Keyword research (Keyword analysis)
What is keyword research or keyword analysis?
Keyword research is the process of discovering the keywords or search terms that are relevant to our company and through which we want potential customers to find us.
Therefore, these are the terms we want to rank for: either organically in the SERPs (SEO positioning) or through paid campaigns (SEM positioning).
The keywords or search terms chosen after conducting keyword research will form the foundation of our SEO strategy. For this reason, it must be executed accurately and is vital for the health of our business.
Many sources talk about keyword research, keyword search, or keyword analysis; however, they all refer to the same concept.
1. How to do keyword research?
To conduct effective keyword research, you need to take several steps to identify keywords that accurately reflect your offerings and align with your goals. To achieve this, you should follow these steps:
- Identify the right terms. The first step is to decide whether we want to target short-tail or long-tail keywords. The former attract a higher search volume, while the latter have less volume but are easier to rank for.
- Know your buyer persona in detail. Ultimately, keyword research aims to study the keywords needed to reach our buyer personas. Therefore, try to imagine the types of searches they might perform on Google and use that as your starting point.
- Look for ideas in multiple places. To generate a list of terms related to your company or product that also match your chosen terms, you should share ideas with your team and conduct a brainstorming session.
- Analyze the competition. It is vital to use tools that show us which keywords a specific domain ranks for, giving us insight into our competitors’ strategies. This helps you identify which ones are worth targeting and which ones to avoid, saving your efforts for better opportunities.
- Analyze searches (local and trends). Once again, using keyword research tools, try to find viable keywords to rank for locally and spot trends to target for future positioning. You will undoubtedly uncover unexpected data that will be highly useful to you.
2. Keyword research tools
There are highly popular paid SEO tools that include keyword research features, as well as free resources that allow you to conduct keyword research without needing advanced knowledge.
Here is a selection of tools and services to carry out your keyword research according to your needs:
- Ahrefs. This is one of the most popular platforms for finding keywords, featuring a keyword explorer powered by its own database. It also lets you choose from 9 search engines and displays a score from 1 to 100 based on keyword ranking difficulty.
- Google Autocomplete and related searches. While not a tool in itself, Google’s search engine autocomplete feature provides many clues about similar searches already performed by users. The same applies to the related searches section found at the bottom of every SERP.
- Google Keyword Planner. Within Google Ads, you have an excellent keyword research tool that pulls data directly from its search engine. It also provides a very interesting metric: the estimated cost per click in Google Ads.
- Keyword Tool. This is one of the best in the market, extracting keywords based on the autocomplete functions of various search engines. This allows you to discover the most popular variations, search volumes, trends, and more.
- Semrush. This SEO and content marketing management tool includes a dedicated section for finding and researching keywords: the Keyword Magic Tool. It displays trends, keyword variations, volumes, etc.)
- Soovle. A free application to start finding keywords and term variations, with support for running queries across different search engines. While not the most comprehensive, it is cost-free and does its job well.
- Ubersuggest. It offers a user-friendly interface and allows for keyword research while taking into account the languages and countries where keyword behavior needs to be analyzed.