What keywords should I use?
How to do the right keyword research?
These are some of the questions being asked when we’re thinking about keywords and keyword research. Finding good keywords is an essential backbone for developing your content and creating good traffic for your business or brand. To search for the right keywords for your business or brand, you must know how to do keyword research the right way.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is a groundwork SEO task that identifies specific words and phrases related to your business or brand and searches the words that are most popular and have a high volume of search queries made by your target market. It is a process of searching and gathering good quality words based on queries that your target consumers will more or less look for in the search engines.
Researching keywords aims to let you understand how your target consumers search for certain products or services by how they search for it depending on the words and phrases they enter on search engines. We can see, how this is an essential process that helps each marketer to analyze which keywords have a high demand and will be best to use for a business or brand.
Keyword research isn’t just for getting high demand keywords for SEO but it is also a beneficial element for content development. It helps to give you ideas and concepts on the SEO optimized content for blogs, hashtags, and titles that you can use. By using your target keywords you can drive the right traffic towards your business and brand and convert them successfully.
Before we get started with our top tips, let’s first understand the basics of keywords.
What is a Keyword?
These are certain words that you based your ideas and concepts on for your content development, social media marketing, and SEO use. These are also known as “ search queries ” which are words or phrases that your target market enters into search engines.
It is very important to search and gather keywords that are relevant to what your target market is searching for to have a higher chance of your content being found on SERPs and drive good traffic.
Keywords are important not only for analyzing how your target viewers search but it is also a vital part of creating target and SEO optimized content. Remember that if your goal is to rank on search engines, then you must drive organic traffic towards your site from the search engine results page, that is why the keywords you target and include in your content must determine the kind of traffic you will get.
What are Long-Tail Keywords?
When doing your keyword research, you don’t just focus on “ head or singular keywords ” only, you should also include long-tale keywords with your search. Long-tail keywords are longer, more specific, and less common words and phrases that focus more on a niche. These types of keywords or phrases are being used by your target market when they’re already at the point of buying or purchasing.
Although these kinds of keywords have less search traffic, it does have a high conversion value, as they are more specific. They might not mean much with the drive of traffic but are valuable all the same especially if you know how to use them.
That is why it is a good idea to add long-tail keywords to your usage.
5 BEST TIPS to Master Keyword Research
To gather the right keywords for your brand or business, you need to have a good system and process for your keyword research.
Remember!
The power of great keyword research rests in better understanding your target market on how they do their searching for content, services, or products, determining the right strategic keywords to target for your website and SEO content development.
Your keyword research yields specific search data that should answer these 3 main questions:
- What is your target market searching for?
- How many people are searching for it?
- What kind of format do they want that information from?
To explain to you how the process of keyword research works is simply a 3-step process – generate, filter, and prioritize.
1st step – Generate as many keyword ideas as possible
2nd step – Filter the results, and research terms that are irrelevant, crazy, or too difficult to implement.
3rd step – Lastly, Prioritize the remaining keywords to know which ones you will implement first.
Now, it’s time to learn to master your keyword research process by following Mappdom’s best tips below- so let’s dive into it!
MAPPDOM TIP # 1: Create a Seed Keywords list
All keyword research starts with an idea, topic, or head keyword- this is called “seed”. These are the basic terms that broadly define your business or brand. The seed keywords are used to kickstart the process of creating more keyword ideas and when you have listed enough seed keywords, you can move forward and use keyword search tools.
Don’t skip this tip, it is best that you already have a basic list on hand when starting and the simplest way to find seed keywords is to note down a few phrases and words that best describe your brand or business. The best way to do this is by breaking a business or brand into general topics and choosing a couple of important keywords for each topic. This will result in several relevant keywords to serve as a starting point for wider keyword research.
MAPPDOM TIP # 2: Pick & test out SEO keyword search tools
Believe it or not, there is a large range of SEO tools you can use for free to do your keyword research. When using keyword search tools, it is recommendable to have at least 2-3 tools in hand to use for searching, you can compare the results you get and can get a better understanding of your search.
There are a lot of tools you can use both paid and free that are available in the market, but for this article, we’ll be sharing with you our
“ TOP 3 free tools “ that we love using, it’s a mix of simple and sophisticated tools but all are reliable in how they work.
Google Ads Keyword Planner
Google keyword planner is one of the first tools that you should be using to do your keyword research. The way keyword planner works are fairly simple – you just add your list of seed keywords, and it generates a huge list of similar words and phrases. You can analyze the data results with metrics such as search volume, competition, and bid range while cleaning out your data by extracting adult results, brands, or negative keywords.
While Google Ads Keyword Planner is a powerful Google-built in keyword research tool with search data directly from Google itself, it does provide basic results – it is still better to supplement with other SEO search tools to make your research more comprehensive.
But this is always a good place to start with.
Wordtracker.com
Now, the Wordtracker.com search tool is simple to use and understand and can give a little bit more comprehensive results that can be beneficial for you. You input a seed keyword and choose the country you want, it gives out a max of 3 result data – Volume (shows an average number of searches per month over the past 12 months), Competition ( shows several organic competitions of the keyword) and IAAT (In Achor And Title which counts the webpages on which the keyword appears in both the title tag and text of a backlink.)
The resulting data is a bit more comprehensive and easy to understand and gives about 50 results for free.
