Keyword research should be the basis of any online marketing campaign.
The simple goal of keyword research is to find out what your target audience is searching and what it will take to actually rank for those keywords.
Without knowing what keywords you should be targeting, how will you effectively optimize your website, target phrases for link building, or know what content to develop for your audience?
This post is a three-part series that will cover everything you need to know about keyword research.
In this first section, we’ll go through setting up a spreadsheet for your keyword research and discover the best keywords for both your main website’s search engine optimization and topics for content development.
In the next section, we’ll discuss what data will help you choose the best keywords to target.
The final section will be a compilation of the top posts on keyword research.
Spreadsheet Set Up
The first thing you will want to do is set up a spreadsheet to record your data within.
I’ve set up a basic spreadsheet that you can access. This document has columns for data using all tools mentioned in the first two parts of this blog post.
You can add or delete columns as you wish in order to match your keyword research needs. The columns included are as follows.
- Keyword
- GAKT – Competition (Google AdWords Keyword Planner)
- GAKT – Global Monthly Searches (Google AdWords Keyword Planner)
- GAKT – Local Monthly Searches (Google AdWords Keyword Planner)
- GAKT – Approximate CPC (Google AdWords Keyword Planner)
- SEOmoz KA – Difficulty (Moz Keyword Explorer)
- SEOmoz KA – Competitor 1 (Moz Keyword Explorer)
- SEOmoz KA – Competitor 1 DA (Moz Keyword Explorer)
- SEOmoz KA – Competitor 1 RDLRD (Moz Keyword Explorer)
- SEOmoz KA – Competitor 2 (Moz Keyword Explorer)
- SEOmoz KA – Competitor 2 DA (Moz Keyword Explorer)
- SEOmoz KA – Competitor 2 RDLRD (Moz Keyword Explorer)
- SEOmoz KA – Competitor 3 (Moz Keyword Explorer)
- SEOmoz KA – Competitor 3 DA (Moz Keyword Explorer)
- SEOmoz KA – Competitor 3 RDLRD (Moz Keyword Explorer)
In this section, we’ll cover filling up the columns with keyword and Google AdWords Keyword Tool data.
In the following section, we’ll look at how to narrow down those keywords using the Moz Keyword Analysis tool (or some alternative methods if you are not a Pro member).
Saving the Google Docs Version
If you are signed into your Google account, simply use the File > Save option to save the spreadsheet to your documents and start filling it in with your information.
Downloading Excel and Open Office Versions
If you don’t have Google Docs, or would prefer to save it on your local machine, go to the Google Docs version and use the File > Download As to save it as your desired file type. I’d suggest Excel for best possible functionality.
Section I: Keyword Discovery
The first phase of keyword research involves coming up with new keyword ideas.
Sometimes this is the most difficult part of the process as many people unfamiliar with keyword competition will select very broad words to target such as pizza, hotel, or Los Angeles.
Others will pick obscure phrases that no one will likely search such as SEO/Link Building/Social Media (yes, I’ve seen people trying to similarly over-punctuated phrases).
So the first thing you will need to do is find suitable, related phrases for their business.
You can always start with some simple brainstorming. Look at what the main focuses are on the website and jotting down keywords.
I would suggest doing so in Microsoft Excel or another spreadsheet application.
Then, whenever you’re ready to expand on those ideas, continue to some great keyword tools.
Keyword Discovery Tools
The following are a great collection of free and premium tools that will help you discover new keywords related to your website or business.
Ubersuggest
The free tool from Neil Patel Digital, Ubersuggest, is great for helping you discover new keywords.
To get started, simply enter the keyword or phrase in the tool.
Let’s say we’re researching Social Media Marketing.
Input the phrase and click Look Up.
You’ll get a breakdown of the keyword’s volume, cost per click, and the degree of competition you’ll be facing to rank this keyword.
You’ll also be able to scroll down and see different variations of your keyword phrase.
This gives you a wider view of what you can strive to rank for.
For low budgets, you may want to optimize a low competition, low cost per click option that still gets good results.
Or, you can pick multiple and A/B test them for the best results.
However you use it, this is a great tool to start with.
Google Search Suggestions
Once you have some basic ideas, you can expand upon them by using the freely available suggested search.
Simply visit Google.com and start typing in a keyword in the search box. You will then see ten phrases related to your keyword pop up below as more targeted, suggested searches.
You can continue typing to get more detailed suggestions. As you can see, this will help you with long-tail and, in some cases, even local keyword phrases.
Be sure if you are working with a local client that you change your Google settings to reflect results from their location as Google will assume you are looking for your location.
This is when it is important to be signed out of your Google account for non-personalized recommendations.
To change your location for local keyword suggestions, go to your search settings and add a city/state as your default location.
Just be sure to change it back before doing some local searches for your own personal needs.
Alternative Search Suggestions
Looking for alternative suggested search boxes?
The following search engines have similar suggested search options that appear below the search box when you start typing in keywords.
Depending on your keyword, each search engine will offer different suggestions.
