If you are into the field of content creation, either you own our website or you create website content for other business owners and companies, then you must have heard about “keyword research” and “SEO optimization“, right?
Or you may have heard people giving you advice like
“Create SEO optimized content and it’ll bring more traffic to your website.”
Well, it’s absolutely true! But how do you optimize content with respect to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
Creating SEO optimized content is a whole lengthy process and in this article, we are going to dig deep into the first step of SEO optimization that is particularly ‘How to do keyword research?’
This SEO guide for beginners will teach you how to do keyword research with Google for free.
What’s keyword research?
Keyword research is the process of finding exact keywords that give you the information about what your customers are searching for that would drive targeted traffic to your website.
This is done by identifying and observing the search intent of your customers that are looking for a solution to any of their problems. Knowing how users find related websites according to their needs or questionnaires.
But how?
When we are looking for any solution to our problems, we simply hit the Google search bar and start looking for our solutions on the very first few top results. Isn’t it like that?
And absolutely, we get our solutions on the first page of the search engine, which is also known as the Search Engine Result Page(SERP). This is the SERP through which we are going to know our customer’s search intent. This shows the exact ‘words’, ‘phrases’ or ‘questions’ that a lot of people worldwide are searching on Google every day.
This is for what keyword research is done, that is what kind of questions the masses are asking to the search engine and how you can answer those questions to get that whole traffic of your targeted audience to your website. And this is the only purpose of doing keyword research as it helps you to speak the language of your customers knowing exactly what they want from your content.
You must have noticed that when we search for a particular term on the Google search engine it automatically starts showing a variety of similar searches that other people are searching related to your searched term.
Suppose if you just typed “keyword research…”, then down below it starts showing similar searched terms that can be like…
-keyword research with Google
-keyword research SEO tools
-keyword research in SEO
-keyword research for free
The list goes on and most of the time we end up clicking on those few similar searches that align with our needs.
It shows that Google is so smart that it automatically keeps a record of a lot of frequently asked questions to help its users. The search engine of Google keeps a record of all of the search terms that have been asked within a specific time, which ultimately helps us in finding and using proper keywords for our target audience.
Now you know more about what keyword research is and a little about its importance. Let’s clearly define the importance of keyword research in creating SEO-optimized content.
What is the Importance of Keyword research?
To answer this question simply, I would say that it is the first and foremost thing to do while creating any SEO optimized content whether it may be for any kind of business, blogs, eCommerce, or any other services.
But here are the absolute reasons why keyword research is important-
- It helps you to understand and discover the exact ‘words’, ‘phrases’, or ‘questions’ that are being asked by your targeted audience and thus help you to convert them into your potential customers.
- In this way, this helps you to find the set of audiences that are already in need of your services and so you can convert them into sales or get high traffic and engagement to your website.
- Keyword research eases the process of market research. No matter whether you are selling something or just putting out content to gain traffic to your website, it is always going to help you in finding your targeted audience and providing them with what they want.
- It helps a lot in doing competitive analysis with respect to your competitor’s product or service. You can have an idea of keywords that are helping your competitors to rank on the first page of Google.
- By spending your few hours in creating SEO optimized content with the help of keyword research you can save hundreds and thousands of dollars which businesses pay in the form of PPC to get traffic to their sites. Keywords SEO helps you to drive those graphics for free without costing you a single dollar.
- By finding proper keywords with high CPC (Cost Per Click) true keyword research you can increase your ad revenue from your websites.
- It helps you to catch on with unanswered questions that are not yet answered by others. By focusing on these points, it can directly help you to bring more traffic through search engines.
- Helps you to understand market and business ideas that are trending that you need to keep up with.
What are the types of keywords-
Types of keywords can be defined based on the users’ search intent.
Now, what’s ‘search intent’?
Search intent is the identification and categorization of users’ intent that is knowing what your customers want and what they are searching for on the online web search engines. It helps to work on search engine optimization (SEO) or conversion rate optimization.
Now according to the search intent of users, there are 4 types of keywords. A similar query can be presented in 4 or more different ways such as it can be for informational purposes or commercial purposes or transactional purposes or anything.
These four types of keywords are-
- Commercial keywords
- Informational keywords
- Transactional keywords
- Navigational keywords
Another way to classify keywords is according to the length of the keywords. In this way, there are two types of keywords-
- Long-tail keywords- These keywords are a set of 2 to 3 words or short phrases that are easy to target and rank for your sites.
- Short tail keywords- These are short-termed words also known as Head words. These are difficult to target and rank on with them.
How to do Keyword research?
Although there are several ways to search for SEO keywords, we will look into the simplest ways that even a beginner can follow and execute to get the results.
1. By simply searching a word or phrase on the search engine bar-
This is the easiest way to find keywords that are being searched on the search engine without any effort. As we all know that Google is becoming more advanced every single day.
Just by writing a few initial letters of a word, we get a variety of results similar to those words or phrases that we are searching for. And these results are shown by Google the keywords that we want because these are exact words, phrases or questions that are being asked by the masses all over the world.
You need to focus on these questions or phrases and try to answer them in your content to solve your audience’s problems because this is what they are looking for.
2. By using competitor’s or top site’s keywords-
Now here comes the second easiest way to do SEO keyword research for your sites. This can be done by identifying 3-4 top websites that are already appearing on the first page of Google by ranking on those keywords that you are searching for.
Now what you have to do is copy the domain name of those top results and head onto keyword research tools like Semrush, Google keyword planner, ubersuggest, ahrefs, etc. and paste it there on the search bar. These tools will automatically show you the list of keywords of that particular domain which are helping them to get more traffic and rank on the first page.
Besides, these tools will give you all important details like which particular keyword is bringing more traffic to which page of the website, which keyword has more search volume density, which keyword has more traffic percent, and all other minute details that help you to decide and choose proper keywords for your site. Like this, you can find several keywords that will bring maximum traffic to your website by doing this competitive analysis of other top sites.
3. By using seed words to generate keywords-
This is a little technical process but not much when you understand this clearly and have practiced over it. And when you do this it is worth the time you spend as it helps to discover new keywords that no one is targeting.
In this process, you will be needing a good keyword research tool like semrush or ahrefs. All you need to do is just search your ‘seed word’ with the help of these tools. Seed word is the word that you are targeting and around which your whole content and query revolve.
For example, as I am writing about keyword research in this article, during my keyword research process my seed word was ‘keyword research’. And with the help of this word, I got all related primary and secondary keywords that can help me to rank using these keywords.
So by searching for your seed keyword you can get tons of keywords within a minute with the help of these tools. You can also filter your keywords research by using a particular geographical location that you are targeting and find the best from those which have high search volume and less SEO difficulty.
Conclusion
Keyword research for SEO is a vast topic and absolutely an extensive process as we dig deep we start getting indulged in it. And it is the first process while researching for your SEO-optimized content. It is the most important step in SEO optimization but it is also true that it’s not enough for creating fully SEO optimized content.
Several other factors must be optimized like on-page SEO, off-page SEO, backlinks, and many other things. But while starting as a beginner the foremost thing is to learn keyword research as it is not just important for creating website content or blogs but it also has a major role in creating any type of content that can be your social media post.
It helps you to know you are your target audience because if you don’t know for whom you are creating content and what they want from you, you can never sir them with their needs or solve their problems. And at last, you end up with zero traffic or engagement.
I hope this beginners guide helped you in knowing the basics of keyword research like-
What is keyword research?
What is the importance of keyword research?
What are the types of keywords?
How to do keyword research?
If you liked it, share it with your mates who are in the beginning stage and if you have any questions you can ask them in the comments below.