Learn How To Do Keyword Research The RIGHT WAY: 7 Pointers

One thing that is constant in helping your blog or website get traffic and rank higher on search engine results is SEO. For this, you need to know how to research keywords.

The algorithms may keep changing but a good SEO base can save you. If you’re new to keyword research, I would suggest going through the post I did about short, medium and long-tail keywords.

You’ll get an idea of how keywords work and how you should be finding the perfect ones for you.

In this post, I’ll be sharing with you, the methods I use to conduct keyword research for the blog.

This is a step-by-step guide from the beginning to end of the keyword research for your niche.

Table Of Contents

Broad keywords that define your niche/topic

Broad keywords are the ones which are most searched. They are usually short-tail keywords and are the words people type in first when looking for information on that topic.

For example, if you’re writing a blogpost on digital marketing, the keywords with high search volume would be SEO, SEO tips, learn digital marketing and so on.

Just think about the words that first pop into your mind when you think about the niche or the topic.

Step into your viewer’s shoes and imagine if you had to read about keyword research, what would you type in the search bar.

If your post is about the latest smartphone, say ‘B’. The related broad keywords would be Specifications of B, B Launch date, expected price of B etc.

List down around 5 broad keywords and then start narrowing them.

Also Read: How to Rank on Page 1 on Google, Simple Steps

How to narrow down broad keywords into easy-ranking keywords

I use UberSuggest, Google and Answer the public to research and find out what the audience is searching for.

Let’s start with UberSuggest. It is a gem for digital marketers and us bloggers. The day you start using it, endless opportunities in SEO will open up for you.

How to use Ubersuggest to Get Keyword Ideas

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After entering your keyword and targeted country, you will be redirected to a window that shows you the detailed statistics for that keyword.

It’s search volume, SEO difficulty, paid difficulty and cost per click are one of the first things you’ll notice on the page.

You’ll see a table of keyword ideas which depicts how the keyword has been trending over time.

Click on the column headers like volume, CPC, PD and SD to sort the column in ascending or descending order.

In the related section, you will find keywords which are closely related to your broad keywords. Blogposts which answer a question tends to get more visitors overall.

For this, head to the question section and have a look at what questions are people asking in your niche.

Make use of the 5 sections: Suggestions, Related, Questions, Prepositions and Comparisons to create a list of keywords that you should focus on.

Try to include more of medium and long-tail keywords with a few short-tail keywords.

Also Read: 10 SEO Benefits of Internal Linking

How To Use Answer the Public as a Keyword Research Tool

AnswerThePublic is a tool that gives you a list of questions people ask on the Internet according to your keyword. In the pro version, you can enter the targeted country too.

On entering a keyword, it displays the result in the form of an image known as a search cloud.

The questions include 5Ws, what, how, why, which etc. The image above is the result of entering ‘keyword research’ as the keyword.

Questions which have a dark green coloured dot in front of them have a higher search volume as compared to the lighter shades.

In simple words, the darker the shade of green the more is its search volume.

You can use these questions in your blog post by including them in your content, headings, meta description or even the title.

Find what keywords you already rank for using Google Search Console

Login to Google Search Console and see which keyword your site ranks for. If there is a keyword related to the topic of the post for which you are already ranking, build related keywords around it.

This would make it easy for the post to rank high.

In the Google Search Console, you can see the average position for keywords and the number of impressions and clicks you get from them.

Dig in and find who are your competitors

Your competitors are the posts which are in the top results in the search results for your chosen keyword.

Type your keyword on Google and check out the top3 or top 5 posts. Now how will you find which keywords are they ranking for?

Copy their site link and paste it in Ubersuggest. Ubersuggest will analyse their site and give you a list of their top pages and the organic keywords which they rank for.

This makes it easy for you to pick out keywords like the best apples from the lot.

Let’s see this with an example. Assume our keyword is ‘keyword research’. The first result is from Neil Patel’s site. Well, this is no surprise given the fact he is the idol of many digital marketers around the globe.

Enter his site link into Ubersuggest and you can see what keyword he ranks for. Funny how this step reminds of a Spiderman meme. Did you think of it too?