How to Do Keyword Research for SEO: The Beginner’s Guide

What are Keywords?

In the context of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), keywords are specific words or phrases that users type into search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo when they are looking for information, products, or services.

These keywords and their placement in the content play an important role in determining the rank of a website in search engine results pages (SERPs).

By using relevant keywords in your website’s content and including them in prominent locations, you can improve your website’s visibility and drive more organic traffic to your site.

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is the process of identifying, analyzing, and selecting the most relevant keywords and phrases that people type into search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo when they are looking for products, services, or information.

This essential practice in SEO helps website owners and content creators understand their target audience’s search behavior and align their website content with the specific terms and phrases these users are likely to use when searching.

Why is Keyword Research Important?

The importance of keyword research cannot be overstated, as it ensures that you focus your efforts on topics and keywords that people are searching for and are interested in.

The last thing you want to do is spend time creating and publishing content about a topic that no one is searching for or has any interest in.

Unfortunately, many websites make this mistake, resulting in more than 90% of pages on the internet not receiving any traffic, according to a study conducted by Ahrefs in 2020.

Focusing on keyword research offers several benefits, some of which include:

• Ensuring that people are searching for the topics you want to write abou: By conducting keyword research, you can identify the most popular search queries in your niche, helping you create SEO content that aligns with your audience’s interests and needs.
• Gaining a better understanding of the search queries your customers use: Keyword research allows you to uncover the specific terms and phrases your audience is using to find information related to your business.
• Picking the right keywords that you have a chance of ranking for: Not all keywords are created equal. Some are highly competitive and dominated by large, well-established websites, making it difficult for smaller or newer sites to rank for them. Keyword research helps you identify less competitive terms that you have a better chance of ranking for, ensuring your efforts are not wasted on unattainable search rankings.
• Identifying content gaps and opportunities: Through keyword research, you can discover areas where your competitors may be lacking or missing out on, providing you with the opportunity to create content that fills these gaps and offers a fresh perspective to your target audience.
• Improving the overall user experience: By understanding what your audience is searching for and crafting content that addresses their needs, you can ensure that your visitors enjoy a better experience on your website.

How to Find Keyword Ideas?

Keyword research starts with finding the right keywords or phrases that best match what your target audience is searching for.

For better results, you will need to use any of the keyword research tools available. These tools, such as Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool, and others, provide thousands of keyword ideas, insights into search volume data, competition levels, and other keyword data.

There are several ways to find keyword ideas, which I will cover in detail in the following section.

1. Brainstorm Primary Keywords

Start by brainstorming primary keywords related to your business or industry.

Think about the main topics, products, or services you offer, and list them down. These primary keywords will act as the foundation for your keyword research and content creation efforts.

For example, if you run an online store selling organic food products, some of your primary keywords could include:

• Organic food
• Organic produce
• Organic groceries
• Organic snacks
• Etc.

Once you have identified your primary keywords, you can begin to expand on them and look for related terms and phrases that people may use when searching for products or services related to your business.

Keep in mind that you won’t necessarily target these primary also referred to as “seed” keywords directly. However, you can use them to find other related terms that you can use for further keyword research.

2. Study Your Target Audience

Understanding your target audience’s search behavior is crucial for finding keyword ideas.

Here are some methods to gather these valuable insights:

• Surveys and interviews: Conduct surveys or interviews with your target audience to gather information about their search behavior. This can help you understand the specific questions, concerns, and topics that interest them. Ask about the keywords or phrases they would use when searching for information related to your industry or product.
• Online industry forums and Q&A websites: Explore online industry forums and question-and-answer (QnA) websites where your target audience actively participates. Look for threads, discussions, and queries related to your niche. Pay attention to the language and phrases used by your audience to uncover relevant keywords.
• Social media groups and thought leaders: Engage with social media groups and follow relevant thought leaders in your industry. Participate in discussions and observe the conversations to identify recurring themes and topics. Note the language and phrases used by the audience in their posts and comments.
• Internal collaboration: Engage in conversations with your colleagues and team members who interact directly with your target audience. They may have valuable insights about the questions and topics frequently raised by customers.

