How to do keyword research?
Step 1: Make a list of topics related to your business
To choose the most suitable keywords for your website, you have to make a list of topics you want to rank in. You can then choose 5 to 10 topics where you can come up with keywords that are relevant to the topics.
Imagining yourself as part of the buyer persona and thinking about what they search for can also help you with finding topics.
Step 2: Identify the seed keywords for those topics
Those are the keywords that fall in those topics. You can easily identify those keywords and then use them to rank in the SERPs. This happens because your target audience is researching those terms which makes it easier for you to use.
You just want to end up with a list of phrases that you think potential customers may use to search for your content. You can find them through brainstorming keywords related to your specific topic or business.
Step 3: Understand how intent affects keyword research
Understanding intent is one of the most important factors that help with understanding what users are searching for. It is more about finding the reason behind the user’s search.
For example, a user may search for blogging but what exactly about blogging he is searching for. Is he searching for starting a blogging website or how to write a blog post?
For that specific reason, it is important to dig deeper about what the searcher is exactly searching for and understand the purpose of the search.
One of the best ways to get to know the user intent is through entering the keyword in the search engine and seeing the types of results that show up in the search engine.
Step 4: See the keywords that competitors are ranking in
This is one of the most effective ways to find keywords that you can rank for. First, you will need to find out who your competitors are. This is done in two ways; the first is through putting the seed keywords in the search engine to find who ranks in the top positions.
” By doing so, you begin to learn what keywords your competitors rank in”.
After finding the websites that your competitors rank in, you can use tools such as Ahref’s site explorer and enter your competitor’s website to find the top keywords that generate the most traffic.