Today I will show you exactly how to make the keyword research for SEO.
In this comprehensive guide I will cover:
- What are keywords, why are they important and the different types
- Keyword Tools
- How to find keywords and choose the right ones
- How to choose the right keywords
So, if you want to rank your website high on Google and get more traffic, this updated keyword research guide will be very helpful.
Let's get started.
What are keywords?
“Keyword” is a popular term we’ve all heard, but if you’re new to SEO, you might be confused about what keywords are and why they’re so important.
A keyword can be made up of one or more words (often referred to as a "long-tail keyword"). Keywords are important because they tell search engines about the content of your website page.
“"Keywords" is also a term used to refer to the words and phrases people enter into a search engine to find the information they're looking for. If a user's search keywords match your site's keywords, your site will appear in the search results.
Why is keyword research important for SEO?
Keyword research impacts every SEO activity you do, including topic research, on-page SEO, and content promotion.
This is why keyword research is usually the first step in any SEO campaign.
To put it another way:
Keywords are like a compass for your SEO campaigns: they tell you where to go and whether you're making progress or not.
As a bonus, keyword research helps you better understand your target audience. That's because keyword research gives you insights into what customers are searching for... and the exact words and phrases they use.
Keyword research is important for a few reasons, but primarily to drive organic traffic that is highly likely to convert.
The time and energy you put into keyword research will pay off by helping you create targeted content that brings the right people to your website—people who are more likely to buy because your content perfectly aligns with what they're looking for.
What are the different types of keywords?
1. Short-Tail Keywords
A short-tail keyword is a two- or three-word phrase. Sometimes called a "head keyword," these terms typically have high volume and can be difficult to win due to their broad reach.
For example, take the phrase "keywords." This could refer to keyword research, keyword tools, keyword puzzles, etc. Without context, these short keywords might not be as useful for generating conversions since the traffic they bring in might not be searching for what you provide.
Now, that doesn't mean you shouldn't use short-tail keywords! They work best when used in combination to create more specificity and context, signaling to search engines what your content is really about.
2. Long-Tail Keywords
These keywords are made up of more than four words and are much more specific than short-tail keywords. For example, a long-tail keyword would be "how to do keyword research.".
People using long-tail keywords know exactly what they are searching for, leading your page/article to have much higher conversion rates.
3. Short-term fresh keywords
Remember when Black Adam came out in 2022? This is a perfect example of a new short-term keyword. As you can see from this graph, searches for the term "Black Adam" spiked significantly in 2022, especially around its theatrical release.
During that time period, it would be considered a new, short-term keyword. Since it's no longer relevant, the keyword's utility is quite low, but people using those keywords may have seen explosive growth in views during that time period. These search terms are especially useful for current events and news coverage to attract a new audience.
4. Long-Term Evergreen Keywords
The exact opposite of new, short-term keywords, this type of keyword is always relevant. If you're using evergreen keywords, it's important to ensure your content is timeless or make an effort to keep it fresh.
For example, using keywords like "SEO keyword research 2022" is limited to the year you've identified. An evergreen keyword would be "SEO keyword research." While you may not get immediate high traffic with evergreen keywords, they tend to bring moderate search volume with a high conversion rate.
5. Local keyword (Geo-targeting keyword)
Some of the easiest keywords to use, geo-targeted keywords, are just what they sound like: keywords related to a specific neighborhood, city, state, or country. The area you're in serves as the keywords you'll want to use, like "Turin" or "Milan.".
These keywords are great for small businesses looking to attract locals to their products and services.
6. Product defining keyword
These keywords are related to a specific product. For example, instead of "SEO courses," the product-specific keyword would be "Adrian Gram courses.".
When people search for keywords to define a product, they're typically ready to buy or are already familiar with your products. They might just need that little bit of extra information to close the deal.
7. Customer-defined keywords
Using these types of keywords is fairly simple. In today's market, personalization is key. Your target audience is out there, and by using client-defined keywords, you can help them drive attention to your products and services through organic SEO coverage.
8. LSI Keywords
LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing, and these are thematic keywords associated with your main keyword. If your main keyword is "keywords," your LSI keywords might be "google keyword research," "keyword tool," etc.
These keywords are useful for capturing the different ways people search for the same thing. People use a variety of different keywords, all related to a topic, and LSI keywords can help you capture all that traffic.
9. Related vertical keywords
Related vertical keywords are similar to LSI keywords in that they're related to the keywords you're currently targeting. The difference is that related vertical keywords are more like cousins rather than direct descendants of the main keyword.
10. Intent-based keywords
These keywords are based on specific user intent. There are four different types:
- information;
- transactional;
- navigation;
- commercial.
Informative keywords
Informational keywords are search-based. At this stage, the user is trying to research the product or service they want to purchase.
These keywords could be in our case:
- What are keywords?
- How to find keywords for SEO
- how to search keywords on google
- how to choose keywords
- And more.
Transactional keywords
Transactional keywords include all those keywords where the intent is to make a purchase. The user searches to purchase a product or service, such as:
- Product Name for sale
- Buy product name
- Buy product name
- Offer product name
- How to buy product name
- Order keyword
Navigation keywords
Navigational keywords suggest that the user's intention is to navigate to a particular page, which they are most likely already aware of, but, for one reason or another, do not type the web address directly.
Navigational keywords can include brand names, product names, service names, locations, or words like near me, directions, prices, cost of, and so on.