For instance, if you’re targeting organic food shoppers, after employing some of these methods mentioned above you may find that they’re interested in topics like:

• Organic certification
• Health benefits of organic foods
• Organic food delivery services
• And more

This information can help you uncover more relevant and targeted keywords to add to your keyword list.

3. Analyze Current Website Queries

If you already have a website with some traffic, analyzing the current keywords and search queries that drive visitors to your site can be an excellent source of keyword ideas.

You can use Google Search Console to identify these keywords.

In Google Search Console, navigate to the “Performace” report page and click on “Queries”.

This will show you a list of all the search queries that are driving traffic to your website, along with their performance metrics such as impressions, clicks, CTR (click-through rate), and average position.

Look for queries that rank in position 10 or higher, have a reasonable number of impressions, and are relevant to your business.

These are potential quick-win opportunities that you can capture by making improvements and optimizing pages for the particular search query.

Or if the query doesn’t align with any existing content and ranks between positions 15 – 50, treat it as a new potential content opportunity and add it to your keyword list. Because chances are that if you already rank for example on page 3 for a topic you don’t have a specific page for yet, creating a specific page for that topic can help you rank better right away.

4. Use Keyword Research Tools

Keyword research tools are invaluable for finding both matching and related terms to your primary keywords.

These tools can help you discover long-tail keywords, and related questions, alongside their search volume, and competitiveness, enabling you to target less competitive yet relevant search terms.

Most tools work similarly.

You plug in your primary keyword and the tool will give a list of keyword ideas based on that keyword.

More advanced tools like Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, Semrush Keyword Matchin Tool, and others provide powerful ways of finding keyword ideas related to your primary keywords.

In particular, analyzing matching and related terms to your primary keywords.

Find Matching Terms

Matching terms report in either of the keyword above research tools provides a list of keyword ideas that include your seed keyword in them.

This opens up the possibility to find many more keywords and long-tail keywords that are more specific and may have less competition.

If your seed keyword is “organic foods”, the report will provide keyword ideas that contain those terms.

Here are a few examples of the keyword ideas you might come across:

• Best organic foods
• Organic foods for weight loss
• Organic foods online
• Local organic foods
• Benefits of organic foods
• Organic foods for babies
• Organic foods vs conventional foods
• Affordable organic foods
• Organic foods delivery
• Organic foods recipes

Some tools might offer even more advanced filtering options like “phrase match” and “terms match”.

“Phrase match” would only show keywords that have all words of the seed keyword you ordered in the exact order (e.g. “Organic foods vs conventional”).

While “terms match” would show keywords with all words of your seed keyword regardless of their order or arrangement (e.g. “Organic vs conventional foods“).

Find Related Terms

Related terms reports offer a diverse range of keyword ideas associated with the seed keyword.

Unlike other reports that strictly include the seed keyword, these reports provide keyword ideas that may not directly contain the seed keywords. Instead, they focus on the search queries that the top-ranking pages for your seed keyword rank for or mention in their content frequently.

Here are a couple of examples of possible related keywords based on our example “organic foods”:

• Organic farming
• Organic vegetables

Finding these related terms can help you uncover opportunities for creating content around topics that you never thought about before.

5. Analyze Competitors

Competitor keyword research provides insights into the keywords and pages that drive the most traffic to your competitor’s websites. By analyzing this data and understanding their SEO strategy, you can uncover opportunities to enhance your website’s content and drive more traffic.

Here are some practical ways to use competitor keyword research reports.

Identify High-Traffic Potential Topics

One of the most valuable insights you can gain from competitor keyword research reports is the identification of your competitor’s high-traffic topics.

By studying the keywords that generate the most traffic for your competitors, you can determine which terms and phrases you should consider targeting in your content and SEO efforts.

Find High-Value Keywords

High-value keywords are those with a high traffic value.

Traffic value is calculated by multiplying the search traffic that the keyword brings with cost-per-click (CPC) for a particular keyword in Google Ads.

Identifying these keywords can help you prioritize your content and SEO efforts by focusing on terms that have the potential to generate significant revenue.

Discover Content Gaps

Competitor keyword research reports can highlight content gaps on your website, which are topics or keywords that your competitors cover well but are missing or underrepresented on your site.

