seo Archives - Keyword Tool Blog: How to Find Great Keywords Mon, 02 Dec 2024 09:12:18 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 https://d3av7c16ak3dxm.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/23151010/favicon-32x32-1-32x32.webp seo Archives - Keyword Tool Blog: How to Find Great Keywords 32 32 Google Advanced Search: How to Find Better Info (2X Faster) https://keywordtool.io/blog/google-advanced-search/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=google-advanced-search Fri, 14 Jun 2019 12:55:37 +0000 http://keywordtool.io/blog/?p=1531 Everyone knows how to search using Google. Just key in a word or phrase and press enter. But many don’t know there are many other functions to Google search, and they can all be accessed through Google Advanced Search. For most people, Google is a tool for them to find information, whether it’s about the…

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Everyone knows how to search using Google. Just key in a word or phrase and press enter. But many don’t know there are many other functions to Google search, and they can all be accessed through Google Advanced Search.

For most people, Google is a tool for them to find information, whether it’s about the latest news, weather, products to buy, places to go, images, videos, and literally everything under the Sun!

For marketers, SEO specialists, entrepreneurs and freelancers, Google functions in a very different way. It’s the place where they do research to find the best possible data (in the easiest and quickest manner) for the work they need to do.

Since most of their work resides online, knowing how to leverage and make the most out of Google can be very invaluable to their workflow. If you’re one of these people, read on and find out how to master Google Advanced Search to upskill your research and data collection.

What is Google Advanced Search

Google Advanced Search is a more detailed method of finding information on Google. It uses a variety of Google search operators that consists of special characters and commands – also known as “advanced operators” – that goes beyond a normal Google search.

what is google advanced search

The search operators can be used to identify and locate information more precisely and much quicker, whether you’re looking for data on websites or images. This function can be incredibly useful for content research, competitor analysis, or even SEO audits.

How to use Google Advanced Search

Google Advanced Search uses advanced search operators – or special commands and parameters – that modify Google searches to narrow down searches into more detailed and specific results.

For this example, let’s use the search term “digital marketing.” The next section will list down all the known search operators for both Google search and Google Advanced Search, its function, purpose, and intended results.

List of all search operators for Google Search

Most people type in a word, a phrase or a question when they’re looking for information on Google. But there are actually many types of searches that you can make. All you need to do is tweak the search a little bit to find the information you want more precisely.

Here are some of the most common Google search functions you can try to use:

1. Find a user on social media

Search usernames on social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and others) by placing @ in front of a word.

For example: @digitalmarketing.

2. Search for a price of a item or service

Place the $ symbol in front of a number. You can also use other fiat currency symbols.

For example: $100

3. Find hashtags

Hashtags are a great way to find a whole bunch of content related to a particular topic. Other than Twitter and Instagram, hashtags are also becoming increasingly popular on YouTube.

For example: #digitalmarketing

4. Exclude certain words from your search

Place the symbol – without a space – in front of a word to exclude it from your search results.

For example, digital marketing -adwords

5. Make exact match searches

When you key in a search term with more than one word, Google will pull results from both searches. If you’d like to make an exact match search, place the words inside quotes.

For example, “digital marketing”.

6. Narrow down results within a range of numbers

This function is especially useful if you’re looking for prices of products or services that fall within a certain range. Insert “..” between two numbers to narrow down your results to within that range.

For example, digital marketing $100..$1000.

7. Combine searches of two keywords into one

If you have two similar keywords that generally fall under the same category, you don’t need to search for them separately. Instead, combine the search results by putting “OR” between each search term.

For example, digital marketing OR seo.

8. Identify a specific site

If you already know the domain you’re searching for, this function can filter out results that show only pages and content from that specific domain. Alternatively, you can also search for domains that fall under the same top-level domain (TLD) name.

For example, site:digitalmarketing.com or site:.io.

9. Find related sites

This is quite useful as a competitor research method. If you’re looking for websites that are similar to yours (or your client’s), doing a manual search can take forever. Instead, just place “related:” in front of the URL, and Google will show all the pages and websites that the crawler sees as similar to that particular URL.

For example, related:digitalmarketing.com.

