How To Successfully Do Keyword Research for SEO

Keyword research is the cornerstone of any SEO campaign. 

Without keyword research, you won’t know which keywords your target audience searches for, which ones have search intent that matches your business, which ones are feasible for you to target, and what you need to do to rank for them. 

The introduction of AI Overviews makes keyword research even more important. You’ll want to know which keywords AI Overviews appear for so you can make sure it’s worth your time trying to rank for them. 

If you want a complete guide to keyword research, you’ve found it. In this article, I’ll show you my step-by-step process for finding, analyzing, and implementing keywords. You’ll be a keyword research pro by the end of it. 

Key Takeaways

• Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing keywords to target with new content and optimization campaigns. 
• Keyword research helps you find competitive keywords that you have a chance to rank for. It also helps you understand search intent and discover what kind of content you need to create.
• Start the keyword research process by visiting your goals. Make sure you target keywords that achieve your broader marketing aims, whether that’s brand awareness, increasing conversions, or something else. 
• Use the keyword discovery phase to find long-tail keywords that have relatively high search volume and low competition. 
• Use tools like Ubersuggest during your keyword analysis to narrow down your shortlist by assessing hundreds of keywords quickly.
• Use your keywords to create new content or optimize your existing content. Pay attention to headings, meta tags, and body copy during the optimization process. But remember, no keyword stuffing!
• Track your keyword rankings to measure your improvement. Ubersuggest has a built-in keyword tracker that can help. 

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• What Is Keyword Research?
• Why Is Keyword Research Important for SEO?
  • Why Search Intent Is Important for Keyword Research
• How to Do Keyword Research
  • 1. Revisit Your SEO Goals
  • 2. Keyword Discovery
    • Long-Tail Keywords
    • Local Keywords
  • 3. Keyword Analysis
  • 4. Keyword Targeting
  • 5. Keyword Optimization
  • 6. Keyword Tracking
• Bonus: Four More Ways to Find Keywords
  • Ubersuggest
  • Ahrefs and Semrush
  • AnswerThePublic
  • Alternative Search Suggestions
• FAQs
• Conclusion

What Is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing the search terms your target audience enters into Google and other search engines. It helps you find which terms are most popular, which ones your site has a chance of ranking for, and the kind of content Google thinks searchers want to see in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

You can carry out keyword research on a global scale, nationally, or locally. Local keyword research finds topics that people in a specific area are searching for. This means you can do keyword research even if you are a small business that only serves customers in a particular city or state.

Why Is Keyword Research Important for SEO?

There’s no point in creating content if people aren’t searching for it. Keyword research helps you avoid this scenario by ensuring you target the search phrases your target audience actually uses. That makes it much more likely these users will find your site on Google and pay you a visit. 

You don’t stop keyword research when you find a bunch of high-volume search terms, though. That’s because keyword research also helps you find the terms your website has a chance of ranking for. 

If you’re a local store selling wetsuits, for example, it’s unlikely you’re going to appear in search results that dominated by industry giants like Ripcurl and O’Neil:

Keyword research can tell you if a search term is too competitive but also if it’s not worth your time. 

For example, if every result in the SERP is a listicle from a third-party media brand and you’re trying to rank an individual product, it’s probably not going to happen. Users just aren’t looking for that type of content. 

Why Search Intent Is Important for Keyword Research

There’s another reason keyword research is absolutely vital before you start optimizing your site: discovering search intent. 

Search intent is the reason a user types a query into Google. It’s a reflection of what the user is trying to achieve. For example, a person searching for “black basketball shoes” probably wants to make a purchase from an e-commerce store. Someone searching for “how to sink a three pointer” is looking for tips on improving their shooting.

Google attempts to show results that it thinks match the intent of every query. So, someone searching for basketball shoes will get a list of e-commerce stores, and someone searching for an informational keyword will get videos and articles. 

Keyword research helps you discover the search intent of your target keywords, ensuring you create content with the best chance of ranking. 

“What sort of things do they search at awareness, research, and transaction phases of their buying journey? Target each of these clearly in different areas of the website by bucketing groups of terms into these different intent groups,” explains William Kammer, VP of SEO at NP Accel.

How to Do Keyword Research

You know what keyword research is and why it’s important. In this next section, I’m going to show you how to research keywords for SEO.

1. Revisit Your SEO Goals

Before you find and analyze keywords, take a minute to remind yourself of your SEO and wider business goals. Doing so will help you ensure that you spend your time and energy targeting keywords that will help you achieve these goals. 

For example, businesses that want to increase revenue and conversions should target commercial keywords. Others who want to generate more organic traffic should target broader informational keywords with higher search volumes. 

2. Keyword Discovery

Once you’ve reviewed your goals, you can start brainstorming keyword ideas using one of the following keyword discovery methods. 

