Keywords are considered the founding pillars of any SEO strategy. Therefore, we must find keywords with a high volume of searches in a specific area before initiating the writing process. Google, or any other search engines, don’t read your blogs or sales copy, but its intelligent ‘AI system’ looks for keywords density along with some other factors to rank a blog.
Finding exact keywords is a little tricky and lengthy procedure. But it’s significant to find keywords that work for your content. Otherwise, all the hard work on your site will be in vain.
What are keywords and keyword research?
Keywords are frequently used words or phrases to find out a specific product or service by general searches. They show us the searching behaviour of people demographically. It helps to find the exact words people used to find our product or service on the internet.
But finding a word or a phrase with a high-volume search does not complete the keyword research cycle. You also have to find relevant keywords that can represent your products or services in your targeted market. Here, keyword research will help you find perfect terms or phrases that work for you.
Keywords rich content is called SEO content. So, keywords help to set a specific direction and tone of the content.
The procedure of finding terms or phrases for a specific niche and location is called keyword research. Keyword research is like a scientific work where a minor mistake can lead you in the opposite direction. In this article, we will enlighten the expert’s 8-step secret guide to finding exact keywords that work for your site.
How can I do keyword research?
How can I initiate a keywords research procedure? You might be thinking of paid SEO tools or free methods to find keywords at this stage. However, you can use both ways to find perfect keywords by following our 8-step guide.
Spend time at each of the enlisted steps as keywords research is a time taking procedure. Don’t be in a hurry, as your SEO strategy will depend on your chosen keywords.
Step 1 | Explore your Niche
Before initiating the keywords research procedure, it is the best practice to explore your targeted niche. Try to figure out:
- Needs of your niche?
- Problems in your niche?
- Existing solutions in your niche?
It will help you to get a precise picture of your chosen market statistics. The words that represent your market needs, problems, or solutions are a treasury for you.
Now, you have to refine these words treasury by finding the words that people used to find out the services or products of your chosen niche. For that, you can join LinkedIn and social media pages to read blogs and comments on videos of your niche. These comments will help you to study the research behaviour of your targeted audience.
Step 2 | Make a Plan
Create a plan which describes the actual needs of keywords to your business. For that, you have to put yourself in your customer’s shoes to get a better idea of your brand.
This step may look similar to step 1. But in this step, you have to take a narrow approach by comprehensively focusing on your targeted audience and niche. Try to get answers to the following interoceptive questions:
- Who are we?
- What do we offer?
- What’s our targeted region?
- What makes us different or superior to our competitors?
- What does our ‘About us’ section say?
The answers to these questions will help you to define a well-organised brand mission. One of the following funnels could help you move forward towards your brand mission.
- Gaining new subscribers
- Getting maximum impressions to your post (awareness strategy)
- Getting specific leads
- Generating sales
- Downloads (intangible products sale)
A well-defined brand mission will lead you to a precise funnel for your brand. After getting the exact funnel, you will be able to refine the initial keywords list to set the right direction for keyword research.
Funnels will impact the keywords research strategy as varying keywords of the same niche represent different interests. For example, a keyword, ‘Foot Massage’ may be used for getting aware of a product/service. While another term, ‘foot massage cream,’ may be used for buying the product/service. For a detailed understanding of interest-based keywords, look at How to do Keyword Research the Smart Way: Targeting Interest.
Interoceptive questions → Brand’s Mission → Ideal Funnel → Interest-based keywords
Step 3 | Prepare a List of Relevant Terms
It’s time to further narrow your approach to looking at different aspects of your brand. Try to divide your brand/niche into smaller components. It will help you to find related keywords that could help you write optimised content. Let’s suppose you’re managing a female garments store. The following could be related keywords in that case:
- Printed off the shoulder tops
- Plain Maxi
- 2021 A-line dresses
You can further refine this keyword bucket to get a list of related keywords representing your brand’s products or services in a true sense.
Step 4 | Prepare a List of Focused Keywords
Focused keywords are the main keywords that represent the voice of your brand. You can prepare a focused keywords list by refining the related keywords bucket.
But how to refine the related keyword bucket? It’s pretty straightforward – adopt a customer-centric technique. Choose the words or phrases that a customer can use while searching for your product or service.
Step 5 | Keyword research tools
It’s time to check keyword research volume for each of your chosen keywords in a specific location. For that, you can use any keyword research tool like Google keyword planner or Semrush, etc.
If you’re looking for a free ‘keyword research tool,’ Google keyword planner should be your first choice, as Google is the leading search engine globally, and you can get the research volume of your keywords on Google via its key planner tool.
You will need to buy a premium SEO tool like Semrush to get an exact number of searches for a keyword and a suggestion list of related keywords, as Google Keyword Planner does not show the exact search volume for a keyword.
Step 6 | Go for Interest-Based Keywords
Google AI is getting smarter with each passing day. It’s not easy to rank a web page for a perfect audience anymore. Google AI calculates ‘keyword intent score’ for each keyword to rank that keyword-optimised content for an audience of particular interest.
Learn how to create an interest-based keywords list for your brand?
Step 7 | Explore Keyword Phrases
Keyword phrases or long-tail keywords represent the exact service or product offered by your domain. It’s comparatively easy to find keyword phrases. Long-tail keywords lure the audience by exactly hitting their intent. If you’re managing a movies blogging site following could be long-tail keywords for your site:
- Top 10 fiction movies of 2021
- Rise of the “Fast and Furious” franchise
- James Bond era movies
Step 8 | Spy your Competitor’s Keywords Strategy
Before finalising your keywords list, look at your competitor’s tested keywords that help them to taste success. It will also aid you to identify the keywords with high competition. That ultimately aids you in designing a short-term and long-term SEO strategy by separating the keywords of several competition levels.
Spyfu is a well-reputed keywords research tool that can help you to find your competitor’s keywords. Refined keywords after getting through the above-listed 8-steps will help you to craft highly optimised content for your business.