10. Pull out a Google cache version of a website

Using this Google search function can come in handy, especially when you need to pull out content from a page that is offline. To see the Google cache version of a site, place “cache:” in front of the URL.

For example, cache:digitalmarketing.com.

List of all search operators for Google Advanced Search

To clear things up, Google Advanced Search has a completely separate search window from the regular Google search bar that you know all too well. You can visit the page here. The search operators that are used in a regular Google search can also be used in Google Advanced Search, with a few additional functionalities.

It’s also a lot easier to use compared to regular Google search, as it features drop-down menus and search bars that allow you to narrow down on specific types of searches (without having to type the search operators.

Here’s a breakdown of all the types of searches you can make on Google Advanced Search:

1. Find the exact match for a word or phrase in a page title.

If you’re doing content research, you’ll know what topic to search about but not necessarily the exact titles for the content pieces you’re looking to dig out for research. To find content titles based on a word or phrase, type “intitle:” before the topic you’re looking for. Make sure to include the quotation symbol for an exact match search.

For example: intitle:”digital marketing vs seo”

2. Find a general search for words and phrases in a title

Similar to the above function, this feature allows you to find page titles that include all the words or phrases within the search operator.

For example: allintitle: digital marketing vs seo

3. Locate an exact match word or phrase in a document URL

With this function, you can find exact match words or phrases in a specific document URL. You can also combine this with other keywords.

For example: inurl: digital marketing news inurl:2016

4. Find URLs for a specific keyword

This one can be pretty handy. Instead of making multiple searches of URLs for a certain keyword that you’re looking for, this function allows you to find all URLs that are related to your desired keyword.

For example: allinurl:”amazon field-keywords digital marketing”

5. Identify keywords in a body or document text

If you’d like to find web pages or documents that contain a specific keyword, this Google Advanced Search operator can be very useful.

For example: intext:”digital marketing vs seo vs adwords”

6. Find multiple keywords that contain in a body or document text

Similar to the search operator above, this function allows you to locate web pages or documents that contain more than one of your desired keywords.

For example: allintext:”digital marketing seo adwords”

7. Locate specific files containing your search term

Finding documents on the world wide web can be a pretty daunting task. Instead of manually browsing multiple websites to find and download documents (e.g. file types like PDF, PPT, DOC, XLS, TXT, and more) that contain your desired keyword, you can use this advanced search operator.

Example: “digital marketing tips” filetype:pdf

8. Find search results that contain two keywords within a certain number of words of each other

If you’d like to narrow down your searches even more, especially when you have two desired keywords to perform a search on, use this nifty function.

For example: AROUND(X) digital marketing AROUND(3) SEO

What can you use Google Advanced Search for?

You might be wondering why would you need to use so many complex operators and parameters to find information that you might also be able to find through regular Google search? Well, there’s a good reason for that.

If you’re working in marketing or running a business that needs digital marketing, you’ll be in a precarious position that requires a lot of information. Being able to deep dive into the billions upon billions of data stored in Google servers can be extremely invaluable.

What more if you can do it much quicker and without having to individually click into URLs and scroll to find the information you need. Instead, you can just use Google Advanced Search operators.

Here are some of the ways you can use Google Advanced Search for your workflow:

  • Keyword research.
  • Competitor analysis.
  • Data gathering and collection.
  • Locating files, e.g. PDF files (for annual reports, e-books, etc).
  • Identifying precise pieces of information in a specific set of websites.
  • Combining search terms (without performing two separate keyword searches).
  • And so many more.

Now that you’ve gotten a detailed run-down of all the different search operators you can use for Google Advanced Search, it’s time to take your Googling and web research skills to the next level. Try it for yourself and get a leg up to your SEO and digital marketing workflow.

Frequently Asked Questions

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5 Easy Steps to Run a Great SEO Campaign (Like an Expert) https://keywordtool.io/blog/seo-campaign/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=seo-campaign Thu, 04 Apr 2019 02:45:03 +0000 http://keywordtool.io/blog/?p=1283 SEO campaigns can be a pretty complicated process. If you want to run a successful and effective campaign to improve your website’s SEO rankings, you’ll need to kick it off the right way – through doing detailed and thorough keyword research. When you’re looking to launch an SEO campaign, the very first thing you need…

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SEO campaigns can be a pretty complicated process. If you want to run a successful and effective campaign to improve your website’s SEO rankings, you’ll need to kick it off the right way – through doing detailed and thorough keyword research.

