How to do Google keyword research (strategy)

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When you want to start a business, keyword analysis is the first step, it's the first step of all SEO work, and it runs through all SEO. For example, when you are looking for new content ideas, when you are optimizing existing content, do keyword research. So let's see together how to do a comprehensive research

The content of the article:

• What are keywords?
• 1. How to find keywords
• 2. How to deal with keyword research
• 3. How to analyze the difficulty of keyword competition
• 4. How to choose the main keywords
• 5. Other Keyword Research Strategies

What are keywords?

Keywords are search words entered by the user in the search engine, i.e. words or phrases that open the user's search intent.

Keyword Research is a study of the user's search intent and an understanding of what content we should provide in order to best meet the user's search needs, attract him to the click and help him complete the action.

1. How to find keywords

We know that keywords are very important, but how can we find more keywords related to our business? Here I divide the resources that can be used for keyword analysis into three categories: the first category is the search engine category, the second category is the community platform category, and the third category is the analysis tools category.

(1) Search engines

We can enter our business keywords into the main search engines and find more keywords related to our main keywords in the relevant search and autocomplete search modules.

1. Google

For example, when I entered colored contacts into google, google automatically filled in other keywords that users search for frequently, and the related keywords appeared at the bottom.

"People also ask» in search results is a great place to get long-tail keywords.

2. Bing

Bing is also a search engine and it also has its own recommendations and search autocomplete. We enter our business keywords into Bing and we may get different results from Google.

3. Duckduckgo

Duckduckgo is a new search engine that has emerged in recent years. We can view relevant search results for our main business keywords here.

4. Yandex

The Russian search engine, search and screening of keywords is similar to Google. You can also use the tool from Yandex - https://wordstat.yandex.ru/

We can see that when searching for our main keywords on different search engines, similar search terms and auto-filled search keys are similar, but there are some subtle differences.

These terms are search terms that are frequently used by users, recognized by search engines, and are of great reference value. We need to sort out these keywords and do a deep analysis.

(2) Large community and authoritative platform

1. Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a very reputable website. The explanations of some of the words on it are very complete and detailed. Here we can find more keywords related to our business.

Of course, you can use the Karooya tool to find other related keywords for a Wikipedia keyword. But the disadvantage of this tool is that it cannot query and count some niche words.

2. Youtube search

Youtube is currently the second largest search engine website after Google. YouTube search keywords match video search results. The keywords here are very valuable for reference, and the click-through rate of the display is relatively high.

Enter our top keywords on Youtube and keywords users search frequently will be automatically recommended.

You can also expand the search results to see related search results for that term in the search results.

Of course, you can use YouTube's keyword search tool to find more keywords, for example by installing the tubebuddy plugin, which will be automatically suggested when you search for keywords on YouTube.

Another option is to use http://keywordtooldominator.com/k/youtube-keyword-tool. Enter keywords to search.

3. Reddit Community

Reddit is a very large community with millions of people interacting every day and there can be many keywords that are highly relevant to users' search intent. We can type in our main keywords on Reddit and look through user posts and responses in subtopics to find rich keywords.

Here we can find long terms such as recommendations for comfortable men's underwear; men use comfortable men's underwear. We can also use the keywordrddit tool to find more keywords related to our business on Reddit.

It is worth noting that not every word can be searched on the keyword rddit, some words are small, and there are relatively few discussions on reddit, without discussions on large subreddits it is difficult to search here. For example, I searched for color contacts to no avail, but there are many results for buzzword makeup.

4. Industry Forum

Industry forums are closely related to your business and are the most active places for your potential customers, where you can find many valuable keywords and topics. To find your industry forum, google: “keyword forum” “keyword” + “forum” “keyword” + “forums” “keyword” + “board”.

5. Amazon

Amazon is the largest integrated trading platform in the world and Amazon also has its own search engine that collects the most searched terms on Amazon and gives you autocomplete suggestions. No matter what business you're in, you can always find hundreds of similar sellers on Amazon. Product descriptions, customer questions, customer reviews, etc. contain rich keywords.

(3) Analysis tools and websites

1. Google Keyword Planner

The Keyword Planner is a functional module within Google Ads, mainly for reference data for users who need to place Google Ads. The keywords here are actually counted from Google search which is very reputable and authentic. Search volume, competitiveness, cost per click are all very accurate data.

2. Keywordeveywhere, Keyword Surfer, Ubersuggest and other keyword recommendation plugins

Tools like keywordeveywhere, Keyword Surfer, and Ubersuggest can install Google plugins. When you search for keywords on Google, these plugins will recommend relevant keywords to you in the sidebar.