You can then create new content or update existing pages to address these gaps, ensuring that your website provides comprehensive, high-quality information on all relevant topics in your niche.

When you set out to perform competitor keyword research, it’s essential to analyze multiple competitors rather than focusing on just one. However, this doesn’t mean that you need to analyze every single competitor in your niche. Instead, it’s more effective to choose two or three of the biggest and most successful players in your industry – this should give you plenty of keyword ideas to analyze further.

This diagram shows the main steps of finding keyword ideas.

How to Analyze Keywords?

Analyzing keywords is a crucial step in the keyword research process, as it helps you determine which keywords are worth targeting in your SEO efforts.

It involves evaluating various factors such as search volume, competition, cost per click (CPC), and relevancy or business value of each keyword.

1. Determine Monthly Search Volume

Monthly search volume refers to the average number of times a specific keyword is searched for in a given month.

This metric helps get an estimate of the potential monthly organic traffic you could generate targeting that keyword if your webpage ranks well for it.

Most keyword research tools, such as Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and SEMrush, provide monthly search volume data for each keyword.

For example, let’s say you are analyzing keyword ideas for your online store selling organic food products. Some potential keywords and their search volume could be:

• Organic food online store: 2,500 searches per month
• Organic grocery delivery: 1,500 searches per month
• Best organic snacks: 500 searches per month

In this example, “organic food online store” has the highest search volume and therefore holds the most potential for driving traffic.

But that’s not it.

There are a few important things to know about the search volume metric:

• Search volume represents the number of searches, not the number of people who searched: This means that a single user might be searching for the same keyword multiple times, so the search volume might not directly correlate to the number of unique users interested in the topic.
• Search volume does not equal the number of visits you could get if you rank well for it: Ranking well for a keyword with a high search volume does not guarantee a high number of visits. Click-through rates and user intent play significant roles in determining the actual traffic you could receive.
• Search volume is an annual average number: Seasonality may affect the keyword search volume, as some topics might have higher or lower search volumes depending on the time of year.
• Search volume is typically a country-specific metric: Keyword search volume data is often tied to a specific country or region, so it’s important to consider your target audience’s location when analyzing keywords to ensure they are relevant to your market.
• Consider the general trend of the topic: Beyond the search volume itself, it’s important to analyze the trend of a keyword or topic. Is the interest in the topic growing, stable, or declining?
• A single webpage can rank for numerous similar keywords: Instead of focusing on the potential traffic of an individual keyword, it’s more effective to analyze the top-ranking pages for a keyword and see how much traffic they receive for all the relevant keyword variations they rank for. This can help you better understand the overall potential traffic.

However, it’s also important not to focus only on search volume, as other factors such as competition and relevancy play a significant role.

2. Assess Competition or Keyword Difficulty

Keyword difficulty or competition refers to how challenging it is to rank for a specific keyword.

Simply put, the higher the competition, the more effort and resources will be required to achieve high search engine rankings for that keyword.

Most keyword research tools provide a keyword difficulty score, which typically ranges from 0 to 100. Higher scores indicate higher competition levels, and these scores are primarily based on the authoritativeness of pages ranking in the top 10 results.

However, relying solely on this score could be misleading, as it might not accurately represent the true competitiveness of a keyword.

It is better to manually assess various factors to determine keyword difficulty by analyzing the search results.

Here is a list of essential factors to consider when assessing keyword difficulty:

• Content quality: If the content on the top-ranking pages is poorly written, outdated, or lacks depth, you may have an opportunity to create better content and outrank them.
• Many quality backlinks: If these pages have numerous high-quality backlinks from reputable websites, it may be challenging to outrank them. However, if their backlink profile is weak, you might have a better chance of ranking higher by acquiring quality backlinks. Keyword difficulty scores on most SEO tools primarily take into consideration this factor.
• Domain Rating (DR) or Domain Authority (DA): DR or DA are metrics invented by SEO tools that are used to measure the overall authority of a website by looking at the number of quality backlinks. If the top-ranking pages have high DR/DA, it could be more challenging to outrank them, especially for a new or less established website. Conversely, if the DR/DA metrics are lower, it might be easier to compete and rank well for that keyword.
• Type of content ranking on the SERP: If the SERP includes forums or UGC platforms such as Quora and Reddit (excluding navigational search queries like “… Reddit”), it may signal that the topic is underserved. In such a case, you may have an opportunity to rank a dedicated and comprehensive page more easily.