When you’re looking to launch an SEO campaign, the very first thing you need to do is choose the right keywords to target. It determines whether or not you’ll get more clicks to a landing page or a blog post, but more importantly, targeting the right search terms help to attract the target audience that you’re looking for.

Without understanding the potential of a keyword, you may be wasting a significant amount of time, effort and money investing in one that won’t yield a significant ROI. It’s important that you learn how to conduct proper keyword research to narrow down the best ones for your site.

 

What is an SEO campaign

An SEO campaign is a planned effort of optimizing a page or website to improve its Google SEO rankings. It’s often a long term project that involves many different components, such as keyword research, web audit, SEO analysis, on-page optimization, link building, and many more.

SEO campaign
Source: suntecmarketing.com

Any type of brand or business can benefit from a well-executed SEO campaign, whether you’re a solo entrepreneur or a digital marketer for a large multinational company.

With that said, here are 5 tips on how to make the most of your SEO campaign by using the right keywords:

 

1. Focus on long tail keywords

The internet is a vast ocean of websites. Frankly, it can seem downright impossible to compete with mega-corporations as a small company. Therefore, instead of focusing your efforts on trying to make it in an open ocean, you need to focus on being the king of a small pond first. For this reason, it’s better to look for relevant keywords (with three words or more) with low competition, which is why long tail keywords are so important.

For example, if your brand sells sports shoes, you shouldn’t be focusing on keywords such as “sneakers” or “trainers”. Chances are that you will have to be competing against Nike and Adidas. It’s better to focus on keywords such as “training shoes for flat footers Sacramento” instead, as this will single your brand out compared to your competitors.

It’s a process of pre-qualifying the traffic, which means that those who visit your site from these keywords are more likely to convert and generate revenue for you that way. Which also means, long tail keywords have higher conversion potential for your web visitors turn into leads or paying customers.

 

2. Optimize your keyword placement strategy

Another thing you have to consider is keyword placement, as this is also an integral part of the success of your SEO campaign. Many people simply throw keywords in random places, thinking that it will have the same effect for their rankings. The truth is that search engine algorithm views and analyzes them based on their placements as well. It’s crucial that you place your keywords in:

  • The page title
  • URLs
  • Meta descriptions
  • Headings and sub-headings

This is to ensure that the Google algorithm is able to see the terms clearly when they crawl your site. Aside from earning you brownie points with the algorithm, this will help to make the keywords more noticeable for viewers as well.

Make sure that you place your keywords in logical places that improve the quality of your content; otherwise, it can be marked as keyword stuffing, which can actually harm your rankings significantly. Most blog posts usually have around 0.5% to 2.5% keyword density, so make sure you optimize your content around that limit.

 

3. Narrow down the right keywords

Now that you know what a good keyword looks like, the next thing you will have to consider is how to go about finding one for your business. There are two ways you can do this:

  1. An organic search of primary keywords, or
  2. Using a keyword generator like Keyword Tool.

When you conduct organic research, you will be able to see what the people in the community related to the keywords are talking about. This will give an idea about which type of keywords you should be using to attract more traffic. The issue with this method is that it can be time-consuming and laborious.

Keyword Tool, on the other hand, allows you to see the traffic and engagement of each search term, which can help to cut down the time significantly. However, it may not provide the same understanding of the industry and community as organic research does.

We would say that a combination of the two methods is best to ensure the most success.

 

4. Find the sweet spot between high search volume and low competition

Keywords aren’t as black and white as it seems. Keywords with tonnes of searches tend to be competitive, and will likely take you a long time to rank against the bigger brands and websites that have ranked for those keywords for a long time. Long tail keywords have much lower competition, but also lower search volumes.

Then, there are those special set of keywords that have relatively high search volumes but yet are not highly competitive. These are the type of opportunities that can be a gold mine for your SEO campaign. They are hard to come by, but with proper keyword research aided by the right type of SEO tool, it’ll be much easier to find them.

