informational keywords.

How to choose the right keywords practical guide

Do you seek to get maximum results with a minimal amount of work?

How to analyze and choose the best keywords for your blog, business. 

Once you have all of these great keyword ideas though, how do you prioritize them?

Many professionals and learners in the SEO world, and like in several other professions, are seeking for a genie bottle, a magical tactic to solve all incoming problems. If such magic existed, probably none of us will have a professional future in this area. Nonetheless, there exist many non-magical tactics, quite easy to execute yet offering a significant Return Over Investment (ROI)

Looking at that sorted list, and as a first logical idea, we want to jump and use those which returned the best numbers and looks quantitatively great.

If you happen to have a great big domain, which is well ranked, then such top competitive results are where you should start and where the most number of clicks will be. However, we will assume most of you here are wanting to start this journey and/or possess an on the growing content page.

If so then you might be wanting to start taking a look a little down the list, the middle point can be a good reference to start. Although these words might not the “best” keywords you wanted to target your niche, they are still competitive a smarter choice and easier to rank for. 

Business approach for keyword research

Some important theory before we move to the practise part:

Let’s talk Pareto

Economic is all around us, whether you acknowledge it or not. Guides the growth countries and is used as guidance codes when the crisis comes. You might not be aware that an economical principle, observe by economist Vilfredo Pareto back in the 1800s, guides the economical and transactional world. 

Pareto’s principle is simple and straightforward; 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. This, in terms of business and strategies, means that 80% of any type of business sales-transactions comes from 20% of its clients. this principle applies to any e-commerce, Page or blog. Such a statement can mean that 80% of your traffic is driven from 20% of your users.

The goal here is to identify the biggest winners in our requirements list so we can quickly get to aim that customer’s with a lot less effort than blindly go through the whole list. You might not realize it but is easier to get to 80% of our target than to complete the last 20% of the list. Nonetheless, always apply caution and common sense to any practice; Pareto’s numbers, although being absolute, can be twitched and adjust little if you maintain its core principle.

The Four Ps of Marketing Mix

It is a golden rule of an SEO specialist to assess and produce valuable and well-structured content, as without it the chances of success on google ranking are rather slim, well-written content for users is not all there is to it. Before you even start writing, you need to plan around it.

Well structured analysis and selection of keywords, which is what we want to focus on, will make sure that you write a spot-on content that has a chance of reaching the readers interested in it.

As many things can go wrong in the beginning, and grow to be a major disaster factor, Keyword research stage needs to be taken with an extra pair of gloves and found them a solid concrete base.

3 critical mistakes can happen that will jeopardize any sort of benefit even from the best-written article in the history

• The misplaced topic of the article
• No user interest in the written topic
• Higher competition on Google

Choosing keywords based solely on subjective feeling or the number of views can be a double-edged sword that brings an effective positioning of content on your website or a major waste of time and money. This is can be a wrong assessment of your work and lead to poor execution.

Take a look into a simple division of the marketing mix 4’Ps to assess accurately:

1. Position: Keywords ranking is a big part of the cake and should be a foundation level on your pyramid. Target keywords that rank in the SERP spot of position 5 through 15.

2. Popularity: The search demand for one particular keyword or set of terms against other low-hanging terms. Take into consideration the traffic potential to prioritize your list.

3. Production: Keywords with high intent that drive filtered and useful traffic and have proven to convert are, without a doubt, more valuable than keywords with GKT traffic estimates that are as yet unproven.

4. Payout: While in the process of selecting keywords to target, pay special attention to inputs and outputs: effort, time, hard costs invested. Perform some cost-benefit analysis o which keywords offer the highest ROI potential for the client and which of those are the most cost-effective approach for you.

 

How to find valuable keywords for your business – practical quide

After “a short” theoretical introduction, we finally move on to the theoretical part. Yeah!

Here it goes the disclaimer…

You have to be aware that the keyword research strategies vary from enterprise to small business. In this guide, we are going to take a look at all types of the best practices that can help to you to improve your skills and ability so you will always be able to find the best keywords for your audience at the right time.

So, if you want to find the right keywords for your business there are basically 3 straightforward steps to do:

1. Do the keyword research to gather the data

The keyword research process should always start with defining the core terms  (or head terms or seed terms). There are the most essential terms/ keywords for your business. Another step is to expand the list of your core terms with various keyword modifiers.

A typical keyword consists of:

• Core term: Term that the best describes your business. For example, if you are the restaurant owner the core term will be the keyword ” restaurant”. In the ideal scenario, this is the keyword you might want to rank # 1.
• Keyword modifiers: Words that come with your core terms and create more narrow definition of your business. They are easier to rank for, less competitive and more targeted.