That being said, while understanding and assessing keyword difficulty is important, focusing on excessively competitive keywords could be a waste of time and resources if you don’t have the necessary authority or backlinks to outrank them.

The general advice is to target keywords with lower competition and high enough search volume to generate decent organic traffic, especially for less authoritative websites.

3. Check Cost Per Click (CPC)

Cost per click (CPC) is a useful metric for understanding the commercial intent behind a keyword.

CPC is the average cost an advertiser pays for each click on their Google Search Ads when targeting a specific keyword.

A higher CPC generally indicates that a keyword is more valuable to businesses.

For example, if you find that the CPC for “organic food online store” is $2.00 and “best organic snacks” is $0.50, it suggests that the former keyword might have more commercial intent, making it more valuable to target.

To get more precise CPC data use Google Keyword Planner, which provides an average CPC estimate right from the source itself.

While the CPC metric can tell you about a keyword’s commercial intent, it doesn’t provide a complete picture.

The actual revenue potential of a keyword may be different depending on your business model.

4. Evaluate Relevancy or Business Value

Relevancy or business value refers to how closely a keyword aligns with your business, products, or services.

Targeting highly relevant keywords helps ensure that your website attracts qualified traffic, increasing the likelihood of conversions and sales.

For example, if you sell organic food products, “best organic snacks” might be more relevant to your business than “organic farming” even though the latter has a higher search volume.

In this case, targeting “best organic snacks” would likely deliver more qualified traffic and potential customers to your website.

To determine the business value of a keyword you could simply assign a score from 1 to 3 depending on the ease of mentioning a product or service while covering a given topic. In other words, this score would reflect how easy it will be to incorporate the product or service within content related to the keyword.

The business value scoring system is broken down in the table below.

Score	Explanation
1	Difficult: Mentioning the product or service within content related to the keyword is challenging or requires extensive creativity. It may not naturally align with the keyword topic.
2	Moderate: It is moderately feasible to mention the product or service while covering the given keyword. Some effort and thought might be needed to incorporate it.
3	Easy: The product or service can be easily mentioned within content related to the keyword without much difficulty. It naturally aligns with the keyword topic.

By assigning these scores, you can assess the business value of keywords based on their compatibility with the product or service you aim to promote.

The four main steps of analyzing keywords are displayed in the following flowchart.

How to Target Keywords?

Once you’ve conducted extensive keyword research and analyzed various factors the last step is to find out how to effectively target these keywords in your SEO strategy.

1. Cluster Similar Keywords

Keyword clustering involves grouping similar keywords under a single topic to cover all possible search queries related to that particular subject.

For example, let’s say you have a list of similar keywords such as:

• Best organic snacks
• Top organic snacks
• Healthy organic snacks
• Organic snack ideas

Instead of creating separate pages for each of these keywords, you can cluster them together and create a single piece of content that answers all of these queries. Such as a comprehensive list format blog post titled:

“Top 10 Best Healthy Organic Snacks: Ideas and Recommendations”

You might be wondering: “How to effectively organize these keywords into clusters?”

Let’s dive into the process of keyword clustering and explore two approaches – manual clustering and using a tool.

Manual Keyword Clustering

1. Gather your keywords: Compile a list of keywords that you have already identified, analyzed, and determined important for your website.
2. Identify similarities: Group keywords based on similarities in their themes, and relevance.
3. Analyze SERPs: Dive into the search engine results pages for each keyword in the cluster. Explore the content and determine if there is overlap or similarity among the results. If the SERPs display comparable results and cater to the same search intent, it’s a strong indication that the keywords should be clustered together.
4. Repeat the process: Continue grouping keywords into clusters, identifying similarities, and analyzing corresponding SERPs.

As you see this is a rather time-consuming process.

Looking for a more efficient way to tackle keyword clustering?

Then you will have to leverage the power of technology!

