Google doesn't know you, nor does it hate you! If what you write doesn't rank on the first page of search engines, it means you're doing something wrong.
Rest for 10 seconds and ask yourself:
How do search engines rank web pages? Isn't it possible to automatically determine which page should appear on the first page of a search engine with just a few lines of code?
Well, search engines look for signals to rank pages, and you and I can easily tweak our articles and send all those signals to search engines and enjoy all that traffic.
To get to this point, you need to start here, so let's get started:
Keyword research is a subject that every blogger should learn from day one. Probably, by now, you have read every blogging or SEO blog and I am sure Google Keyword Planner (formerly Keyword Tool) and “Keyword Research” are not new terms to you. But if not, you are missing out on the basics of SEO for any blogger.
Blogging has evolved from simply high-quality content to SEO optimized social content . Writing high-quality content is a must, but at the same time, it is also good to have a properly optimized article to rank well in search engines. This is where on-page SEO comes into play.
On-page SEO starts with choosing the right keyword for your post, and that keyword should be one that has search volume. That means people are searching for that particular keyword.
You should ask yourself a question: Why can't I attract enough traffic from search engines despite writing high-quality content? Well, I believe Google won't have anything against you unless you are doing black hat SEO .
The reason is, the topic you write about is not the one that people are searching for. Or, even if the topic you write about is a popular topic, it is difficult for search engine bots to understand your content. I have already covered how to write SEO optimized articles in WordPress, and today you will learn how to research keywords using the Keyword Planner tool.
First, if you're not sure why you should do a keyword search before writing a blog post, you should read my post on the importance of keywords in SEO .
What is Keyword Research?
Let's first understand the basics. In layman's terms, keyword research is the process of identifying keywords that have a high monthly search volume.
Discover keywords that people are searching for that are relevant to your business.
For example, keywords: "KeywordSpy", "Website SEO optimization tips", etc. The purpose of conducting research is to find keywords that can bring the most traffic and have less competition. I will discuss the competition part later in this article.
For example: When you do an exact match search: “WordPress SEO plugins”, “Best WordPress SEO plugins” will all give a completely different picture in terms of traffic.
By doing a complete keyword search, you will be able to find keywords to drive targeted traffic, more revenue, and more niche traffic. Also, when you plan on targeting a niche market (like "weed killer"), doing a keyword search will help you find many new keywords that you might have missed.
You can also analyze your competitor's websites and find the keywords they rank for. Performing a thorough keyword research based on data can drive huge traffic to your website.
In the end, sales only happen when you get targeted traffic. Isn't it?
What is Google Keyword Planner Tool:
Google Keyword Tool is an official product from Google that not only allows us to estimate the traffic of our target keywords , but also helps us find more relevant keywords. Here are some important things to know:
- You need to have a Google Adwords account to use the Google Keyword Planner tool. It is free and it does not cost you anything to use this tool. You just need to create an Adwords tool and start using it.
- You can also search for existing Google Adwords coupons, create a free account for yourself, and start using the Keyword Planner tool.
- This tool was created specifically for Adwords advertisers, but it can still provide a wealth of information when it comes to finding the right keywords for your blogs and articles.
This is the homepage of the Keyword Planner tool. All you need to do is type in the target keyword you want to start searching for. After that, you can add filters, such as which country you want to target the keyword for (in the example below, all locations are selected).
1) Enter your product or service:
This is where you place your target keywords. For example, my next post is about keyword research and I'm not sure what keywords I should use to target this post, I'll do some searches based on my knowledge and as you can see in the example, it will show me results for both global and local searches. The idea here is to find a keyword that has high traffic but low competition . If you are blogging for long-term goals, you can also use resource pages to target high competition keywords . For example: WordPress Guides . It may take some time before you see your keywords ranking in good positions. The image below illustrates the difference between broad, exact, and phrase searches .
2) Search type:
This is an important column that you should pay attention to. There are three options for the search type:
- broad
- Precise
- phrase
Exact Match: Exact searches show traffic for exact match keywords. For example, if you search for WordPress SEO as an exact match, it will be very different from a broad search.
Choose Exact Search when you are doing research for a micro-niche site, or Broad Search when you are writing an article on a personal blog.
Example: Keyword Research
Broad match: Broad match is my favorite because it allows me to target long tail keywords and your traffic isn't limited to exact matches. For bloggers, broad match is useful, but again, this depends on your blog type and goals. Example: “ Keyword-based research ”
Phrase: The phrase type is useful when you need keywords in an exact phrase. For example: "best keyword research". The keyword position will not change, but it will provide traffic data and your keyword may gain for phrase searches.
3) Advanced options and filters:
This feature is designed to add more filters to your search. Such as country search volume, language, and target device (computer or mobile). Depending on your target audience, you can set everything, including categories.
4) Understand the keyword toolbar:
Note the pointer 4 in the above picture. Now you understand what each column means.
- Competition: To clear up a misconception about this tool, the competition field does not show how hard it is to rank for that keyword. In fact, it shows the competition among advertisers bidding on that keyword . So if you see “Low” for a good keyword, mark it, and we'll see later how to easily analyze competition .
- Global Monthly Search Volume: Global Monthly Search Volume shows the average of global search volume over the past 12 months.