For instance, if you are running a bakery business, your core terms is not really “bakery”. You probably don`t want to rank on number 1 position when people just simply typing bakery.

The ideal keyword you want to rank for is “bakery” + whatever city you are. That is the keyword that is going to drive the customer your way.

So in this simplicity scenario, your core term might be something like: “bakery in London”. However it might turn to be quite hard to rank well for this keyword, in this case depending on the nature of your bakery business, you can try to modifier the core and go for: “gluten-free London bakery”, ” home bakery in London” or ” Bakery Cafe downtown London” etc.

The same it goes for any other business! If you are a digital marketing consultant specialized in SEO and want to create the in – depths online SEO course, then your core terms will be “SEO course”. Then you should try to expand your core term using all kinds of modifiers and assess that narrow your niche down and give you more chances to rank as high as the top 5 Google search results. So, for example, it can be anything like: “SEO course” for beginners, for dummies, for small business owners etc.

As you can see, the this first part of the keywords research consists of the simply brainstorm. In most cases, the keywords will come from your common knowledge. If you’ve been in the business at least for some time you probably know which keywords flow around. However, you can also support your creativity by using the keywords tools.

If you are somewhat new to a niche, you should consider starting your keyword research by using a dictionary, thesauruses or glossaries. They will help you to go through most common terms and definitions in the industry and give you a few more ideas of core terms to start with. For example, Thesaurus.com is always a good start.

Export the data, put them in the keyword spreasheet

Once you get bunch of the potencial keywords you might rank for , is time to qualify each term. 

In this stage, you are going to need the keyword research tool or tools that will help you to analyze all the keywords data and find the most valuable one. Here you can find the reviews of all available online keyword research tools on the market, so it can help you to choose the best one.

Raw keywords data export

Having the raw data of your potential keywords is essential to being able to break it down into something useful.

Regardless of what keyword tool are you going to use to generate your raw keywords data, it will always be organized by the quite similar variables: CPC (cost per click), search volume, position, difficulty, competition etc. However, depending on the advancement of a given tool, data can be a little more or less detailed.

Try to keep your data organized 

A great way to help you while doing keyword research is to try out with different views of the data sets in your private keyword spreadsheet.  Fortunately, most SEO tools allow you to export the raw data into a.CSV file, so you don`t need to fill up your spreadsheet manually.

Analyze the data to find the best keywords for your business

Before you get into the raw keyword data analysis, you have to know that this process will be slightly different for every business or person. Likewise, the amount of analysis you will have to do will strongly depend on the size of your enterprise. If you are a small /medium business or startup with no real online presence entering into a market, you probably aren`t going to be playing with a ton of keywords. Similarly, if you are a global e-commerce company, you’re probably going to spend several weeks combing through the data.

However, knowing how to choose the right keywords is essential as it is going to determine whether your article will be successful or spectacularly unsuccessful.

What are the most important factors that define if the given keywords are valuable for your business:

Search Volume

Is defined as the average number of people entering a given query (keywords or set of words) on a search engine each month. 

In the ideal world the more views the better. Therefore an article optimized for such a phrase can attract more interested readers. Unfortunately, as like all that shines is not gold, phrases with the highest number of views very often do not meet all needed characteristics like relevance and competitiveness. Also if you are a new starter the phrases with the high search volume might be externally hard to rank for.

A a new starter, keep the following in mind. The best keywords for your business that you should try to optimize your content are:

• At least 1,000+ monthly searches (if you’re aiming for high-value, long-tail keywords, this can be closer to 500+)

• low hanging fruits with 100 – 500 searches per month range

Keywords difficulty ( competitiveness)

How hard it will be to rank for that keyword. It’s a score set from 0 to 100 based on who’s already ranking for the target keyword and the authority of those sites. Restrain yourself with the difficulty score under 50 – the lower the better

By this point, you are aware that choosing a phrase you write about that is searched by many people is good assessment must include a measurement keyword competition to make sure is not saturated. A good key indicator to give up and put your current effort and resources are those words that compete against hundreds or even thousands of other portals. You will need a greater monetary and resource support to achieve desired results there.

As an SEO enthusiast, always understand you need to walk before you run. Is a much smarter and profitable path to choose a less common phrase for which you’ll be able to succeed faster and easier. Later on, you will go with all you have for the most competitive one. Great project leaders and managers know how to build stable and sustained foundations on which to build a successful product.

Alignment with intentions

In simple words, your deal phrase must match the searcher’s intention.