Keyword Clustering With a Tool

1. Choose a clustering tool: Select a reliable keyword clustering tool that utilizes the SERP-based clustering method. Popular options include Keyword Insights, Keyword Cupid, and a free alternative such as ContentGecko.
2. Input your keywords: Enter your list of keywords into the tool. Some tools allow you to upload a file or input them manually by copying and pasting.
3. Choose the setting: Select the target country location, target language, and the minimums SERP threshold/overlap. Some tools, such as the ones I mentioned above, also allow you to enter your domain name to pull the data regarding what position your domain ranks for that keyword.
4. Run the tool to analyze SERPs automatically: The tool will analyze the SERPs for each keyword, measuring the overlap between the results. This analysis determines which keywords should be grouped based on SERP similarity.
5. Review and refine clusters: Take the time to review the clusters and make adjustments if needed. Some tools even provide the overlap percentage making it easy to spot keywords the tool was not fully certain whether it belongs to a given cluster.

Whether you choose to employ a hands-on approach with manual clustering or leverage the efficiency of a clustering tool, the benefits are clear.

Using a tool saves more time.

However, manual clustering still holds value, especially if you have a smaller set of keywords or prefer a more personalized touch. It allows you to delve deeper into the keywords, understand their nuances, and tailor the clusters to align with your specific business goals.

Ultimately, the key objective remains the same regardless of the approach you choose. Grouping related keywords enables you to create content that is focused, relevant, and optimized for multiple search terms, enhancing your chances of ranking higher in search engine results.

2. Identify and Match the Search Intent

Search intent refers to the goal users have when searching for specific keywords. Understanding the search intent behind each keyword is crucial for crafting content that meets the needs of your target audience.

If your content does not match the search intent, it simply won’t rank well if all the other competing pages satisfy the intent.

There are four primary types of search intent:

• Informational: The user is looking for information on a specific topic (e.g., “benefits of organic food”).
• Navigational: The user is searching for a specific website or page (e.g., “Organic food store XYZ homepage”).
• Transactional: The user wants to make a purchase or complete an action (e.g., “buy organic snacks online”).
• Commercial investigation: The user is researching products or services before making a purchase decision (e.g., “best organic food brands”, “brand A vs brand B”, etc.).

To match the search intent, analyze the top-ranking pages for your target keyword and identify their content type, format, and angle.

• Content type: Is it a blog post, product page, product category page, infographic, video, or perhaps a combination of more than one type?
• Content format: Is it a list post, a how-to guide, an expanded definition post, or a landing page featuring a tool or quiz?
• Content angle: Is there a unique angle or perspective that addresses the topic at hand like how low cost or how easy or fast it is to do something?

This will give you an idea of the kind of content that’s likely to perform well for that keyword.

For example, if the top results for “organic food” are blog posts and it’s evident that users are looking for informative content in a comprehensive guide format. The content angle could be whether organic food is healthy or not and/or common myths about it.

Once you have successfully identified the intent for each group of your clustered keywords you will have to develop content that aligns. But before you start producing the content you should shift your focus for a bit to determining the priority of targeting these keywords.

The main steps of keyword targeting are presented in the following flowchart.

Which Keywords Should You Target First?

Determining the priority of keywords and identifying where to invest your efforts can be the most challenging and subjective aspect of keyword research.

There are just too many things to consider:

• Traffic potential
• Competitiveness
• The business value of the keyword
• Current pages on the site
• Number of newly identified clusters
• SERP features
• Number of ads on the SERP
• The list goes on…

Anyhow, here’s my actionable advice on prioritizing your keyword selection – consider these things in the exact order:

1. Assess business value: Start by prioritizing keywords that align closely with your business and target audience. Focus on keywords that directly relate to your core products, services, or unique selling propositions.
2. Evaluate competition level: For new websites, it’s crucial to initially target keywords with lower competition. By focusing on less competitive keywords, you can establish a solid foundation and gradually expand your SEO efforts.
3. Consider search volume: For less established sites search volume is an important consideration as the last criterion. However, for more authoritative websites it should be evaluated in conjunction with the competition level.

Always, ensure that the keyword aligns closely with the business and your target audience first and foremost. Then consider the level of competition. Lastly, prioritize by the search volume.

