What is keyword research in SEO?
Keyword research is the process by which you research trendy search terms people type into search engines like Google, and include them strategically in your content so that your content appears higher in search engine result pages (SERP). Keyword research is a fundamental practice in search engine optimization (SEO).
The keyword research process involves choosing a topic for your content that is focused on a set of targeted keywords that you want your content to rank for.
Identify Your Competition
- Enter your domain into the Organic Competitors report. Here you will find your domain’s current top competitors based on common organic keyword rankings.
- Review the list and choose up to 4 of the websites listed to use in your comparison.
Find the Best Keyword For Your Niche Market
- Enter your top competitors in the Keyword Gap tool with your domain in the farthest right input field and compare “common keyword” with the set diagrams between the domains. If the report says “no keywords,” remove one of the competitors from the list until there is a pool of keywords that all of the domains share. Comparing 3-4 websites is much better than comparing 5 for this reason.
- To in-check the easiest keywords to target, apply a filter for keyword difficulty to only show keywords with a KD score less than 60. The lower the KD score, the easier it would be to target the keyword and successfully rank for it in organic search for your site.
- Identify the most relevant keywords to your website with low KD and use the checkbox to add them to your Export.
- Next, change the set diagram to your domain from “common keywords” to “unique to first domain.” This will show you keywords that your competitors all rank for but your website has no ranking.
Disclose Long Tail Keywords
The moment you’ve identified some common topics to target from the Keyword Gap exercise, you can go deeper into keyword research with the Keyword Magic Tool.
- Enter your target keyword as a “seed keyword” here to find more ideas (“small inground pools” For example).
- Apply a filter for KD % (Keyword Difficulty) to find keywords that are easy to target and relevant to your site, and another filter for Word count greater than 4 for finding those long tail phrases with 4 or more words in them.
- Review the long tail keywords from this report and look for any relevant topics to add to your list. If you see a lot of long tail keywords around a single subtopic , it could be a great opportunity for you to target the topic with content on your website.
Now that you have a list of keywords you can use them as the foundation of your SEO strategy. Try these steps to start optimizing:
- Add the target keywords to a campaign with your domain in the On Page SEO Checker to gather ideas for optimizing your site for those keywords.
- Enter a target keyword into the SEO Content Template to get a suggested template for writing a webpage that is optimized for the target.
- Add your list of targeted keywords to a Position Tracking campaign to track your progress as you conduct your efforts.