Let’s say you run a blog that publishes content about running. Since monetizing blogs require you to maximize traffic to your website, you’ll need to create content that can attract the most amount of clicks. Ideally, you’d want to target high volume keywords that are not as competitive as other keywords (that most likely rank for big names like Nike or Adidas).

To find these type of keyword opportunities, key in “running shoes” into the input field on Keyword Tool:

 

As you can see from the summary of results, there are tonnes of searches for this keyword but the average keyword competition level is also pretty high. Scroll down to see the list of generated keywords:

 

Not surprisingly, a lot of the top keywords with a lot of searches are dominated by Nike and Adidas. The keyword competition is also very high at 100 (out of a max of 100, based on Keyword Tool’s metrics). This means that although a lot of people search for these keywords, it’ll be very difficult for you to outrank them.

So, the next best solution is to find a sweet spot between high search volume and low competition. To identify these type of keywords with high search volumes, click on the Filter Results box on the left-hand side of the screen, and key in “50” in the “max” field of Competition, and click Go:

 

After filtering the results, there are now 141 keywords that have a competition level of 50 and below. And as you can see, the average competition of these less competitive keywords are at 23 (Low). Let’s scroll down to see whether we can find these “sweet spot” keywords:

Voila! Based on this new filtered results, there’s 1 keyword with a high search volume of 60,500 yet with a low competition of 23. Other than that, there are also:

  • 1 keyword with more than 10,000 average searches that is moderately competitive.
  • 2 keywords with more than 3,000 searches with an extremely low competition level of less than 5.
  • 7 keywords with at least 1,000 searches with very low competition.

From this list alone, you can craft several articles that target keywords with high search volumes yet low to medium keyword competition levels.

 

5. Keep track of your KPIs through a thorough SEO analysis

Lastly, it’s essential that you keep track of the performance of each keyword through Google Analytics to see what you need to adjust. If your KPIs aren’t hitting the mark, you will need to make adjustments to your SEO campaign to ensure that your investments pay off.

For example, if your keywords have high traffic but low conversion, the issue may be the call-to-action (CTA), so you will need to fix it according to what the stats show.

 

If you’re looking for an SEO keyword research tool, take a look at our tool today! We provide an easy way to research and compare the search traffic of different keywords across multiple platforms. It’s a great SEO tool that makes your keyword research effortless yet incredibly effective.

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Search Terms: #1 Tool to Find Popular Keywords (& Skyrocket Your Traffic) https://keywordtool.io/blog/search-terms/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=search-terms Thu, 06 Dec 2018 04:35:42 +0000 http://keywordtool.io/blog/?p=776 “Search terms” is a simple concept, but an instrumental part of both organic and paid search marketing. You might wonder, what’s the difference between a search term and a keyword? There’s actually a fine line between the two. A search term is what users key into a search engine to find something specific. It can…

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“Search terms” is a simple concept, but an instrumental part of both organic and paid search marketing.

You might wonder, what’s the difference between a search term and a keyword? There’s actually a fine line between the two. A search term is what users key into a search engine to find something specific. It can be a single keyword or made out of a combination of words, e.g., “physiotherapist” or “sports physiotherapist Los Angeles.”

A keyword, on the other hand, is a word or phrase that SEO professionals use to attract organic clicks and improve page rankings on search engines. Keywords are also used by marketers and PPC specialists to bid on in their paid search campaigns.

What is a search term?

A search term is also known as a search query. It’s a word or phrase that someone enters into a search engine, like Google. Search terms can contain a single keyword or a string of keywords that’s either a part of or the entire length of a phrase.

These keywords are used by:

  • SEO professionals or agencies to rank a website or page
  • Digital marketers to bid on in their paid-per-click (PPC) marketing campaigns

All search results shown on Google depend on these two types of keyword targeting. And it all begins with the user’s search term.

How Google reads search terms

Search engines have changed a great deal in these past few years. And the better you understand how it works and the way people today search on the web, the better equipped you will be when crafting your SEO strategy.

Google no longer only ranks pages based on keyword density or volumes. Instead, the search engine’s algorithm looks at search intent. Over time it has adapted to understand users’ search queries better and match them as accurately as possible to relevant results.