Targeting a low-volume keyword with high relevance to your business can still be valuable, even if the search volume is as low as 10 searches per month.

For example, consider a scenario where you have a highly relevant low-volume keyword, “organic gluten-free vegan cookies”. Despite the low search volume, let’s assume that 10% of the users who search for this keyword become a customer.

Now, imagine another topic that generates 1000 visitors per month but has a significantly lower conversion rate of only 0.01%.

For the “organic gluten-free vegan cookies” keyword:

• Search volume: 10 searches per month
• Conversion rate: 10% (0.1)
• Conversions per month: 10 searches * 0.1 conversion rate = 1 conversion per month
• Conversions per year: 1 conversion per month * 12 months = 12 conversions per year

For the high-traffic topic:

• Search volume: 1000 searches per month
• Conversion rate: 0.01% (0.0001)
• Conversions per month: 1000 searches * 0.01% conversion rate = 1 conversion per month
• Conversions per year: 1 conversion per month * 12 months = 12 conversions per year

Despite the vast difference in search volume, both topics in this example would yield the same number of conversions throughout the year.

Therefore, it’s important not to fixate on search volume alone but instead prioritize a keyword’s relevance to the business and it’s target audience. Furthermore, SEO tools, and their provided search volume data, although useful, provide estimates that may not always reflect the actual search behavior of users.

What Keyword Research Tools to Use?

As you delve into keyword research, you’ll want to consider which SEO tools best suit your needs and budget.

Below are two lists of keyword research tools – one for free tools and one for paid tools.

Free Keyword Research Tools

• Google Search Console: A tool by Google that helps you monitor your website’s presence in Google Search results, providing valuable insights about the search queries driving traffic to your site.
• Google Keyword Planner: A tool within Google Ads that helps discover keywords and see search volume data, competition levels, and potential keyword bid prices.
• Google Trends: Shows the popularity of search queries over time, helping you understand the seasonal trends and overall interest in the topic.
• Google Autocomplete: Google’s search bar feature suggests possible search queries as you type.
• Google Related Searches: Found at the bottom of Google search results pages, this feature provides additional keyword ideas related to your initial search query.
• Ahrefs Webmaster Tools: A free suite of SEO tools by Ahrefs, providing insights on your website’s backlinks, technical aspects, as well as keywords the site ranks for, their position, difficulty level volume, and more.
• Ahrefs Keyword Generator: Generates keyword ideas based on your seed keyword, showing search volume and keyword difficulty. Although the number of keywords presented is limited.
• Ahrefs Keyword Difficulty Checker: Shows the SERP and the DR of top-ranking pages for keywords you input. Similarly, like their other freemium tools, the presented data is limited.
• Keyword Surfer: Chrome extension that displays keyword data, including search volume and keyword suggestions, alongside Google search results.
• ChatGPT: An AI-powered language model that can generate keyword ideas and assist with various content creation tasks, including keyword research.
• SeoStack Keyword Tool: Chrome extension/application that provides keyword ideas from multiple sources, including Google, Bing, Yahoo, YouTube, Amazon, and more. It scrapes all the possible autocomplete results. The tool also provides an option to go straight to your Google Keyword Planner to get volume and CPC data.

Paid Keyword Research Tools

• Ahrefs Keyword Explorer: A comprehensive keyword research tool offering search volume data, keyword difficulty, click metrics, related keyword ideas, and much more. Probably one of the best keyword research tools regarding the feature set and data quality.
• Semrush Keyword Magic Tool: Another best-in-class keyword research tool that includes keyword research capabilities, providing insights on search volume, keyword difficulty, and competition analysis.
• Moz Keyword Explorer: Offers search volume data, keyword difficulty, opportunity scores, and SERP analysis.
• SERanking Keyword Research Tool: A versatile, budget-friendly tool that provides keyword suggestions, search volume data, and competition analysis.
• Mangools KWFinder: A user-friendly keyword research tool with an emphasis on finding low-competition keywords, offering search volume data, keyword difficulty, and SERP analysis. Priced considerably lower than Ahrefs and Semrush.
• Ubersuggest: Another simple and relatively cheap keyword research tool provides keyword suggestions, search volume data, and competition analysis, along with various other SEO features.