How To Do Keyword Research for SEO With TripleWebTech

Master SEO keyword research with TripleWebTech: find top keywords, gauge volume/competition, and enhance content for better rankings.

Introduction

Keyword research is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization (SEO). It involves researching and analyzing keywords and keyword phrases that are relevant to your business, products, or services. The goal is to identify the terms and phrases that your target audience is searching for, so you can optimize your website content accordingly.

An information from Conductor stated, “Keyword research is the process by which you research popular search terms people type into search engines like Google, and include them strategically in your content so that your content appears higher on a search engine results page (SERP). Keyword research is a fundamental practice in search engine optimization (SEO).”

Effective keyword research helps you:

• Better understand your customers and what they are looking for
• Create content that answers common questions and provides solutions
• Improve website discoverability and search rankings
• Drive more qualified traffic to your site
• Focus your SEO efforts on terms that really matter for your business

Without proper keyword research, you are essentially guessing at what keywords to target. This can lead to wasted effort optimizing for low-value keywords, or missing high-potential keywords entirely. That’s why taking the time to research and analyze keywords is a crucial investment for any website focused on organic search traffic and SEO.

Understand Your Audience

When doing keyword research, it’s crucial to start by understanding who your target audience is. This will help you identify the types of keywords and search queries they are likely to use when looking for your products, services or content.

Some key steps for understanding your audience include:

• Identify demographic information like age, gender, location, income level, education, interests, etc. Create detailed buyer personas.
• Determine their goals, challenges and questions around your offering. Put yourself in their shoes.
• Analyze existing customer data and feedback to gain insights into how they describe your offerings.
• Look at audience search intent – are they informational, navigational or transactional searches?
• Research how your competitors describe and speak to your shared audience. What language do they use?
• Leverage tools like Google Trends and Answer the Public to see actual search queries people are using around your topics.
• Conduct user research like surveys, interviews and focus groups to directly ask your audience for keyword ideas.
• Examine social media discussions within your niche to see common words and phrases.

The more you understand your target audience at the start, the better equipped you’ll be to identify relevant, high-value keywords that resonate with their search behavior. This ensures your keyword strategy is tailored specifically to connecting with your ideal customers.

Brainstorm Relevant Keywords

Make a list of potential keywords related to your business/website. This is one of the most important steps in keyword research. Start by thinking about words and phrases that are relevant to what your website/business offers.

Some tips for brainstorming keywords:

• List your products, services, topics, categories, etc. Then think of all the words and phrases that describe each one.
• Consider synonyms, related terms, and conversational phrases. For example, for a pizza restaurant you could include “pizza delivery”, “order pizza online”, “pizza takeout”, etc.
• Think about words your target audience may use when searching for your offerings. Put yourself in their shoes.
• Use tools like UberSuggest, Google Trends, and Answer the Public to generate more keyword ideas based on seed keywords.
• Look at keywords your competitors are ranking for by using SEMrush, Ahrefs, or other tools. Consider including these as well.
• Ask colleagues, friends, or customers for keyword suggestions. Get input from people familiar with your business.

The goal is to generate an extensive list of relevant keywords. Don’t worry about ranking ability at this stage. You want as many possibilities as possible to analyze further in later steps. Be expansive in your brainstorming.

Keyword Planner Tool

Google’s free Keyword Planner tool allows you to discover new keyword ideas and view monthly search volume data. This can help you prioritize which terms to target in your content.

To use Keyword Planner:

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account. If you don’t have one, you can create one for free.
2. Click on Tools in the left sidebar, then select Keyword Planner.
3. Enter a seed keyword that’s relevant to your topic. This will generate related keywords and phrases.
4. Filter keywords by average monthly searches to focus on terms with sufficient search volume. You generally want at least 1,000 searches per month.
5. Look at the competition column to get a sense of how easy it may be to rank for each keyword. High competition keywords will be harder to rank for.
6. Add keywords to a plan and export the list. This will give you keyword ideas and monthly search volumes to inform your targeting.
7. Repeat this process with other seed keywords to generate more ideas. Look for low competition long tail variations of your main keywords.

The Keyword Planner provides excellent data to guide your keyword research process. Just be sure to double check volumes using other tools as the Planner data is not always fully accurate. But it’s a great starting point for keyword discovery.

Use Google Autocomplete for Long-Tail Keyword Ideas

Google Autocomplete is a handy tool for discovering long-tail keyword variations related to your main keyword targets.

When you start typing a keyword into the Google search bar, Google will automatically suggest longer, more specific queries to complete your search term. These suggestions come from what other users are frequently searching for.

For example, if you start typing “keyword research” into Google, the autocomplete results may include:

• a keyword research for youtube
• keyword research tools
• keyword research process
• a keyword research for blogs
• keyword research for seo

And so on.

Google Autocomplete provides a quick way to see all the various long-tail permutations of a base keyword that people are searching for. You can jot these down as they appear to expand your keyword list.

Focus on long-tail keywords with higher search volumes for better optimization potential. Google Autocomplete is useful for spurring additional keyword ideas that you may not have thought of previously.

Analyze Competitors

Analyzing your competitors’ websites and ads is an excellent way to discover new keyword opportunities. Your competitors likely target many of the same keywords that your business would want to rank for.

Start by making a list of your top competitors. Then use tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or SpyFu to analyze their organic and paid search results. Look at the top keywords they rank for and the terms they bid on for paid ads.

Pay attention to competitor keywords with high search volume that your site doesn’t currently rank for. These present opportunities for you to target and potentially outrank your competition. You may also find valuable long-tail variations of your core keywords in their results.

