Keyword Research
Keyword research is a practice search engine optimization (SEO)
professionals use to find and research search terms that users enter into
search engines when looking for products, services or general
information.
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| What is Keyword Research? |
Search engine optimization professionals first
research keywords and then align web pages with these keywords to
achieve better rankings in search engines. Once they find a niche keyword, they
expand on it to find similar keywords. Keyword suggestion tools usually aid the
process, like the Google Ads Keyword Planner, which offers a thesaurus and
alternative keyword suggestions. Google's first-party data also aids this
research through the likes of Google autocomplete or People Also Ask.
Importance of research
Keyword research
The objective of keyword research is to generate, with good precision and recall, a large number of terms that are highly relevant yet non-obvious to the given input keyword. The process of keyword research involves brainstorming and the use of keyword research tools. To achieve the best SEO results, it is important to optimize a website's content as well as backlinks for the most relevant keywords. It is good practice to search for related keywords that have low competition and still a high number of searches.
This makes it easier to achieve a higher rank in search
engines which usually results in higher web traffic. The downside of
this practice is that the website is optimized for alternative keywords instead
of the main keyword; the main keywords might be very difficult to rank for due
to high competition. There are three essential concepts to consider when
conducting keyword research.
Good keywords are closely related to the subject
of the website. Most search engines use an internal quality system to check
website relevance related to possible keywords, a non-relevant keyword is
unlikely to rank well for a website.
Good keywords that are highly competitive are
less likely to rank in the top. Keywords that have no monthly searches are
believed to generate little to no traffic and therefore of little value for
SEO. Keyword stuffing in a web page should be avoided.
Types of keywords
Keywords are divided into two primary groups
based on search volume.
- Short-Tail Keywords: Short-Tail Keywords are the most commonly searched 20% of keywords. These are typically extremely competitive.
- long-Tail Keywords: Long-Tail Keywords consist of the other 80% of search traffic. They are more likely to consist of phrases and typically have far fewer average searches per month.
Research examples
A very popular and highly competitive keyword on
the Google search engine is "making money." It has
4,700,000,000 search results, meaning that billions of websites are relevant or
competing for that keyword. Keyword research starts with finding all possible
word combinations that are relevant to the "making money"
keyword.
For example, the keyword "acquiring
money" has significantly fewer search results, only 116,000,000, but it
has the same meaning as "making money." Another way is to be more
specific about a keyword by adding additional filters. For example, the keyword
"making money online from home in Canada" is less competitive on a
global scale and therefore easier to rank for.
Furthermore, keywords also have various
intents that can affect whether the marketer would want to target that
keyword. Multiple tools are available (both free and commercial) to find
keywords and analyze them.
Keyword research tools
Google Ads Keyword Planner
Google offers free tools to do some basic
keyword analysis. All the results are based on the data of the Google
search engine.
Google recently
released an update to the Google keyword planner and changes some of its
policies by which the first campaign must be set in order to get the keyword
planner back. This is a type of Google Ads account that is used by agencies and
consultants to manage many different advertising accounts.
Features of Google Ads Keyword Planner:
- Get search volume estimates for the keyword.
- Generate new keywords by combining different keyword lists.
- Create new keyword variations based on a primary keyword.
- Provides Keywords used for websites – useful for competitive analysis.
- Hides long-tail keywords data as the tool is made for Google Ads and not for SEO purposes.
- Keywords generated by the device may not produce good results as the tool is targeted toward advertisers and not SEO.
- The search volume displayed received a change in 2016, Google started limiting the output options to advertisers (or accounts) with lower or no monthly spending.
Google Suggest
Google has introduced Google
Suggest in 2012. Google Suggest is typically used as a live feature while
a user is typing a search phrase into the browser or Google website. Google
Suggest uses the organic search input of billions of users and tries to
"guess" that way what a user might be searching for even before he
completed entering the query or all the words of a keyword phrase.
| What is Keyword Research? |
This makes Google Suggest a relevant source for
keyword research, it contains a large number of organic keywords very closely
related to a full or partial keyword and can be used to find additional most
searched appending keywords that make the whole keyword less competitive.
Google Suggest can be researched through the Google Search website or
through a compatible browser for a small number of keywords but also on large
scale using free scraper tools.
Bing Ads Keyword Planner
The Bing Ads Keyword
Planner provides keyword and ad group suggestions and shows average
monthly search volume trends, relative competition, and suggested bids.
Features of Bing Keyword Planner:
- Get search volume data and trends.
- Get performance and cost estimates.
- Multiply keyword lists to get new keywords.
Limitations
of Bing Ads Keyword Planner:
- Bing holds only 20 percent of the U.S. search engine market share, the data provided may not be reliable at least not for optimizing websites for Google search engines.
- Similar to Google Ads Keyword Planner, data furnished by the tool is for helping advertisers and not publishers.
