Best Keyword Research Tips in 2022
Keyword research tips are vital if you’re looking to successfully build and maintain a website. It should be a regular thing for digital marketers, being the first step in any SEO campaign.
Every second, people are searching for something on a search engine. Are they simply searching? Not exactly, and they are using keywords. If they’re looking for shoes, they may type in “shoes for men”, or if they’re in the market for a new phone they may use the keyword “new phones 2022”.
All businesses with an online presence do keyword research – it tells you what people are searching for, how many people are searching a certain keyword, and makes a target audience-based insight.
What is Keyword Research?
Keyword research sounds like finding something that people are already searching for, and it helps us find out the search terms that people are using when searching for something on a search engine.
Keywords can be short or long. But here is the confusion. Short is not for you when you are a beginner because short keywords are often harder to rank on search engines than long ones.
Amateur bloggers often make this mistake by choosing the short keyword. But later they realize, it is hard to see their post on number one.
Businesses and marketers must do regular keyword research to find out what keywords their audience is using – how is your audience supposed to find you if you don’t know what they’re searching for?
However, it’s not just individuals that you find or do keyword research. Search engines such as Google will use your website to find keywords, and your site will be ranked based on what those keywords are.
Buyer intent keywords typically follow formulas similar to these:
- ‘best x’
- ‘x for y to get more’
- ‘$xxx free today’
- ‘budget x under $xx’
This is a great formula when you’re writing ‘Top 5’ or ‘Top 10’ reviews and buyers guides.
Keyword Research Tips
Use a Keyword Research Tool
There are many keyword finder tools to find your desired keywords or your targeted keywords/topics.
Here you can take a look at the most popular keyword research tool.
- ahrefs
- Moz
- SEMrush
- KeywordRevealer
- SEMScoop
- Answerthepublic
Some of these programs can be quite costly, so if you’re a beginner, it’s probably best for you to find a free program. One of the best free keyword finders is Ubersuggest – it’s a free, fully functional keyword research and competitor analysis tool.
Most of these programs will give you a list of relevant keywords in seconds, as well as what your competitor’s keywords are.
These programs and sites can give you plenty of valuable information, such as:
- Growth trends
- Competitors
- Organic keywords
- Keywords tracking
- Traffic estimates
- Keyword difficulty
- Clicks and impressions
- Search volume
- Domain ranking
- Number of backlinks
These programs and websites are great for analyzing keywords. Why are we using SEO tools? A short and simple answer is to outrank our competitors. Just using a keyword tool can help us to outrank. First, we have to know who is already ranking (competitors).
Beat the Competition
Use Keywords Your Competitors Use
Every blogger has one or more niches, and you are one of them. So, you already have competitors. Take a look back, and know who your competitors are. This can be done on google search (just search in your main keyword, and see what other sites are at a similar ranking to you), or using a program such as Ahrefs.
Your competition has most likely done the keyword research before you, so find out the main keywords that they rank for, and select the best, most relevant ones.
You may naturally decide to use the keywords that rank highest, but this isn’t always the best way forward. A keyword can have a high search volume without getting many clicks – and it’s the clicks that you’re after.
Keywords with high competition may be a waste of time, so opt for keywords that have low competition – around 2000 searches per month is a good number.
Google Suggest
Many marketers tend to forget about the valuable Google Suggest, but it’s definitely something that can be used to find the best keywords.
Google carries a vast database, and when you search for something on Google, Google will show you a large number of search results from similar websites based on your keyword intention. Google suggests very useful and valuable for a small businessman (small-website).
For example, if your site is a rabbit-care niche, then type in “rabbit food”. See what comes up on google search.
You’ll most likely see the following:
- Rabbit food Bristol
- Food bowl for Rabbit
- Rabbit food dispenser
- Storage of food for Rabbit
- Pellets of food for Rabbit
You can utilize this information to gather relevant keywords and phrases. Google has learned this from what people are searching – it recognizes when people type in several phrases before finding the result they’re after.
This is to benefit searchers, to help them find their result quicker – but it’s also great for us marketers. When you are looking for some extra targeted keyword, you have to scroll down to the bottom. Here you will see many potential keywords for your following targeted content.
Outbound Marketing
Build a Mailing List
Maybe you are asking self is there any connection between keyword research tips and mailing lists. Hopefully, yes.
With the information you’ve received from your program of choice, from google, and from your competitors, start building a list of keywords.
It’s best to keep the list of keywords in a document, that you can keep updating and adding to. You’re likely to have hundreds of keywords on the list, and it will become a valuable resource for you and members of your team.
As your list grows, you’ll start to notice which keywords are more popular. This is where prioritizing your keywords comes in.
Search volume and competition are the two main metrics that you can use to simplify the process. Consider the potential that each keyword has, and do a search of the keyword in a program like Ahrefs to find out some analytics on the keyword.
It can be difficult keeping track of each keyword, but there are programs available to help you keep your list organized – Keyword Planner is a popular choice amongst marketers.
Your list of keywords should be changing all the time – in marketing, pretty much everything is in flux, keywords included.
Try narrowing down your keyword list based on what the analytics of the keyword is showing. You can take every keyword on your list; it’s up to you. But when a keyword is targeted by many bloggers, which decides that this keyword is under high competition, then you should avoid this.
Conclusion
Keywords are extremely valuable in the marketing game, and essential for the online growth of any business. The keyword is not your last priority. You are doing keyword research. Sounds good, but you have to remember there are many things that you have to keep in your mind when you are doing marketing.
If you have poor keywords, your site isn’t likely to get much traffic as people won’t find it on the search engine.
Keywords are key to increasing the number of visitors to your site, and they should be well-thought-out before you implement them.
Do you have any more keyword research tips you’d like to share with us? Let us know in the comments section below, and don’t forget to share this post with your marketing friends.