Competitor analysis takes keyword research beyond just your business perspective. It gives you insight into how others in your space approach SEO and SEM. With this information, you can adopt successful tactics in your own strategy. Just be sure not to copy competitor content directly, as that could penalize you for thin or duplicated content.

Keyword Gap Analysis

Comparing your site’s keywords to your competitors’ keywords is a crucial step in keyword research. This is known as a keyword gap analysis.

Here are the steps to conduct one:

1. Make a list of your top 3-5 competitors. These should be sites that rank well for your target keywords.
2. Use a tool like Ahrefs to see which keywords your competitors rank for. Export these into a spreadsheet.
3. Do the same for your own site – export the keywords you currently rank for.
4. Compare the two lists to identify “gaps”. Look for popular keywords your competitors rank for that your site doesn’t. These present opportunities for you to create content around and potentially rank for.
5. Prioritize the keywords in the gaps list based on search volume and difficulty to rank. Focus first on keywords with high search volume that your site has a good chance of ranking for.
6. Identify any keywords you rank for that competitors don’t. Analyze if these are worthwhile keywords to continue targeting, or if efforts would be better spent elsewhere.
7. Use the gaps list to create new content and optimize existing content. This will help you expand your keyword footprint and gain more organic traffic.

Conducting a keyword gap analysis ensures you capitalize on valuable keyword opportunities you may be missing compared to competitors. Staying on top of gaps allows you to continually expand your keyword targeting and presence.

Group Keywords by Theme

After generating a large list of relevant keyword ideas, the next step is to group them into topics and categories. This helps organize your keywords and identify common themes and subtopics.

To group keywords by theme:

• Review your keyword list and highlight common words or phrases that relate to a specific theme or topic. For example, keywords around “SEO tips”, “on-page optimization”, “link building”, etc.
• Create topic buckets or Excel sheets for each theme. Move related keywords into their respective topic groups.
• Break down broad topics into subcategories where it makes sense. For example, “SEO tips” could have subcategories like “keyword research”, “content optimization”, “technical SEO”, etc.
• Identify which groups have the most keyword opportunities. These are themes you may want to focus on when creating content.
• Note keywords that fit into multiple categories. You can tag these as crossover keywords and potentially create content that targets both themes.
• Add keywords to an “Other” bucket if they don’t fit into any defined categories. Revisit these later to see if new categories emerge.

Properly grouping your keywords helps reveal the themes and topics with the most search volume potential. It also makes it easier to develop targeted content around each theme. Focus on creating pillar content for the largest keyword groups first before addressing smaller niche topics.

Prioritize Keywords

When you have a big list of potential keywords, it’s important to prioritize which ones to target in your content and SEO strategy. Here are some tips for determining which keywords should be your top priorities:

• Focus on keywords with high search volume and relevance – Look for keywords that have a high monthly search volume, indicating strong user intent and interest. But make sure those high volume keywords are also highly relevant to your business offerings. Targeting high volume keywords that aren’t a good fit will bring the wrong traffic.
• Pay attention to competitiveness – Extremely high competition keywords will be hard to rank for as a new site. But low competition keywords may not have enough search volume to be worth targeting. Look for the “just right” level of competition.
• Consider long-tail variations – Longer, more specific long-tail keywords are often easier to rank for than short one or two word keywords. But make sure there’s still decent search volume.
• Analyze trend data – Look for keywords that are steadily increasing in search volume and popularity over time. This indicates growing user interest.
• Keep top priorities aligned with business goals – Make sure your most important target keywords align with your core products, services, content pillars, and monetization goals.
• Create groups and tiers – Break your keywords down into groups and tiers so you know which ones are most critical to focus your SEO efforts on.

By carefully prioritizing keywords, you can create an effective strategy that targets the terms that will bring qualified traffic, leads, and customers to your site.

Track and Refine Keywords

Monitoring your keyword performance and adjusting as needed is a crucial part of ongoing SEO success. Here are some tips for tracking and refining your keywords:

• Use Google Analytics to view keyword rankings, traffic, and conversions over time. Check if your target keywords are driving results or if you need to shift focus.
• Check your keyword rankings in Google search to see if you’ve moved up or down for target terms. Tools like SEMrush can automate this.
• Review search query reports to uncover new relevant keywords from actual searches. Look for patterns and volume spikes.
• Run keyword reports periodically to identify new keyword opportunities in your space. The market is always changing.
• Prune underperforming keywords that deliver little traffic or conversions. Swap them for better options.
• Add fresh keywords and LSI variants to existing content to keep it competitive. Update pages targeting outdated terms.
• Monitor your competitors’ rankings for shared keywords. If they overtake you, revisit your content targeting those terms.
• Consider paid tools like Google Trends and Soovle to analyze keyword difficulty changes over time.
• Don’t forget local keywords. Track geo-modified terms relevant to your business or location.

Refining your keywords is an ongoing process as searcher behavior evolves. Continually review performance and optimize based on the latest data. A proactive approach to SEO.

Conclusion

Keyword research is the foundation of a strong SEO strategy. By following the steps outlined above, you can identify the keywords and phrases that your target audience is searching for, allowing you to create content that is relevant, informative, and optimized for search engines. This will ultimately drive more qualified traffic to your website, improve your search rankings, and help you achieve your business goals.

Remember, keyword research is an ongoing process. As search trends and user behavior evolve, you’ll need to continually monitor your keyword performance and refine your strategy accordingly. By staying on top of the latest trends and making data-driven decisions, you can ensure that your website remains visible and competitive in the ever-changing digital landscape.