3. Analytical sites like Semrush, ahrefs

Semrush, Ahrefs can do very detailed keyword analysis, including: search volume, competition difficulty, search results, trends, related keywords and related questions, search results that match the keyword's SERP results, advertisements, etc. The information may provide us with a more complete analysis.

This is a good way to use Semrush to analyze the keywords of existing competitors. We can find keywords that are already ranking on all competitor sites in semrush. After analysis, we can choose keywords with less competition to use.

Ahrefs can not only view the search data of a particular keyword on google, but also search its data on search engines like youtube, amazon, bing, yahoo, etc.

4. Tools like ExplodingTopics.com, AnswerThePublic

Search for hot topics, enter industry-related keywords, view current hot topics, and click to view the popularity of certain topics. If search volume and trends are high, you may want to consider creating some content as keywords.

Use AnswerThePublic to find long tail topics and keywords. It displays long tail keywords as some common questions. We can create content to accommodate these long tail keywords.

5. Soovle tools

Soovle is available for Wikipedia, Google, Amazon, http://answers.com, YouTube, Bing and Yahoo! to create a quick list of popular terms.

6. Use Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics

Using these two tools for keyword analysis usually means that our business has been doing this for a certain period of time (2-3 months) and the analysis tools already have relevant data, we analyze this data, and then we create content for optimization.

(1) Find keywords with more impressions but fewer clicks.

Keywords with high impressions and low clicks can have high traffic potential, but we are not ranking well enough and we need to create better content to rank for. After we have mined the keywords in each of the above resource points, we will move on to the next step - keyword processing.

2. How to deal with keyword research

• Step 1: After we sorted out the keywords from the above resources (search engines, community platforms, analysis tools, etc.), we combined these keywords into a table. The keywords fields of this table include: name, source, search volume, competition difficulty, number of clicks, volume of search results, etc.
• Step 2: Remove duplicate aggregated keywords because the keywords we have aggregated from different places may have duplicates. Just use Duplicates → Remove Duplicates in Excel.
• Step 3: You can deal with keywords with a search volume over 100 first.

Check the entire table and remove keywords that are clearly not related to our business, especially keywords that we have obtained from other keyword analysis tools that use broad match and recommend some keywords that are not related to our business.

For example, our business keyword is baby-doll (physical doll), if the keyword tool recommends doll (doll) or dollars (dollars), such words are clearly not relevant to our business and should be removed.

If you really can't confirm if a certain keyword is related to your business, you can copy the keyword to Google for search, check the text search results and image results to see if it matches the characteristics of your business, if not, delete it.

• Step 4: Group keywords with a search volume of more than 100, group keywords with the same value, and form a keyword cluster on the same topic. You can search for a specific modifier in an Excel sheet and then place a modifier that contains it. Words are extracted and translated to see if they are words of the same type.

For example, if I filter out the best modifier, I will get a lot of keywords that contain best, and these words can be used as a keyword cluster. People familiar with Excel can use formulas to classify and count data directly.

Once you've grouped all your keywords, you'll most likely end up with a table like this, which is a general table of your keyword groups, including Russian and English, your keywords, search volume, and competition difficulty.

After we have dealt with this keyword table, in the next chapter of Keyword Difficulty Analysis, we will analyze the difficulty level of the keywords in each group. The competition is small, it has conversion value, it fits the business, and it matches the user's search query. Keywords take precedence. The last table is the basis for building our site (structure, number of pages, etc.), SEO optimization of pages, content creation and external link building.

3. How to analyze the difficulty of keyword competition

Next, we will analyze how to evaluate the difficulty of these keywords. We definitely want to promote low competition keywords first so we can rank faster.

So, how do you know how difficult it is to compete with these words?

1. Google home page score

Enter the keyword you want to submit to Google and check the first 10 search results. If the majority of your search results are authoritative websites such as Wikipedia and other authoritative websites, it's hard for you to compete for that keyword on the first page. Conversely, if the first page has a page similar to the one you want to rank for, such as a competitor's blog page, category page, or product page, then you stand a good chance of competing for a rank.

Also, if that page has rich SERP selection results such as search results for advertisements, images, videos, Q&A, stores, etc. It is also harder to rank for such keywords.

Check the number of search results for this keyword and return time. Many of the results take a long time, indicating that there are many pages involved in the ranking and the competition is very strong.

Check the site snapshot under the search results for this keyword, the newer the snapshot update time, the more active these pages, the content is updated every day, and the page competition is relatively high.