Navigational keywords are the types of queries users enter to jump directly to a specific page. These include product names, service names, locations, and even brand names.
These aren't typically the types of keywords you can physically optimize for, but it's a good idea to know they exist.
Commercial keywords
Users rely on keywords with commercial intent when they're in the "consideration" stage of the marketing funnel. These keywords signal interest in a particular product or service and usually lead to a purchase.
An example of a keyword with commercial intent is "best keyword research tools." Searchers using this query most likely need a research tool, which is why they're looking for the best options.
Remember that commercial keywords, such as navigational keywords, may also contain brand names.
An example might be "Ahrefs vs. Semrush." However, since these keywords aren't used to find a specific page on your website, they aren't considered navigational keywords.
How to identify commercial queries?
An easy way to find commercial keywords is to use Google autocomplete. Simply enter a keyword or phrase that describes your target product along with commercial terms, such as:
- Improve
- Alternative
- Review
- Against
By following a good organizational content hierarchy and properly optimizing all your potential keywords, it will be easier for people to navigate to the content that is important to them.
Keyword Tools
Can you find keywords without a tool?
Safe.
But one tool makes the whole process MUCH easier.
That said, here are the keyword research tools I personally use and recommend.
1. Ahrefs
Most people consider Ahrefs a useful link building tool, but it's also a great keyword tool, so I use it mostly.
The great thing about Ahrefs “Keyword Explorer” is that you get a lot of useful data about each keyword.
That said:
When it comes to digging deeper into a single term, Ahrefs Keyword Explorer is the best.
2. SEMrush
If you're looking to invest in a paid keyword tool, I HIGHLY recommend SEMrush.
That’s because SEMrush is a HUGE time saver.
That's why…
Instead of entering random keywords into a tool, SEMrush shows you the exact keywords a site is already ranking for.
So, if you have a site that you're competing with on Google, enter it into SEMrush.
And steal all their keywords.
3. Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is useful because it has a free version. It recently received a major update and overhaul.
Ubersuggest generates keyword ideas from Google search suggestions and also provides data about each keyword (such as search volume, CPC, keyword difficulty, and more).
There are many other keyword research tools such as:
- Keywords Everywhere
- KeywordTool.io
- Moz Keyword Explorer
- SERanking
- Keyword Researcher Pro
- Mangools KW Finder
- etc.
I will go into this topic in more detail in a separate article because we need to distinguish between the different tools based on their functionality, which can be: keyword suggestion tools, competitor keyword research, keyword density tools, and finally keyword research tools, which are the ones we will be using in this guide.
How to do keyword research for SEO?
Keyword research should be aligned with your SEO strategy and goals. Before starting keyword research, review your website profile to assess its strengths and weaknesses.
Depending on your website's authority, the quality of its content, and the competitive landscape of your industry, it will take varying degrees of effort to optimize your pages. Keep your target audience in mind: you should focus on the value your website offers users and how to satisfy their search intent.
When it comes down to it, keyword research is basically a three-part process.
1. Create a list of keywords (topics)
The first step in keyword research is to brainstorm a list of potential keywords. These keywords can be as broad as you like and can be anything related to your industry, products, or services.
So, for example, if you're a web agency, your keywords might be something like "website creation," "SEO consulting," or anything else related to the products you sell.
You can also use location-based keywords, which are words and phrases that describe your state, city, region, or other terms people might use to describe your area.
2. Main keyword and search intent
We then need to enter these keywords into Google to search for our long tail, which, as we were saying, will be much more specific if we also have short tail keywords in the list, leading our page/article to much higher conversion rates.
The keywords Google returns are specific to a service a web agency offers. We choose "professional website creation."“
You can also check your competitors' websites and see the keywords they're using to describe similar products and services. Researching your competitors can be a great way to generate ideas you might never have thought of in the first place, and can inform the rest of your keyword research later.
In any case, we would do it for specific articles, it depends on my strategy and how I organize the keywords.
3. Enter the long tail keyword into Google
The key here is to understand our competition and the types of articles/pages Google ranks highly. Once this is done, we'll look at the article or page of one of our competitors, preferably among the top three.
4. Use the keyword research tool
When you type a keyword into Ahrefs, you'll get a list of related keywords that users commonly search for on Google.
We're dealing with multiple types of keywords, including local keywords. Now, when it comes to local keywords, we need to delve deeper into how we optimize them. For now, let's focus on our strategy and the main keyword, which we've defined as "professional website creation."“
But in the next step, we'll look at what to do with all the keywords and how to organize them to get the best possible results for your SEO strategy.
5. Export keyword data and organize it by type and intent
So, you already have a clear idea of what your main keyword is, all that's left is to define all the keywords for the article, and here we can divide them into:
- Primary Keyword – The main keyword a page is optimized for
- Secondary keywords – different but related to the main keyword
- Keyword Variation: synonyms, plurals, abbreviations, etc.
For the strategy I use, I further define the keywords by intent which, as we said above, can be:
- Informational
- Commercials
- Transactional and of
- Navigation
To simplify your search, I'm sharing my work template with you. Send us your email in the form below so you can download the template and stay updated with my latest guides.
Conclusion
I really hope you enjoyed my keyword research guide.
Keyword research isn't just part of search engine optimization, it's also a source of inspiration for your business. With a solid keyword list, you're guaranteed to rank and target the right audience, which means you're on the right path to a reliable website that converts.
In any case, let me know if you have any questions about it by leaving a short comment below.