One strategy is to look at things from your customer’s perspective and make a list of the queries you think they are searching for. Consider:

• Their pain points
• Their goals and ambitions
• Your core service offering
• Industry terminology or brands

Don’t worry too much about how many searches these terms get or whether they’re too competitive or not. The idea is to create a list of seed keywords that you can explore further with keyword research tools.

Next, go to a keyword tool like Ubersuggest and start entering your seed keywords to get hundreds of related terms and questions that people are also searching for. 

Here’s an example if one of my seed keywords is “womens wetsuit.”

Alternatively, you can mine your competitors for inspiration. When you analyze competitor keywords, you see which terms they are ranking for that you aren’t. 

Head on over to the Similar Websites section of Ubersuggest and enter either your own or one of your competitors’ domains. 

This will give you a list of similar sites, along with the keywords both sites rank for:

It’s a great way to make sure you aren’t losing out to your competitors over low-competition or high-volume keywords. 

If you’re chasing a newly-trending keyword, you may need to take another route, though. Jonathan Hoffer, SEO Manager at NP Digital, explains that “in the case of new trends they might not appear in a tool so you’ll have to check social media or forums to see if something is trending.”

Long-Tail Keywords

When you use the methods above, you want to pay particular attention to long-tail keywords. These are keywords of more than three words that are very specific. These keywords may have less volume than head terms (phrases with only one or two words) but they are usually much easier to rank for. 

“Hiking boots for bunions” is a great example of a long-tail keyword. You can imagine that it’s much easier to rank a page for this term than it is to rank for “hiking boots” or even “hiking boots for ladies” as you can see from Ubersuggest’s Search Difficulty score below:

Don’t worry if your keyword research tool tells you that these terms only have 10 monthly searches. If the term is highly relevant to your customer, then you want to be in the top results. 

Local Keywords

If you want to improve your local SEO using keyword research, you’re in luck! Keyword research for local SEO is usually much easier since the addition of your location automatically means you’re finding long-tail keywords. 

You can use the exact same strategies I’ve discussed above, just make sure you aren’t limiting yourself by using just one location.

Let’s say I have a pizzeria in Los Angeles, for example. I could find keywords by adding “LA” to my seed keywords to get:

• take out pizza LA
• pizza delivery LA
• Best pizzeria Los Angeles 

But I can find way more keywords by being even more specific with my location. If my pizza joint is based in Santa Monica, for example, I’ll probably find way less competitive keywords using that location at the end of my keywords. 

And if I’m offering a take-out service, then I can target every region in the city!

3. Keyword Analysis

So you’ve got a huge list of hundreds or thousands of different keywords. Now you need to narrow your list down through keyword analysis. 

A tool like Ubersuggest will be your friend here, since we need to look at several metrics, the search intent, and the composition of the SERPs for every keyword.

The most important keyword metrics are search volume (the estimated number of monthly searches) and SEO difficulty (a score from 0-100 measuring the keywords competitiveness).

Carrying on my wetsuit example from above, you can see that “womens wetsuit 3mm” has a great balance between search volume (320) and search difficulty (28).

You can analyze all of your keywords at once in Ubersuggest by creating a Keywords List. This makes it easy to sort keywords by volume and difficulty to find the top performers. 

You can go ahead and remove the most difficult keywords from your list. Of course, what counts as a difficult keyword will differ from site to site. The more authority your domain has, the easier it will be to rank for the keywords with Search Difficulty scores of 50+. 

Next, run a Google search for each keyword to analyze search intent. Your goal here is to make sure the kind of content you create (whether that’s a blog post or an e-commerce product page) has a chance to rank. Ideally, you’ll see lots of similar sites. 

Finally, analyze the search’s composition. Check the number of ad spots, whether there’s a featured snippet and most importantly, whether an AI Overview is taking up real estate. 

Nikki Brandemarte, Sr. SEO Strategist and Local SEO Team Lead at NP Digital, adds that you should “pay attention to content coverage for specific topic areas. “For example, are your SERP competitors publishing multiple blogs dedicated to explaining the basics of a topic, or one comprehensive guide? This can help pinpoint gaps in topical authority.”

Don’t be put off by the presence of these rich result SERP features. Instead, make sure you optimize your content to appear in them. 

At the end of all this, you should have a list of keywords that meet the following criteria:

• Has any amount of search volume
• Is relevant to your brand or industry
• Has a medium or low search difficulty
• Meets the user intent

4. Keyword Targeting

You’ve got a list of suitable keywords to rank for, but how do you decide which to target first? Prioritizing your efforts may seem daunting when you’re faced with hundreds of potential keywords, but it’s pretty easy if you follow my step-by-step process.

