If you are into SEO, you must know that keyword research is the most crucial step in implementing SEO. If you find this step challenging, this is the right place. Check out this ultimate keyword research guide for beginners to enhance your SEO strategy.
Keyword research is said to be the foundation of search engine optimization, and without performing this step, you can’t expect to create sustainable visibility for your website.
SEO is a much wider disciplined concept than it was in the early days of the industry and has been divided into many verticals.
But, actually, SEO is about finding online opportunities and bringing relevant traffic to a website through visibility in search engines. And keyword research is at the heart of the SEO strategy.
This keyword research guide for beginners will help you know what keyword research is, why it is important and how you can start creating a successful SEO strategy.
What Is Keyword Research?
Keyword research refers to the process of finding words, phrases, and queries that users are searching for, which means searching for a keyword with search volume. The purpose of performing this step in SEO is to choose keywords that have the potential to generate conversions. Selecting the correct keywords for your SEO project’s success is extremely important.
Keyword research also includes connecting the relevance of keywords to a website and its individual pages so that it gets easier for the users to find the best page to answer their query, known as search intent.
Additionally, the process involves categorizing search queries into user journey stages and different search categories such as informational, navigational, and transactional.
Types Of Keywords
Keywords are generally classified into three types based on the search intent:
- Informational Queries: The main purpose of such queries is to find information about a product or service.
- Navigational Queries: These queries are the ones in which a user is looking for information about a specific brand or website.
- Transactional Queries: The user intends to buy the product or service in such queries.
Keywords Based on Length
If we differentiate keywords based on length, there are again three types that are mentioned below:
| SHORT TAIL | MEDIUM TAIL | LONG TAIL |
| Generic Terms | Specific Terms + Localised Terms | More Specific Queries |
| High Volume | Medium Volume | Low Volumes |
| High Competition | Medium Competition | Low Competition |
| High Conversions |
In general, when beginning the work on new projects, it is recommended to start with long tail keywords and then target the short tail keywords depending on the competition level.
Know Why Keyword Research Is Important For SEO
A search engine is basically an informational retrieval system built around the queries that a user asks to find an answer or relevant information to their search query.
The primary focus of Google is to offer a user the best answer to their query and the best website page in order to satisfy the user. Understanding this fact about search engines underlines SEO.
And if we talk about the importance of keyword research, it is the foundation of how a business can connect with its potential customers and audience. If you understand this concept, it will help you to understand a good SEO strategy.
A business strategy begins with understanding its audience and its requirements:
- What do they need?
- What do they want?
- What keeps them awake at night?
- What are the possible solutions to their problems?
Keyword research is a way to understand your audience by first considering their requirements and then the keywords, queries, or phrases they use to find solutions.
And this process is extremely important for SEO as it can let you know where the opportunities are by knowing what your audience is looking for.
Additionally, it can help you to find new areas of business and to prioritize where to focus resources and attention.
Furthermore, the keyword research process will help you to calculate where it is possible to expect a return on investment to justify your efforts:
- Can a keyword deliver relevant traffic that has the possibility of conversion to an end goal?
- What is an estimation of that traffic, and how much is each visitor worth to your business?
Generally, you can consider keyword research as the ultimate business research tool.
Keyword Research Basics – Ultimate Keyword Research Guide For Beginners
Before we move on to the step-by-step keyword research guide for beginners, let us first understand the basics of keyword research.
Monthly Search Volume
Monthly search volume is one of the most effective measures of keyword value. It is a useful metric to be considered as a starting point if anyone is actually searching for that keyword, but it should not be the only measure of value.
Just because a keyword has a high volume doesn’t mean it is appropriate for ranking.
High-volume keywords offer browsing traffic at the top of the funnel. These kinds of keywords are useful for brand awareness, but you can’t expect direct conversion from such keywords.
Low-volume keywords can be much more valuable to your business because they can deliver users who are ready to buy a product.
User Intent
User intent refers to the intention of the search by the user – what type of result they want to see when they search for a query.
While you study keyword research, you will hear user intent talked about a lot because it is also one of the most important factors in the process.
This concept is considered important in two ways; firstly, your main goal in creating content and pages on a website is to provide users with the information they want to know.
There is no point in creating a page about something you care about – your users only care about their requirements and problems.
You can have the best page in the world about the history of waffles, but if users are searching for the recipe of waffles, then your link will not be click-worthy for them.
Secondly, while delivering results on SERP, Google considers relevance. So, the more your page fits user intent, the better rankings it can achieve.