When a user performs a search, Google will show both organic and paid results based on their search behaviors. And this is precisely why it’s important to understand how your target audience performs searches.

Paid marketing with Google Ads

All the results (including paid Google ads) that you get upon performing a search on Google depends on the search term that you used. Each Google search ad uses a keyword, or a group of keywords, identified by the advertiser. That’s why you will see relevant pages for both organic and paid results.

Google Adwords use search terms to target user queries

Once the target keyword is found, the advertiser will place a bid (or the maximum amount of money they’re willing to pay) for each relevant keyword. The value varies depending on the competitiveness of the keywords. And in most cases, the bid will depend on the advertiser’s paid-per-click (PPC) budget.

For example, if you’re running a marketing consultancy agency that targets small businesses, you might target “small business marketing” as a keyword. When a potential client enters a search term “how to do small business marketing,” Google will run an automated auction involving other advertisers that have placed a bid on that same keyword.

How a keyword competition level determines its placement on SERP

The winner of the auction will get the top advertising spots on SERP, followed by the rest in descending order. In PPC marketing, placing an appropriate budget that matches the competition level of a keyword is important. It increases the likelihood of your ad placed in priority and high visibility spots on SERP. But choosing the right search terms also matter just as much.

Using Keyword Tool can help you find both relevant high-volume keywords and give you valuable data such as competition level and the keywords’ average CPC costs:

Keyword competition level determines how search terms are ranked

Once you’ve entered your desired keyword, in this example “small business marketing,” you will see an entire list of keywords that will show you the competitiveness of the keyword:

Search term attributes on Keyword Tool

As you can see from this example, the search term “small business marketing” and its semantic keywords are very competitive. So, depending on the data you get based on your keywords, they should help you craft a more feasible digital marketing strategy to promote your services on search.

Organic results on SERP through SEO

A large part of SERP, as you would’ve already noticed, are mainly organic search results.

It’s the handy work of search engine optimization (SEO), which is the practice of optimizing a page or website to ensure that it’s indexed, crawled, and ranks well on SERP. And just like paid search marketing, SEO is centered on search terms.

When a user enters a search term, Google’s algorithm will sort millions of pages and filter only the most relevant pages on SERP. The more clicks a website gets, the more relevant it will seem to Google. That, among many other factors, will determine the placement of the website or page on SERP.

How Google ranks websites

There are many factors that Google takes into consideration when ranking pages, including relevant keywords, meta keywords and how they are used in title tags, headlines, and meta descriptions. But don’t worry too much about keyword density, it’s been long proven to be mostly a myth. What is important is that you use high-volume keywords that are relevant to your brand or content.

Another important metric is your website’s page authority that is determined by Google PageRank. The more backlinks you attract, the more reputable your website will be in the eyes of Google’s crawlers. Which means it will be easier for your page to rank higher based on a targeted keyword.

Page authority depends on the strength of your backlinks. Want a high score? You’ll need tonnes of solid backlinks from authoritative, reputable websites. There are many strategies to gain backlinks, as long as you avoid any black hat SEO techniques like buying backlinks (because Google really doesn’t like it and you’ll get severely penalized).

On the other hand, if you have great content and solid on-page SEO practices, you’ll have a higher potential of getting organic backlinks from other websites, blogs, and even social shares. Which brings us back to the heart of SEO – using the right search terms for your content.

Finding relevant, high-volume search terms couldn’t be simpler when you use the right keyword tool. Through proper keyword research, you will see not just a list of relevant keywords but also valuable data like search volumes, cost-per-click (CPC) and average competition level.

With accurate keyword data and a solid SEO foundation, you can then focus on writing good copy and creating great content.

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Keyword Research: The Complete Guide to Find the Best Keywords https://keywordtool.io/blog/keyword-research/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=keyword-research https://keywordtool.io/blog/keyword-research/#respond Thu, 08 Nov 2018 05:23:31 +0000 http://keywordtool.io/blog/?p=704 Keyword research is the first and most important part of your SEO strategy. Before you start writing content for your website, you will need to identify suitable high-volume search terms. The SEO keywords will inform the direction of your content, ensuring that the content produced will be relevant and easily searchable on Google. And that…

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Keyword research is the first and most important part of your SEO strategy.