2. Use the keyword tool to query the difficulty of the keywords you want to promote

As mentioned earlier, both Semrsuh and ahrefs can query the difficulty of keywords, as well as KWFinder and moz, but you will find that the difficulty of each keyword given by them is different because each tool has its own algorithm, but generally the level of difficulty not too different. We can be given a link, but full trust is not required.

3. Canlrank is a more complete SEO keyword difficulty analysis tool

You can enter here the keywords you want to compete for and at least 5 of your competitors, this will give you the most competitive words among those competitors, which is a very good guideline.

4. How to choose the main keywords

1. Keyword Traffic Size

In general, we definitely want to choose high traffic keywords to promote because there is search traffic, there will be clicks, and clicks will lead to conversions, but now Google is getting smarter and smarter, it's not a "word without search traffic".

Even at first, the potential conversion is very small. If your low traffic keywords have good content coverage, Google will also rank for other keywords in this article. Thus, keyword traffic is only a reference, not absolute. If you find that high-traffic words are very difficult to compete in keyword difficulty analysis, then you can run small traffic first and then compare the difficulty with other keywords.

In addition, when we check the traffic of a certain keyword in the Keyword Tool, we must check not only the search volume and the number of clicks on a single word, but also the traffic received by the top ranked pages in the search results for that keyword. Most of the keywords contained on the page and the keyword you searched for belong to the same keyword cluster, so we won't miss a few more potential keyword clusters.

2. Trending keyword size

We can see the trend of keywords in semrush as well as the trend of a certain keyword in Google Trends, we prioritize keywords with rising trends.

3. Keyword CTR

The click through rate of keywords is also a benchmark because the click through rate is not high, indicating that the chances of customers coming to your site are relatively low.

You can enter the keywords you are looking for in Google or semrush, ahrefs and other analysis tools.

Check your Google search results. If there are more featured SERP snippets as well as results such as advertisements, Q&A blocks, card shops, etc., it means that the CTR for that keyword is generally low because people could have found the answer in search results interface.

There will be no further click behavior, or this click behavior is generated by pay-per-click advertisements and not natural search click behavior. Tools such as semrush and ahrefs can query the SERPs for that keyword, and have a link to click-through data for that keyword.

4. Keyword Difficulty

In terms of keyword difficulty, we have already introduced how to evaluate the difficulty of keyword competition. A low degree of competition can be used as a benchmark for the main keywords. The keyword difficulty in the analysis tool is mainly determined based on the authority of the site ranked first in the SERPs in the search results. If the authority of the site is very good, the difficulty will be very high. If it is not very good, then we have the opportunity to compete.

5. Keywords and purpose of the user's search

There are thousands of keywords in our business, but what is the purpose of a user's search for each keyword, we have to figure out what kind of content we want to create in order to rank well. Or we should choose keywords that match our conversion goals.

First of all, let's understand the search intent of the user. When a user searches for a keyword in a search engine, they must be looking for something. Generally, there are the following four basic search intents:

1. Navigation - the user is looking for a specific website/brand;
2. Information - the user is looking for general information;
3. Transaction - the user wants to buy something on the Internet;
4. Commercial - Users want to do research before buying.

How to determine the customer's search intent for this keyword, we can search for the keyword to analyze on Google and then check the search results to see what content is showing up on Google. This content is the user's search target.

For example, when we make physical dolls, the word "real doll" is the real doll and the brand word, but because it is a relatively long-term and relatively large brand in the industry, this word has become an industry word, and doll games, love the doll of the same existence. Its traffic is relatively high, so we created a blog hoping to capture the ranking of this keyword, but when we searched for this word on Google, we found that the purpose of the word is navigation, users just want to search for this word.

6. Where is the keyword in the conversion funnel

Different keywords can be assigned to different stages of the conversion funnel (awareness-deep understanding-thinking-purchase-actual conversion). Knowing where keywords are in the conversion funnel allows us to create content that matches user search queries.

For example, the cognitive stage: what is XXX; in-depth understanding: how to XXX, considering the purchase: how about XXX, discount XXX, the actual conversion stage, generally specific product services, payment and logistics, etc., product use and after-sales keywords.

7. Choose long tail keywords

Long tail keyword competition is minimal and this can help you rank quickly. As mentioned before, if you have a good article to rank for, then the other keywords in that article will rank as well, so don't get confused by the low search volume for that long tail keyword, what's the use of my ranking, really, it's really helpful. When your website's overall ranking improves to a certain extent, it will be much easier to rank for more highly competitive keywords.