Keywords are divided into 3 types

We divide keywords into 3 types: informational, navigational and transactional.

• Informational: Keyword that provides answers to questions or solutions to a problem. This is where you should aim
• Transactional – Keywords directed to buy products, services or good. The ideal target for a category page or product page of the online store.
• Navigational -terms intended to direct the user to a specific website, but that generally does not remember its address. No place for content here 

You must understand the searchers’ intentions rather well. And provide the exact content they are wishing to find. As well do not try to force this steps to a user looking to order a product (Transactional) or attempt to rank higher there. They are not looking to consume information even if you hit the Top 10 

If Internet users are looking for something different than what your website offers, they are not your audience anyway. They will not bring any profit to you and will leave your site rather fast.

They will bring you no benefit, leave your site quickly and provide meaningless numbers in the web analytics program. Within time, Google’s algorithm will realize something’s wrong with your site with such a high unintended and you will find eventually out of the ranks you work hard for.

Accuracy

Is defined as the precision between what people possibly entering on Google to look for & what exactly you are going writing about. Make sure you understand the searcher’s needs well.

Apply common sense and Google search results to evaluate the relevance of keywords and where it stands among the searches. You can consider a phrase accurate when pages with similar content to yours dominate in Google’s Top 10.

Unfortunately, and in many occasions, the right keyword phrases that match the searcher’s intentions shows different results in google. Once you are certain the keyword you wanted does not provide the content you intend, then its safe to consider it as inappropriate. If Google search engine insists that a given phrase should be displayed with divergent results, you won’t do much.

A great indication to not fall into this trap, is to simply sum up the type and amount of pages the search engine shows. Content pages, tools related to it, guides and so on are a high indicator that you are going in the good path.

On each page with search results, the search engine presents an estimated number of pages matching the query with you want. Unfortunately, you need to twitch and add some keywords google understand and filter as without it you will mostly get tons of pages with less and less relation to your query. 

You need to make sure that you are actually looking at the competitor’s data who are feeling your potential users with valuable and optimized content direct yourself to the Google search engine and take into account the following recommendations:

To recap up to this point, here are your steps to find the best keywords for your website:

As you might be aware by now, optimizing your content is not about placing as many keywords as possible within the article, which can hurt your SEO strategy, but organic and natural content and blog posting, made for humans and displayed by machines.

To summarize this guide a little, we are highlighting selection tips to choose the best keywords:

To summarize this guide a little, we are highlighting selection tips to choose the best keywords:

1. Make a list of potential keywords as comprehensive as possible
2. Come up with as many queries as possible that you would use when looking for the content you plan to write
3. Ask the client for suggestions.( If possible)
4. Get inspired by the competition. Analyze their sites and check Google’s Top 10 for a pre-selected phrase.
5. Use online tools: KeywordTool.io, Ubersuggest, Soovle, AnswerThePublic.
6. Use Google tools: Search Engine Hints, Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Google Keyword Planner
7. Evaluate the pre-selected phrases for:
   • Volumes – Average number of views per month: ideally aim for at least 1,000+ monthly searches keywords or high-value, long-tail keywords with 500+ search volume, or low hanging fruits keywords with 100 + monthly search volume.
   • Match Intention -User looking for information, consumes articles and content information. Users looking for product or services will satisfy a transactional need. Keep this in mind. 
   • Competitiveness – Find a word or phrase which is not fighting in a saturated market but for which you cannot currently find a satisfactory answer on the Internet or at least one that isn’t covered by many sites. A keyword difficulty score should be under 50
   • Competitions – If the first page of Google has at least one site with a DA under 30 (If you look at the first page and the competition is fierce, it will be much harder to rank).
   • Check A SERP position history if it has changed recently. (If the top 10 results have been exactly the same for the last six months, your article probably won’t change things.)
8. Make sure all phrases selected are tightly related and relevant to your intentions. Otherwise, you risk hitting the wrong audience, not interested in your content
9. Determine your tolerance cost-benefit tolerance ratio for content competitiveness and don’t exceed it! Fail to do so, and success can cost you a lot or be an ultimate unreachable goal (despite the effort)  for your accepted ratio.
10. Any phrases that remain in the list should be ranked according to the monthly average number of searches. Select the phrases that are the most popular and that meet the requirements.
11. Write an all valuable and more appealing article than your competitors, which targets the gaps you struggled to comprehend while reading it, add your voice and personality to it and seek to simplicity whilst informative, precise and aimed (Attractiveness and readability)
12. Once the article is published, perform constant and improved-oriented monitoring of results. If you have followed all steps, you should see healthful growth in them