Before you start writing content for your website, you will need to identify suitable high-volume search terms.

keyword research

The SEO keywords will inform the direction of your content, ensuring that the content produced will be relevant and easily searchable on Google. And that is, in summary, what keyword research is all about.

It’s usually a pretty time-consuming task and involves a lot of effort to pour through details, numbers, and comparing long lists of keywords. But it’s incredibly important to do it well. A thorough keyword research will be the foundation of your SEO strategy and content development.

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is defined as the activity of analyzing and finding a list of valuable keywords for the purpose of SEO copywriting. The keywords, or search terms, often become a guide for the direction of your content and marketing strategy.

A keyword can consist of a single word but more often than not it’s made out of several words. For example, “search terms” is a keyword, as is “best keyword search tool“.

Why is keyword research important?

Finding high-volume search terms itself is not enough. You need to ensure that the SEO keywords used in your content matches with your brand, product, or service to the keywords that your customer use. And this is where keyword research happens.

Once you have performed adequate and thorough research, only then will you be able to craft a viable SEO strategy. With a good strategy, you can then create a detailed plan of action to achieve your goals.

For example, if you are in the business of leasing out vacation homes, you may choose your focus keyword as “vacation house.” However, by doing a quick keyword research, we find out that the keyword ‘vacation home’ is much better to use in terms of search volume data.

Keyword research on "vacation house"
Keyword research on "vacation home"

Both terms might mean the same thing, but your target audience is searching for something different, as you can see above. Search volume for ‘vacation home’ is 33,100, whereas search volume for ‘vacation house’ is 6,600.

You would have never guessed the difference if not for keyword research.

Keywords that you choose to use should be those that your target audience is searching. Only then will it make the effort of optimizing your page worthwhile.

But more importantly, two similar keywords often have different search volumes, trends, and competition levels. Choosing a more relevant, higher volume keyword could give you better results compared to its other semantic or related keywords.

How to do keyword research

There are many ways to do it, either manually or using a keyword research tool like Keyword Tool. But whichever way you choose, there are a number of important steps that you need to take.

From outlining your goals to executing your keyword plan, follow these detailed step-by-step guide to performing a proper and thorough keyword research:

Step 1: Study your niche

Before you figure out what are the best keywords to optimize your page, it’s best that you start by diving deep to learn more about your topic or niche. It can give you out-of-the-box ideas and help discover angles to your marketing and SEO strategy that you might not have thought about before.

Here are a few ideas on how to study your niche:

  • Talk with your existing customers and get to know them better. Find out the terms that they use when describing your brand, company, product or service.
  • Try to think from the perspective of your potential customers. If you were to share the brand’s offering to a friend, how will you talk about it?
  • Get involved in your topic or niche’s online communities, like forums and social media networks. Read the discussions and find out any pain points that are mentioned regarding your niche.

Step 2: Define your goals

A plan needs to always begin by defining the end goal. But before that, you should ask important and introspective questions like:

  • Who are you?
  • What is your brand about?
  • What makes you special?
  • What is your website about?
  • What promises do you make on your website?

Once you have effectively answered these questions, then you need to specify what is your brand’s mission. Do you want to increase the number of subscribers? Or do you have a sales target by a certain date?

It’s important to define your goal because it will provide a direction for your SEO strategy and plan. The search terms that you will eventually use should be aligned to your goals, ideally segmented into different content marketing funnels. Your goals will also inform the purpose of your SEO copywriting and content.

Write down your goals. Draw charts. Document them. These will provide the framework and direction needed for your top-level content and online marketing strategy.

define your keyword goals

Step 3: Make a list of relevant topics

Based on your the main category of your brand and the goals you aim to achieve, break it down to smaller topic buckets. Make a list of all the topics related to your brand that you want to rank on Google.

For example, if you’re an FMCG brand specializing in men’s personal care products, some topics that are related to your brand can be:

  • men’s facial wash
  • antiperspirant deodorant
  • male pattern baldness

They need to be topics that are important to your business and related to your buyer personas. Think about what type of topics will your target audience search for on Google? These topic buckets can then later be broken down to keywords that are related to those topics.

