With all the essential keyword research tips and tricks under your belt, you can take blogging to a whole new level.
The importance of keyword research while blogging cannot be emphasized enough!
So without further ado, let’s delve deeper into how you can crush it as a blogger by utilizing the right keyword research strategies.
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What are “Keywords” in the First Place?
According to RankWatch “Keywords are simply words or phrases in your web content which makes it possible for the users to reach you via Search Engines.”
So if you search “keyword research” in Google search engine, it will present you with thousands of web pages as results on that topic.
But only the top ten web pages will make it to the first page of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
Yes, ranking high in the SERPs requires hard work!
Google search engine is bombarded with more than 100 billion search terms every month. To be found, your content must be optimized for those keywords that people are likely to search.
Keywords help in attracting a lot of traffic to your website. But you need compelling keyword phrases to convert that traffic into customers/sales.
When Should You Start Keyword Research?
As soon as a blog post idea sprouts in your mind!
And not after you have begun writing or after you have finished writing an article.
To start your keyword research, just type in the main keywords (that you are planning to develop around) in the Google search bar. Google instantly displays all the relevant search terms related to it as suggestions in a drop down list. The following example should clarify this!
For example, if you are planning to write a blog post on “shoes for men”, just key in those keywords in the search bar. Then Google will immediately display all the relevant phrases related to “shoes for men” as suggestions.
Now if you want more keyword ideas related to the terms “shoes for men” then scroll all the way down to the bottom. There you’ll find a list of keyword phrases related to your main keywords.
Adopting these Keyword Research Tips is Critical while Performing Keyword Research
Keep a note of these following keyword research tips. They are absolutely crucial.
Strategy 1 – Find out What Your Audience is Searching for
It is very important to research the keywords from the perspective of your target audience. This is very crucial if you really want to stay ahead of your competitors.
Find out if they are scouring the internet for reviews of products related to your domain. Or are they hot leads ready to make a purchase or they are just browsing for fun.
Well, how do you really find that out? Via forums and social media sites related to your topic!
Analyzing the conversations occurring in such platforms will help you reveal all those critical keywords related to your niche. Such platforms are goldmines of keyword and content ideas for your blog!
Another great way to extract keyword information is by soliciting feedback from your visitors on your site by placing a feedback form on it. You can ask your visitors how they landed on your site – was it through any referring sites, or keywords that they entered etc.
Strategy 2 – Know Your Competitors’ Keywords
The whole purpose of doing keyword research is to outsmart your competition in the search engine results. For that, you must know what keywords they are using in their own content to rank high in the SERPs. Yes, this can be a bit harder to accomplish, but with the right research technique, it is definitely achievable.
Let’s imagine that you are a supplier of cakes in Miami, Florida, and you want to know the target keywords of your competitors. So all you need to do is a quick search for “cake suppliers in Miami, Florida” in Google. This will display all your competitors from that area.
The next step is to skim through their sites to know what target keywords they have used in their content to rank high in the SERPs.
A heads up on Meta Keywords!
Several online sources still recommend scanning through the Meta Keywords of your competitors’ sites.
Meta Keywords are keywords meant for the search engines (found only in the HTML source code) and invisible to the readers.
But thankfully, meta keywords are dead now. To know why meta keywords are no longer a ranking criterion for Google, you can read this blog post in Yoast.com published in May 2017. So I won’t suggest wasting your time scouring through the meta keywords of your competitors’ sites. Let’s see what else you can do?
Keyword Research Tool
The smartest method to do an effective keyword research is to use a good keyword research tool like the SEMRush keyword research tool.
Once you are in the tool, all you need to do is enter the domain name of your competitor in the search bar and hit “start now”.
The next page that comes up will have a bunch of crucial details about your competitor.
In the results page, the sections you must look for the “Top Organic Keywords” and “Paid Keywords”. These are the target keywords that are driving traffic to their sites.
The cool thing is that you can also obtain the competitors’ competitors’ traffic details and their targeted keywords in this tool.
Google No Longer Weigh the Old-School Keyword Research Strategy!
Google is constantly improving its algorithm to cope with the exponentially rising search volumes.
The search engine giant is truly smart enough to discern if your blog content is really informative to its users. Or it is just a recycled piece of junk choke full of target keywords banged into it.
The days are gone when you could rank high in SERPs by sprinkling your keywords all over your blog. Now it’s not necessary that a blog post ranking high for certain keywords must have those keywords in it.
Google now has a more well-rounded approach towards keywords while ranking a blog post in the results pages. It no longer focuses on just your target keywords. But instead looks for a complete picture – related terms, synonyms and even loosely related terms that define your topic.
Google can quickly understand the context of your search terms (or your intent) and display web pages accordingly.
Creating such a context in your content is technically known as “Topic Modelling” or “Semantic Connectivity” in SEO world!
Wrapping Up
I’m sure you found these keyword research tips useful!
Effective Keyword research forms(spreadsheets) the backbone of your content marketing strategy for your blog/online business. It is also the very first (crucial) activity that you must carry out before going ahead with content creation.
Hence it is vital to be equipped with all the essential keyword research tips and tricks to kill it as a blogger.
From what we’ve discussed above, the most quintessential keyword research tips would definitely be,
- To find out what your audience is searching for (strategy 1)
- To know your competitors’ keywords (strategy 2)
But before I wrap it up, I would be very eager to know how you approach keyword research for your blog. Do you have a better way of finding out what your target audience is searching for? Or do you employ other keyword research tactics to stay ahead of your competition?
Please do not hesitate to share your keyword research tips with our readers as a comment.
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Essential Tips to Develop Good Blog Content
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Thanks for sharing this useful article. I hope this keyword framework you explained will help me to get more traffic.
Looking forward to know more from you!
I like this tips, but i think KWFinder is actually a great tool for keyword researching.
very helpful content!! thank you for updating:)
Very informative article with a lot of details on SEO. Thank you, it is helpful.
Great !!!
This information will be more helpful for me as i creating my own website.
Please keep sharing such blogs.
Thanks a lot..
Nice one. I like this post on keyword research. It’s very informative. Thanks