8. Cost per click for keywords

Why pay attention to keyword cost per click, it refers to the amount a user spends each time a user clicks on an ad for that keyword, which is the commercial intent of the keyword if the keyword has good traffic but the commercial value is 0 then it's not the best choice. If the CPC is high enough, we can sometimes get high ROI from keywords that are rarely used in search.

5. Other Keyword Research Strategies

1. SEO Shell Strategy

When we validate a certain keyword and create very good content to place that keyword on, we hope that we will have as many opportunities as possible to rank on the homepage, then we can publish information about this keyword on many authoritative websites.

For example, you post an article on your blog and then make a YouTube video to cover video search, LinkedIn, Medium, quora, etc. and post relevant keyword-optimized content.

2. GSC Keyword Research

I mentioned earlier that GSC keyword research is basically a research method that is used after the SEO work has been done for a certain period of time.

We can check related keywords, impressions and click-through rates in GSC. We sort keywords according to impressions and optimize keywords with high impressions but low CTR.

3. Relevant Keyword Optimization

This refers to synonyms or words with very similar meanings. There is a trade word called LSI keyword. In fact, when we optimize a page, in addition to optimizing around the main keywords, we can focus on synonyms and other related keywords. Layout synonyms, LSI keywords in the article, you can also get a lot of extra traffic.

4. Content Gap Strategies for Semrush and Ahrefs

Semrush Keywords Gap, Ahrefs Content Gap has this feature that can check keyword differences between us and competitors to provide us with keywords and content optimization suggestions. If most of our competitors currently rank for a keyword, optimizing for that keyword can also be very relevant and important. If most competitors rank very high for a particular keyword, it also means that the competition for that keyword is relatively strong.

5. Search for keywords for search queries of potential customers

At an early stage of our business, we will have a reference to the characteristics of the main client model to classify our potential clients. Here we can find out what topics and keywords our potential clients usually search for in search engines. Creating content with these keywords can help you reach a large number of potential customers.

For example, if we make physical dolls, when we make the main characterization of the client model, the clients of physical dolls can be divided into: children-toy buyers, customers with certain children's intentions, customers who like animation, customers who like doll clothes, customers, who like customers with children's toys.

Then when we select the keywords, we can also select the keywords that these potential customers will search for to promote, such as play best kids toys? Large life-sized soft-bears, the best play sets and much more.

6. Conduct keyword research

When we have completed our keyword analysis and know which keywords we prioritize are easier to rank for, the next step is to create content related to that keyword.

1. Topic matches a set of keyword clusters

Under the keyword, there are many other related keywords. We name the keywords with the same meaning as the keyword clusters. When creating content, the keyword cluster is the topic, and the keywords below the keyword cluster can be used as a subtopic that can be laid out in our article to enhance the semantic connection and relevance of the content of the article. As in my article, the main keyword is keyword analysis, and each subheading is a keyword in that keyword analysis topic.

As for the keyword clusters, we have already sorted them in the keyword processing step. Our subsequent analysis is to determine which word is better and easier to rank. We will use this word to create content first. Creating content with keyword clusters can create very rich content that suits the user's search intent.

2. Location of main keywords

Each set of keyword clusters has its own main keywords, reflects your main keywords in the title and description, and tries to position them as high as possible. In content, reasonable placement of other keywords, do not pay too much attention to keyword density, so as not to be judged as keyword accumulation.

Please note that we do not require that all keywords in a keyword cluster be placed in an article. According to the article structure and semantic structure, relevant keywords can be naturally arranged. As I said before, for good article content, Google will rank for other keywords in the article as well.

3. Building an external chain after creating content

Keywords are also the basis for building our external chain (external links). As I mentioned above, the keyword cluster corresponds to an article, and the article has a URL. When we create external links, the content of the external links we create must be as close as possible in order for us to want to click on the link. The page theme height is the same. Anchor text selects words or phrases that exactly or partially match our page's keywords.

The whole process of keyword research is described above. Get the basics and principles of keyword analysis first, then dig for clues in the various channels, sort them, and build a list of keywords. Analysis, here includes analysis of the complexity of the competition, analysis of value (traffic, conversion, search intent), confirmation of the keywords that we need to do after the analysis is completed, and the corresponding implementation plan formulation, page optimization, blog writing, multimedia content creation, creation external links, etc.

Finally, use Google Analytics and webmaster tools to analyze the keywords that have already been ranked and optimize the content of high-value keywords (more display and less clicks). Keep repeating the above steps: Mining-Building-Analyzing-Optimizing until you have keyword rankings and corresponding page rankings.

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