How to Do Keyword Research For SEO – A Step-By-Step Guide

One of the earliest and most essential steps of any SEO campaign is keyword research.

If we don’t research keywords, we have no idea what to optimise our pages for. And if we don’t know that, it’s probably almost impossible to rank.

So, while keyword research may seem a little overwhelming at first, it’s crucial that you learn it. Luckily, throughout this article, we’re going to walk you through step by step how to do keyword research and utilise some top keyword tools within your niche.

How To Do Keyword Research: Step By Step Guide

Here are the steps you need to do to perform keyword research:

1. Gather Ideas
2. Create a list of Competitors
3. Use Keyword Research Tools
4. Analyse The Search Intent
5. Analyse Trends
6. Create a Content Plan With Target Keywords
7. Create amazing content!

Below, we’ve explained each of these steps to help guide you through the process and find keywords.

The first step is to gather ideas. One way to do this is to put yourself into the perspective of a customer.

To do this, you could head over to Google and start searching for the products you offer. You’ll be able to see suggestions, and will be able to come up with some seed terms that you can work with. Plus, sometimes you can actually already find some sweet keywords using this method alone.

Don’t worry too much about the data yet, as we’ll be discussing that later on. For now, you just want to gather some ideas.

You can keep them in an organised spreadsheet or write them down.

The second step would be to create a list of your competitors.

This is also a crucial step in the process as it will allow you to create content on the keywords that are generating the most traffic for them.  So, you’ll practically be able to steal your competitor’s traffic.

If you’re not quite sure who your competitors are, you can type in relevant keywords and take the URLs of the websites that are ranking. As they are ranking for relevant keywords, there is a big chance that they are ranking for more.

This means, you’ll be able to steal the other keywords they are ranking for too.

Make a list of them and move onto the next step.

Once you have some seed terms and a list of your competitors, it’s time to use keyword research tools (keyword planner).

There is a load of them out there, but some good options are:

• Ahrefs
• SEMrush
• Mangools

One of these three will do the job.

They will allow you to:

1. Find keyword data (search volume, difficulty, CPC, etc.)
2. See keyword suggestions (especially long-tail keyword ideas)
3. See what your competitor is ranking for
4. And lots more…

Unless there’s no rhyme or reason to your keyword research, you need to know which opportunities will take the least amount of your limited resources to yield the highest ROI.”

— Neil Patel, NeilPatel.com

Now, it’s time to make a list of keywords that you want to rank for. Later on, you’ll be creating content for these related keywords.

If there are extremely similar keywords you can add them into the same box as you can create 1 page to rank for both. For example, “Buy foam” and “Where to buy foam”.

Or “Build brand awareness” and “Increase brand awareness”.

Before you start creating the content, there are a few more steps you need to take.

The first one would be to check for the intent.

What does the user try to achieve when searching for this keyword? And, how can you satisfy that intent better than anyone else?

At this point, you’ll also want to take a look at the type of content Google prefers. Look at things such as the content length, type, and structure of the pages ranking in the top positions. This will give you a great idea of what you need to do to secure a spot for yourself.

Once you have determined the intent of the searcher and checked out the competition, the next step is to analyse the trends & seasonality behind the keyword.

For a lot of keywords, this won’t necessarily be too important, as certain keywords get searched a lot consistently.

However, certain keywords are seasonal. These keywords get more search volume during a certain part of the year. An example of this would be keywords related to certain holidays like Christmas.

That is an obvious example, but there are also less obvious ones out there.

The best keywords are ones that get consistent searches throughout the year. You can use a free tool like Google trends to determine the trends of a keyword.

Once you have analysed your keyword list, you should be able to tell which ones will generate the biggest ROI for your business. From here, it’s just a case of selecting them and creating a content plan around them.

For example, if you’re looking to create one article per week for 6 months, you can create a plan with 26 topic ideas and keywords. Then, you can work through them throughout the year, without having to research new keywords for 6 months.

Here comes probably the most fun part of the process which is to create content.

For this part, we recommend following basic on-page SEO best practices to increase your chances of ranking. In fact, for your most important keywords, it would even make sense to use a piece of software like SurferSEO or Page Optimiser Pro.

They’ll allow you to optimise your page based on data of the first pages already ranking which will give you much better chances of securing a spot on the first page.

Tracking Results

Of course, the key to any type of marketing is tracking results and making tweaks as you go along.

That’s why we recommend using some type of software to track your rankings. Again, this can be done with the same software we mentioned earlier, Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Mangools. Using Google Adwords and Google keyword planner will also give you some valuable insights. Ubersuggest is a favourite at Softdata as well 🙂 

Using them, you can see your ranks improving. Plus, we also recommend keeping an eye on the spots above you to see why they are above you. This will allow you to implement measures that will help you beat them. 

Read More on SEO

If you have enjoyed this SEO keyword research guide, you’ll probably enjoy our related articles too.

You can check them out using the links below. Or, if you are looking for SEO services, you can also learn more about our service here.

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TAGS: 

Search marketing, Keyword phrases, seo tool, search marketing, rank tracker, search engine results, keyword competition, profitable keywords

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