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| Keyword Research |
What is keyword research?
Keyword research is all about discovering exactly what it is that people are searching for, and then trying to rank highly (hopefully on the first page) for the search results of that term. This is really the foundation of your SEO strategy, so it's important to get keyword research right.
How To Find Your Best Keywords for SEO
Make a list of important, relevant topics based on what you know about your business. Think about the topics you want to rank for in terms of generic buckets. You'll come up with about 5-10 topic buckets you think are important to your business, and then you'll use those topic buckets to help come up with some specific keywords later in the process.
To do proper research, we need to be very clear on what our product is and we need to get quite specific so that we aren't trying to compete with too many other websites. It's generally better to rank highly for a search term that gets less searches than to rank on page 10 for a highly popular term - within reason, of course. There's no point ranking highly for something that only gets five searches a month.
How to Do Keyword Research?
Google Keyword Planner
Google provides a free tool that will help us with much of our keyword research. Use the Google AdWords Keyword Planner to find new and related keywords, but ignore the search volume data! The search volume data in the planner is really only useful for keywords that you're actually spending money to advertise on. Otherwise, these volumes are not reliable. While not really helpful to decide which keyword is most used by your potential audience, Google AdWords Keyword Planner makes a useful tool in coming up with ideas for potential keywords!
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| Google Keyword Planner |
Other Keyword Research Tools
Keyword Planner isn't the only keyword research tool you can use. Here are a few other common tools:
1.) WordStream's Keyword Tool (free)
Of course I could never forget WordStream's keyword tool for both SEO and PPC keyword research.The WordStream keyword tool allows you to target certain niches (groups of related keywords), gives you further suggestions, and also allows you to group them based off of a common theme for easy ad group launches.
2.) Moz Bar
Moz Bar is a free tool is a Firefox or Chrome browser extension that performs a ton of analysis on the pages you visit. It's a great tool for checking out competitors' websites in order to get a better idea of what you're up against when you try and outrank them in the SERP (search engine result page).Moz Keyword Difficulty Analysis
Moz's paid Keyword Difficulty and SERP Analysis Tool uses all of the backlink and search data they have to provide you with a simple score that aims to define the difficulty of ranking for a particular keyword with your domain. It's probably the easiest and fastest way to do serious initial keyword research, but it does come at a price. If your time is valuable, though, this might be an option to look into.
3.) Soovle (free)
If you have multiple channels you wish to do keyword research for and want to sound like an idiot explaining the pronunciation of this tool to your watercooler buddies, then Soovle is a perfect fit.Soovle allows you to explore the most typed in keywords on multiple search engines based on the keyword root you give it. It even includes Amazon and eBay.
Not only is it a great keyword research tool to use, but it's also a great brainstormer as you can slowly start typing in your ideas and allow it to auto-generate its own ideas.
4.) Ubersuggest (free)
Meet the keyword research tool on steroids, Ubersuggest.Ubersuggest takes any keyword you give it and immediately gives you an almost unlimited list of alphabetized and numerical keyword variations of your original keyword.
5.) Competitor Source Code (free)
This might not be the best and most fruitful keyword research tool but it allows you to see what meta keywords your competitors could be using to try to rank organically.Since I use Google Chrome as my browser, it's super simple to right-click on a site and select "View Page Source."
Conclusion
By understanding and applying the basics of keyword research, you can make a steady and realistic climb up the search rankings. This will enable you to drive traffic to your website and attract new customers even while you're not working.