- Local Monthly Search Volume: It shows the search volume based on your filters. For example, in the image above, I have applied a filter for the United States as the country and noticed a huge difference between the global and local search volumes.
- Approximate CPC: This column shows the approximate CPC (cost per click) of advertisers. Many SEO experts recommend using this column to find AdSense CPC keywords. It is a good idea to choose keywords with higher CPC because advertisers bid higher but there is less competition.
For this tutorial, we keep it simple and keep the example to the broad search type.
Use Google Keyword Tool to do keyword research:
I hope this post gave you a basic understanding of how the Google Keyword Tool works, now we will start to put it into practice. Our goal is to find some low competition but medium traffic keywords using Google Search , Google Keyword Research Tool, and SEMRUSH.
We will use SEMRUSH to analyze the competition level of our keywords. Basically, this will help us determine how difficult it is to rank for a certain keyword.
Now, here's a quick question before we get started:
Which one of these is better?
Getting 100 untargeted visitors or 10 targeted visitors?
If your answer is “targeted”, then don't leave those keywords with low traffic. Since it is relevant to your niche, it will help you in the long run. Be sure to check “Google Traffic Trends” which will help you check how the traffic pattern of your target keywords changes over time.
Use Google Instant Search to discover keywords:
Google Instant is the first place I look for the perfect keywords. It's more like a keyword discovery tool that you can use to generate tons of ideas. While you can't use all of these ideas, it's great to brainstorm and come up with some ideas for your K/W research as a first step.
Type any keyword related to your niche, for example; I started typing “SEO Keywo” and Google Instant search suggested search results.
Depending on your post type, you can choose from several types that make sense for you. Take a look at this screenshot:
Once you find 3-4 such keywords, start adding them to the Google keyword suggestion tool and perform searches.
So, I chose two keywords from the list: “SEO keyword search” and “SEO keyword research” because these two keywords are similar and make sense for my niche for me to write an article about. Now, the next step is to determine if these two keywords will do any good for traffic or if it will just be another article that doesn't have much value from a traffic perspective.
Let's move on to the next step:
Keyword search analysis:
Now, I put the two keywords into the search tool and perform a search and it will give me details on the type of search I am performing and show me related keyword ideas. Now this is a keyword gold mine for you because it will allow you to find many related keywords that you can target in the same article or you can come up with follow-up articles.
I usually target 2-3 keywords/post. You can develop your SEO strategy based on the quality and length of your posts. So, for informational purposes, we have selected only two keywords as shown in the image above, and now it's time to check which one of them is less competitive. Before that, you can change the filter to see if there is any exact match type for your target keyword.
Use SEMRUSH to check keyword competition:
Once you have decided on your keywords, the next step is to check the keyword competition, or what you can also call it, ‘keyword difficulty.’ This is simply a measure of how difficult it is to rank for a particular keyword.
Note: If you are creating an authoritative micro-niche website , you should target all possible keywords, regardless of the difficulty level.
I usually use SEMRUSH to check keyword competition, and it also comes in handy for finding related keywords that I usually place around my posts. Let me explain what I mean with an example.
I searched for the keyword “SEO keywords” in the SEMRUSH tool and this is the result I got.
In the screenshot above, you can see the keywords and their variations and volumes. On the right, you can see related keywords, which are not drastically different, but can vary greatly when you research keywords for different niches.
NOTE: Be sure to pay attention to the column called CPC. This is useful for anyone using AdSense to make money with a blog. The higher the CPC for any keyword, and if you rank higher in the search engines for that keyword, the more likely you are to earn huge click income from Adsense.
Going back to the screenshot above, clicking View Full Report will show detailed information for all keywords. First, let's take a clear look at the screenshot below:
I've highlighted the Keyword Competition column in a red box. While this detail is for advertisers, it gives you a good idea of which keyword you should be targeting. As you can see here, “Meta Keyword SEO” is easier to rank for according to the Competition Checker tool.
Remember, when writing articles or making your posts keyword targeted, you need to include keywords in your title, description, and H1 tag. Pay attention to keyword density, LSI keywords, adding videos, and several other signals. We discussed this in depth here .
In addition to the above points, backlinks and social media promotion are also one of the major factors in improving rankings. In addition, my suggestion is to make sure your domain expiration date is not earlier than three years.
What's next?
So now, we have a keyword, and similarly, you can find a lot of keywords related to your niche. This may be a little time consuming, but it is more valuable than spending time on ten untargeted posts.
Now, your next goal should be to write an SEO copy . You can refer to my previous guide on OnPage optimization.
Never forget that this keyword research is just a preliminary step, the real magic starts with your content. Also, never try to get traffic with the wrong keywords as this will affect your blog's overall performance in terms of average dwell time and bounce rate. For your old blog posts, if you are not optimized for any keywords, you can use Google Analytics data, any software to
For your old blog posts, if you haven't optimized them for any keywords, you can use Google analytics data, any software for keyword research and re-optimize the keywords. I did this for almost 30% of my old posts and they started ranking on pages 1-2.
I will write an article about this, but for now, you can subscribe to my email newsletter to get the next update. I hope this guide to Google Keyword Tool helps you find the best keywords for your next article. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments.
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