Step 4: Create a list of seed keywords

Now that you’ve broken down your main category to different buckets of sub-topics, you can start creating a list of seed keywords. These keywords need to be related to your various topics, and more importantly, are terms that your target audience might be searching on Google.

Seed keywords, or focus keywords, are important as they will become the foundation of your keyword research. They define your niche and identify your competitors.

If you’re wondering how to find the seed or focus keywords of your brand or product, it’s actually a lot easier than you think. All you need to do is describe your offering as simple as possible and brainstorm how other people might search for it on Google.

Step 5: Use good keyword research tools

You might assume, “shouldn’t keyword research begin with using a keyword tool?” There’s no right or wrong answer there, to be honest. But there is an obvious advantage to researching search terms from your brand or business perspective first and foremost.

It avoids you from getting too bogged down with keywords and helps you gain a wider perspective for your content and SEO strategy.

Once you have identified your goals, topics, and a list of seed keywords, it’s time to use keyword research tools to further refine your search terms.

One option is to use Google Keyword Planner. Unfortunately, Google only gives approximated search volumes. Instead, you can use a tool like Keyword Tool. It will give you a lot more details and help you narrow down on the right direction for your search terms. On top of that, it can also give additional ideas on related keywords.

All you need to do is type in the topic (or seed keyword) into the search box and it will give you a list of alternative keywords, including those that contain prepositions and questions:

preposition and question keywords

Step 6: Study the search intent

Plugging in high-volume keywords to bump up rankings for a page used to work pretty easily. But it’s not so simple anymore these days. Today, Google’s machine learning search algorithms compare search terms with user queries to learn about search intent.

Search intent is defined as the intent or reason behind why people search for a specific term. There are many driving factors behind people’s search habits, such as:

  • Why are they searching?
  • Are they searching because they have a question and want an answer to that question?
  • Are they searching for a specific website?
  • Are they searching because they want to buy something?

Try to put yourself in your target audience’s shoes. Why would they search for your topic? How will they key in the terms? Are they looking to buy something? Or are they looking for a service to solve a specific problem?

Once you have a good idea of the search intent behind potential readers or customers, you will be able to use it to fine-tune your keyword research. Getting a list of high-volume keywords related to your brand or topic is great. But finding keywords that directly match your target audience’s search intent is even better.

Step 7: Identify long tail keywords

Seed keywords are often shorter search terms that are closely related to your brand’s main topic or category. Long tail keywords, on the other hand, are more descriptive and often related to your brand’s smaller buckets of sub-topics. Matching your target audience’s search intent to long tail keywords is far easier compared to seed keywords.

For example, if your website published content about golf equipment reviews, using long tail keywords like “what is the best 9 iron golf club” will attract a more relevant audience compared to the seed keyword “golf club.”

Long tail keywords usually get fewer clicks, but since they are focused on a specific topic or product, they often get a higher conversion rate.

Step 8: Find out about your competitors

Doing keyword research on Google about your brand alone is not nearly enough. You also need to be aware of what your competitors are doing. The better you understand the content landscape of your industry, the better it will be for your SEO.

Understanding the competitiveness of different keywords will also allow you to identify search terms that might be too difficult to rank. But most importantly, you will be able to find keyword opportunity gaps. These opportunities occur when you find related keywords that are related to your brand or industry with low to medium competition level.

analyze competitor keyword tool

To find these keyword opportunities, you can perform a keyword search on your competitors. The paid version of Keyword Tool Pro has a competitor analysis function that does exactly that. Key in the URL of your competitor into the search box and the results will show all the keywords that the page ranks for.

Once you’ve gone through these steps, you should have enough insights to craft a good content and SEO strategy. You would also have gotten adequate data for SEO copywriting for your content.

Whether you’re running a content-focused blog, a small business, or a brand marketer, you will need keyword research to kick-start your content and marketing activities.

Doing keyword research can be a tedious and time-consuming task. But more often than not, it pays off handsomely in the long run.

Frequently Asked Questions

The post Keyword Research: The Complete Guide to Find the Best Keywords appeared first on Keyword Tool Blog: How to Find Great Keywords.

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