Keywordtool.io
Lastly, Keywordtool.io is one of my personal favourite SEO search tools to use which is a bit underrated and only shows 5 results on its free use. Even though the search results are limited to 5, the data is very comprehensive.
You can search and choose which country or if you prefer globally, it shows results for 8 categories- Google, Bing, Youtube, Amazon, eBay, Playstore, Instagram, and Twitter. It also gives results for singular/head keywords, long-tail keywords, prepositions, and questions. In its results there are 4 search data to analyze with, these are – Search Volume which shows the average number of times people search for this exact keyword per month, Trend which shows how the monthly search volume for a keyword has changed over the last 12 months, Cost-Per-Click or CPC shows the estimated sum of money that advertisers are paying to bid for this keyword on Google Ads. The last result data is Competition which helps you understand how competitive a certain keyword is.
As you can see, this tool is pretty simple enough to understand and to use, and even though it shows few keyword results in its free use, the data results given with this tool are pretty comprehensive.
Remember! There are a lot of other SEO tools that you can use, and which tool to use will depend on your preference and which one you are most comfortable with using.
Before choosing the right SEO search tools for you, make sure to test each one to be able to compare before reaching your final decision.
MAPPDOM TIP # 3: Target Long-Tail Keywords
Remember to include targeting long-tail keywords with your search, it is important to also use keywords and even though it may not be that popular in search results it does target a niche audience especially viewers who are on the point of buying.
For example :
Take the keyword ” marketing “, is such a broad word that could mean anything from digital marketing to traditional marketing. If you want to target a certain target market to your services you can add “ Toronto digital marketing “ and if you want to push it more forward then go for “ Mappdom Toronto digital marketing services”.
Take note that being specific with your phrases can optimize your content for the right target viewers. Especially, those long-tail keywords have a lower competition rate giving them a higher chance of page ranks in search engines.
MAPPDOM TIP # 4: TRY looking up at your competitors targeted keywords
If you want to be competitive and drive good traffic and rank your business on search engines, then you need to start exploring what your toughest competitors are doing. This is one of the simplest and most effective tips out of everything when it comes to keyword research, analyzing your competitor’s targeted keywords can give you a bit of an edge on the competition as this will help you in working to target consumers who are in search of their keywords.
There are SEO tools you can use to achieve this – one example is Google Ads, by choosing “ Search for new keywords using a phrase, website, or category “. Enter your competitor’s URL, google ads will then provide you with a list of keywords and topics based on your competitor’s site.
There you will see a tab “ Ad group ideas “ that will show you what keywords and phrases your competitors are targeting on their site.
Take note!
To take into account keywords that both have a high search volume and keywords with low competition value. Keywords with high search rates do not necessarily give you a high number of clicks and keywords with less competition value can be worth investing with.
This is a perfect insight that can give you a competitive advantage on the keywords you can target for your own business or brand.
MAPPDOM TIP #5: Filter and Segment your keyword data
This may be a long process to do but is also essential to keep in mind in order to help you organize, prioritize, and strategize the correct keywords to use.
First off, is filtering your data – you might probably get a lot of keywords in your research results but you have to remember that all of those results can be beneficial for you to use. Familiarize yourself with the data terms of the SEO search tools you’ll be using, you can set the filters of your data results depending on the keywords that are most likely to drive more traffic.
Finally, you have reached your final set of keyword results, the next step to do is to keep everything organized. Segmentation is key. It’s to turn chaos into an orderly list of keyword ideas and concepts for you to make use of. Segment by prioritizing your final selection of keywords so it will be a lot easier for you to manage and implement your SEO strategy.
Lastly, is strategize – this mappdom #5 tip is especially useful for your optimized content development. Filtering and segmenting your keyword search data results will give the final and correct keywords you can target in your planning and content strategy.
BONUS!!
MAPPDOM TIP #6: Google is key!
Check out and take advantage of the source of all searches – GOOGLE SEARCH! Make use of what the most popular search engine can offer to you
- Google suggest
It’s so easy, that “Google Suggest” automatically pops down when you try to search for a certain keyword or phrase. Whenever you type in the search term, you will notice that Google will supply a list of similar and relevant search terms below it. This provides a huge insight of new keyword opportunities for your brand or business.
TAKE NOTE! Google updates its suggestion list every 2 to 3 weeks. Meaning that the list of suggestions you see when you enter relevant keywords reflects the most recent keywords and phrases that consumers are searching for on the Google search engine.
- People also ask…
The “People also ask ” section at Google can let you discover additional questions that you may have thought of. This section appears on the search engine results whenever you type a question in the search bar. It shows results that are commonly asked by searchers that relate to the question that you have just entered.
This is such a valuable tip because it provides you to discover even more valuable questions that your target leads or customers might be asking online. Make use of results by building optimized and strategic content around the common questions listed, it can help you reach new leads who are looking for the answers to those questions online.
By far, this is the most valuable organic tool you can make use of easily since it provides you with direct access to insights that Google itself picked up by learning its searcher’s behaviours. For example, Google recognizes when a user has to type in several different phrases before finding the search results they are satisfied with. Google would then offer relevant search suggestions to make it easier for that user to find accurate search results quickly.
Master keyword research efficiently!
Keyword research has become a potential part of search engine optimization but also a source of inspiration for strategic content development. By mastering Mappdom’s Keyword Research tips, you can discover a lot of keyword opportunities and be able to build an efficient and effective keyword list that can help your business drive traffic and strategize your content.