Relevancy
When Google considers which pages it will display in search results, the algorithm will go through other pages that users click on for the same query.
If the query is such as cake, Google has to consider if the searcher wants to know what a cake is, the recipe of the cake, how to make a cake, or wants to buy a cake.
And when you look at the SERP, you get a nice idea of user intent based on other results.
Reviewing the SERP of a query should be considered a part of the keyword research process for every keyword you want to consider.
User intent and keyword relevance are almost the same things. It is all about knowing what the user actually means when they search. This is more relevant for head keywords and less for long-tail keywords and queries.
Long-Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords refer to such keywords that are more specific and usually longer than more commonly used keywords.
The value of long-tail keywords is that they are specific and highly focused terms that convert well, as with these keywords, users are looking for something very particular.
For example, [digital marketing] is a head term with high volume, and [digital marketing courses in Delhi] is a long-tail keyword with comparatively fewer searches but can offer a high conversion rate.
Including long-tail keywords in a keyword research strategy is useful because they are much easier to rank for and achievable for a new website. The volumes of many long-tail keywords collectively add up to considerable targeted traffic.
This strategy is much more stable and better than focusing on one high-volume difficult keyword.
Step-by-Step Keyword Research Guide For Beginners
In this section of the ultimate keyword research guide for beginners, we will understand the step-by-step process of keyword research that should be followed. Have a look.
Step 1: Business Analysis and Product Categorisation
The first step in the process of a keyword research guide for beginners includes the analysis of client business, target audience, target location, and other key metrics. It will help you to target the campaign with the best keywords.
Few Important Points to Know About Business
Before starting with the keyword research process, you must consider the following points about the process.
- Niche category of the business
- You must perform a site audit to know if the client already has the website.
- The target audience of the website
- Target location where the client wants to rank
- To know if the client has the content for the website or if you should work on it.
- The goal of the campaign
- Do the product categorization
Product Categorisation
It is one of the most essential steps in the process of keyword research as it will help you to divide each category, subcategory, and product for the entire business. And the advantage this approach offers you is you can target keyword research for each product individually without duplicating the keywords on multiple pages.
Using this technique, you can avoid keyword cannibalization and focus on different keywords for each page.
Step 2: Brainstorming Technique
As in the former step, you have divided the products into different categories, and now it’s time to focus on a specific product to brainstorm potential target keywords. Here, you can generate a few ideas based on the context and intent of the user search.
For example, if your product is Samsung S22 Ultra, you can go for the following ideas:
- Samsung S22 Ultra features
- Samsung S22 Ultra specifications
- Samsung S22 Ultra reviews
- Samsung S22 Ultra price in India
- Samsung S22 Ultra price
- buy Samsung S22 Ultra
- buy Samsung S22 Ultra online
You don’t know the keywords’ potential, volume, and other details until now. In the next step, you will know how to dig deeper to find more relevant and volume keyword information. Above are a few sample keywords your target audience may use while searching for the product.
Step 3: Keyword Research Tools
This step of the keyword research guide for beginners includes detailed research and finding the average volume and demand of the keywords. To find the best keywords, it is recommended to use Google Keyword Planner Tool for research.
- Use the option “Find new keywords and get search volume data”> Search for new keywords.
- Enter your target keyword.
- Analyze the keyword based on trends, intent, location, and volume.
- Use filters to remove irrelevant queries.
Apart from Google Keyword Planner Tool, you may use the following tools to do the research:
- Google Trends
- Answer the Public
- SEMRush
- AHREF
- Ubersuggest
- Keyword.io
- WordTracker
- and many more
Step 4: Analyse the Competition for Keywords
In this step of the keyword research guide for beginners, the goal is to understand the competition level of keywords and who the competitors are, along with their strengths and weaknesses. By this, you will be able to know the keyword difficulty by analyzing certain factors such as PR, DA, PA, Backlinks, Trust, Content Quality, etc., to understand the keyword competition.
Step 5: Final Selection of the Keywords
Based on the results you received in Step 4, you will be able to pick the keyword with less competition and good volume. The best way you can start is by targeting the keywords which are specific rather than generic. Along with this, choosing long-tail keywords can offer a faster and easier ranking of the keywords.
Conclusion
With the help of this ultimate keyword research guide for beginners, you now understand how to get started with keyword research and start experimenting with a few different niches and websites. The best way to learn is by doing the work yourself.
We hope that the article is helpful for you in understanding the keyword research process. If you have any queries or reviews about the article, feel free to leave a comment below.
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