How To Find Keywords For SEO: A Guide For Beginners
Google’s constant algorithm updates keep us on our toes, but for inbound marketers who want to optimise their websites for search, one thing has stayed pretty constant: keyword research or finding the right intent keywords.
SEO is built around keywords. No matter how hard you try, you won’t get any traffic from Google if no one is looking for what you’re writing about.
Finding the right keywords for SEO helps with two things. It makes it easier for the right people to find you and helps your posts and pages rank higher in search engines. If you do it right, you won’t need to pay for pay-per-click (PPC) ads.
If you’re new to SEO, you might be wondering why is finding the right keywords for SEO so important?
Why is finding the right keywords for SEO important?
If you make a page about a topic that no one is looking for, Google won’t send anyone to that page (or other search engines). This is a mistake that many website owners make, and according to ahrefs, it’s one reason why 90.63% of pages on the internet don’t get any traffic from Google.
Finding the right SEO keywords can help you make sure that people want to search for what you want to write about.
Before we talk about how to find the right keywords for SEO, let’s talk about what keywords are and their basics.
What is keyword intent?
When I talked earlier about the “right intent keyword” what I meant was finding the right keyword which your audience is looking for. Because you know everything there is to know about your business, you might not think like a customer. The words and phrases you use to find your products or services online might not be the same ones that shoppers use.
You might think that your keywords will bring customers straight to your website, but people who search for those terms might be looking for something else or be in a different stage of the buying process than your keywords suggest.
There are four main kinds of search intent.
- Informative (your prospects want to learn something)
People who want to learn more will ask questions like “Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How?” For example, “what are the signs of fever,” “best recipe for pot chicken pie,” or “history of India” could all be used to find information.
- Navigational (they are looking for a specific company or website)
Most navigational searches ask for the name of the business or important information about it. For instance, “Log in to HSBC Bank” or “Royal fitness timings.ā
- Doing business or transactional (they are comparing specific products and are almost ready to purchase)
Words like “reviews,” “compare,” “best,” “vs.,” and “top 10” can be used to start a transactional search. These shoppers are almost ready to buy, so they are looking at their options to find the best product or service for them.
- Commercial (they are prepared to buy now)
People who are ready to buy do commercial searches. They include brand names, specific products (“Android phone,” “Samsung Laptop”), and product categories (“floral dresses,” “cast iron pans”) etc
Understanding keyword types and terms
You should know a few basic terms to get the most out of your keyword research.
Focus keyword
A focus keyword or phrase tells people exactly what your blog post or page is about. It’s the most important word or phrase you want Google to find the page for. If your post is long, you may have several target keywords, but your main keyword will be in the title, URL, meta description, and text.
Ex: If I’m writing a blog post about leather boots for winter, “leather boots” would be my focus keyword.
Long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords have three words or more. They are specific phrases that shoppers are more likely to use when they are further along in the buying cycle or when they are using voice search. When there is a lot of competition in your market, a long-tail keyword strategy can help you stand out. You can stand out from the crowd by going after long-tail keywords instead of short, popular phrases.
Ex: “Leather boots to wear in the winter” can be a long-tail keyword. If we are adding to the previous example.
Search volume
Search volume is the average number of times a keyword or phrase is looked up each month. You can find out how often a keyword is searched for all over the world or just in a certain city, county, state, or country.
More people might find you and your website if there are more searches for them.
Competition
One important goal of keyword research is to get your target phrases to show up in Google and other search engines. Competition shows you how hard it is to do something.
Your best keyword is one that gets a lot of searches in your target market but doesn’t have a lot of competition. If you go after keywords that have too much competition, you’re going to have a hard time ranking for them.
Imagine you work in a field where there is a lot of competition for keywords. In this case, it would be better to focus on long-tail keywords with fewer searches and less competition than to try to rank for keyword phrases with a lot of competition.
Now that we know these basic terms, let’s talk about how to find the right SEO keywords.
Related Topics:
How to look for the right keywords for SEO?
Based on what you know about your business, make a list of important, relevant topics.
In this first step, you should make a tracker with general “buckets” for your keywords. These might be like groups of products. If you blog often, you may already have some topics that you write about often.
Keep this list simple and short, with no more than 5 to 10 topics. You might find it helpful to put yourself in the shoes of a buyer looking for your product or service.
Let’s take an individual who is trying to start a new blog to teach golf. The most relevant keyword buckets would be
- golf for beginners
- golf tips
- golf swing
- golf clubs
Fill in the keywords in those buckets.
Now that you know what topics you want to focus on, you need to find some keywords that fit into those topics. You think it’s important to rank for these keyword phrases in the SERPs (search engine results pages) because your target customers are probably searching for those exact terms.
There are various tools that can help here, but if you are looking for an accurate tool Iād recommend ahrefs.
Steps 1: Visit Ahrefs and create an account.
Step 2: Log in to your account.
Once you log in, you’ll be taken to the main page of Keywords Explorer, which has a field where you can type your seed keywords, just like Google’s Keyword Planner tool. Click on the “Search” button.
Step 3: Find search suggestions
Step 4: Review and download a list of keywords.
This list should give you plenty of keyword ideas to look into and consider.
Find and add more right-related keywords for SEO From The SERP
- If you type a keyword phrase into Google and scroll down the page, you’ll see a list of related search phrases in bold at the bottom.
- Click on one of the related searches and see what Google suggests at the bottom of the second page if you want to learn more.
- AnswerThePublic lets you do up to three free searches per day. It gives you a chart of the words and phrases that people are looking for that are related to your topic.
- You can also use Google’s Keyword Planner to type in your keyword phrase.
Learn how the user’s intent affects keyword research and then analyze the results accordingly.
The intent is now one of the most important factors in how well you rank on Google and other search engines. To find out what a user means by a keyword, you can just type it into a search engine and see what comes up. Make sure that the type of content Google has is similar to what you want to write about.
Check out where these keywords rank for your competitors.
You don’t have to do something just because your competitor does it. Keywords can be the same. Just because a keyword is important to your competitor it doesn’t mean it’s important to you, too. But knowing what keywords your competitors are trying to rank for is a great way to help you take a second look at your list of keywords.
Summing things up
Keywords help search engines put your content in the right category and help customers find you. But they are only one part of an SEO strategy that works.
For your blog posts and pages to rank well, you need to build high-quality content around your keyword phrases. Each post should be better than the last. Give a better answer with more value and make it easier to read.
Make sure to look at these keywords again every few months. Once every three months is a good rule of thumb, but some businesses like to do it even more often. As you gain more authority in the SERPs, you’ll find that you can add more and more keywords to your lists to work on while you maintain your current presence and grow in new areas.