Most people stick with Google as that is the main search engine to target, but it still doesn’t hurt to get additional keyword ideas from elsewhere.
Google AdWords Keyword Tool
The next tool up is the commonly referenced Google AdWords Keyword Planner.
If you have a Google account and, better yet, an AdWords account, I would suggest signing in to those once you arrive on the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to get better results.
To give you an idea, I searched for social media when I was not logged into my account and received 100 keyword ideas.
I searched for it again when logged in and received more than 600.
My suggestion is if you are looking for keywords just for your static website and not interested in the cost per click pricing (CPC), go with the results without logging into Google AdWords.
If you are interested in the CPC pricing and also getting keyword ideas to help with content development, go with the results while logged into Google AdWords.
Here is what each of the columns displayed in the Google AdWords Keyword Tool will tell you about each of the keyword ideas displayed.
- Competition – “The Competition column gives you a sense of how many advertisers are bidding for a particular keyword. This data can help you determine how competitive the ad placement is.”
- Global Monthly Searches – “The approximate 12-month average of user queries for the keyword on Google search.”
- Local Monthly Searches – “If you specified a country or language for your search, this is the approximate 12-month average number of user queries for the keyword for those countries and languages.”
- Approximate CPC – “This is the approximate cost-per-click you might pay if you were to bid on the keyword. The CPC is averaged over all the ad positions.”
You can learn more about the search traffic statistics shown in this tool in Google AdWords Help.
If you want a simple method to see a broader or narrower range of keywords, you can select this option in the filters on the left side of your screen.
You can also select specific Match Types by clicking the “Modify search” tab and scrolling down to the “Plan your budget and get forecasts” option.
Inputting your search term with the added punctuation will change the traffic volume for Global and Local Monthly Searches based on the approximation of traffic that a keyword gets on Google.
- Broad – The sum of the search volumes for the keyword idea, related grammatical forms, synonyms and related words. If you were doing PPC and targeted the broad match for social media, ads would show with any searches including social or media. Organic results would include the same.
- [Exact] The search volume for that keyword idea. If you were doing PPC and targeted the exact match for social media, ads would only show if someone typed in social media but not any other variation of that phrase.
- “Phrase” – The sum of the search volumes for all terms that include that whole phrase. If you were doing PPC and targeted the phrase match for pizza dough, ads would show for anyone who typed in social media, with or without additional keywords such as social media marketing or about social media. Organic results would include only results including the exact phrase social media.
You can learn more about match types (and some additional ones not on this list) in AdWords Help.
You can also see the difference in data based on the three match types using the phrase social media in order of broad, “phrase,” and [exact].
And if you were to use these match types in a search, you would get 419 million results for a broad match search for social media and only 304 million results for a phrase match search for “social media.”
Going back to the generic term social media, you might want to remove certain words from the keyword ideas.
For example, you may not want to target anything about social media jobs, so you could add the word job under the Negative Keywords tab on the left side of the screen.
Now, you’ll need to export your data.
To do so, simply use the Download button under the Review Plan tab and export to your preferred format.
You can then copy the data from the exported spreadsheet to your keyword research spreadsheet.
You can also get this data for the keyword ideas you generated using SEMrush and suggested search by copying and pasting those keywords into the Word or phrase box and checking the box to only show ideas closely related to my search terms.
Then export the data for those keywords and phrases by checking the boxes next to them under the Search Terms section.
At this point, you probably have a lot of great keyword ideas.
In the next section, I will cover how to use the Moz Keyword Analysis Tool (or an alternative method to get the same information if you are not a Pro member) to get additional data and then narrow down your keywords to the ones that you should most likely focus upon for your online marketing strategy.
Section II – Analyzing and Choosing the Best Keywords
Now that you have a base spreadsheet to use for keyword data entry, let’s look at what’s next.
I want to show you some ways to get even more data about each keyword and further narrow down your results.
Please note that this data will take a bit of time to compile, so you might want to run through the keyword list and remove any obvious ones that you don’t want.
I usually go with no more than 100 keywords for this part of the process.
Keyword Analysis with Moz
If you have a Pro membership with Moz (you can always get a 30-day free trial if you have just one keyword research project to do), then you have access to a very nice little tool called Keyword Difficulty & SERP Analysis.
This tool will show you the percentage of difficulty for each keyword, giving you an idea of how hard it will be to rank highly for it.
You will also see the top ten sites ranked for each keyword, each listed with its domain authority and the number of root domains linking to it.
The latter is really the information that will help you decide which keywords to target.
You can put in five words at a time, and you can now pick between keyword, root domain, subdomain, or page.
Using our keyword phrase “social media management,” you can see the results of the difficulty assessment, search volume, organic click-through rates, and the balance of ranking ease and end results (Priority).
While this information is helpful, it’s not really anything we don’t already know. We’ve already decided we like this keyword phrase.
If anything, this is just a double-check that confirms the basics you found in the AdWords Keyword Tool.
Below this information, you’ll find more keyword suggestions and a SERP analysis of the keywor
source http://kissmetrics.wpengine.com/keyword-research/
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