Start off by targeting the low-hanging fruit. These are any keywords with incredibly low search difficulty scores and reasonably high traffic levels that you think it will be easy to rank for. Achieving some quick wins is great for momentum and can show stakeholders that SEO is worth investing in.

Next, target keywords with high commercial intent. These will usually be product or purchase-led terms that target customers towards the bottom of your funnel. While these may be harder to rank for, you could see an increase in revenue with just a trickle of traffic. 

Finally, target top-of-funnel keywords that have very high volumes. Now you’ve started to see the results of a targeted approach to keyword research you can start trying to attract organic visitors in droves.   

5. Keyword Optimization

Now it’s time to put all your keyword research efforts to work by optimizing your site. I’ve talked at length about this in the past, so I’m just going to remind you of the top ways to optimize your site for your chosen keywords.

These include:

• Creating the best content out there for each keyword, making sure content type aligns with search intent of what users are looking for.  See the image below:

• Use your keyword and related keywords throughout your content, but don’t stuff them in.
• Make sure to include your keyword in the title tag, meta description, and H1.
• Create a user-friendly URL that contains your keyword.
• Make sure the keyword is included in at least one alt tag for an image on the page.
• Optimize your content for featured snippets and other rich results.

If you’re targeting a really competitive keyword, then you’re almost certainly going to have to build links to your page, too. 

6. Keyword Tracking

There’s no point going to all the effort of finding high-potential keywords and optimizing your site for them if you aren’t going to track your success. 

That’s where keyword tracking tools like Ubersuggest come in handy.  

With Ubersuggest’s Rank Tracking feature, you automatically track your rankings, get daily status updates, and alerts whenever things change. 

The platform’s dashboard makes it easy to see your progress at a glance. You get an average position score for all your keywords, a ranking distribution graphic, and a visibility trend that is hopefully only going in one direction. 

Each keyword you target is tracked separately so you can see exactly how your optimization efforts are going. You even have the ability to see how your ranks change between desktop and mobile and from one country to another. 

Bonus: Four More Ways to Find Keywords

Want to find even more keywords? Then use the following tools and tactics to find as many low-difficulty keywords as possible. 

Ubersuggest

I’ve already talked a lot about Ubersuggest’s keyword discovery capabilities, but one feature I didn’t mention is keyword modifiers. 

When you search for a keyword in Ubersuggest you can use five modifiers (suggestions, related, questions, prepositions, and comparisons) to surface dozens of low-competition keywords. 

Here are some of the results from the “Questions” modifier for when I search for “hiking boots”:

This makes it easy to find long-tail keywords that are easier to rank for, like “how to waterproof hiking boots.”

Ahrefs and Semrush

In addition to Ubersuggest, there are a number of SEO tools to choose from. Two other popular SEO tools — Ahrefs and Semrush — both have keyword research capabilities. 

Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer tool offers many of the same metrics as Ubersuggest, including search volume, traffic potential and a keyword difficulty score:

Many SEOs use multiple tools when doing keyword research, so don’t worry about mixing and matching your results. Just be aware that search volumes are estimates and can vary from one platform to another as a result. 

AnswerThePublic

Another tool of mine, AnswerThePublic, provides a list of questions based on a specific keyword or phrase. By entering a keyword into AnswerThePublic, you can access a wealth of long-tail keywords to target.

For example, let’s take a look at a search for the keyword “social media marketing.”

It shows us questions people are entering in Google, such as “What are the best social media marketing strategies?” or “How to measure ROI in social media marketing?” 

This gives you more potential ideas to build content on that you know there’s an audience for.

Alternative Search Suggestions

Did you know search engines themselves can help you with keyword research?

Several search engines have “similar suggested search” options that appear below the search box when you start typing in keywords.

Depending on your keyword, each search engine will offer different suggestions. This is what Duck Duck Go looks like when you type in “social media marketing.”

And here’s what the People Also Ask section in Google looks like for the same term:

You can even use Google’s autocomplete feature to find long-tail keywords. 

Just enter your seed keyword into the search bar and then any other letter. Google will automatically suggest several popular phrases for you to analyze. 

FAQs

How do I know what keywords to target for my website?

There are several ways to know which keywords are right for your website. First, keywords must be relevant to your business and target audience. Think about topics related to your industry that your audience is likely to search for. Use a tool like Ubersuggest to find and select these topical keywords.

Second, you need to be able to rank for these keywords. That’s where keyword analysis comes in. Analyze the current rankings and check your site has enough authority to compete with the existing domains.

Are there free keyword research tools?

There are several free keyword research tools like Ubersuggest and Moz. That being said, you may find it worthwhile paying for the premium version of either tool to unlock additional data and features. You don’t need to spend a fortune on expensive SEO tools to compile a list of good keywords, however.

Should you do keyword research for paid campaigns?

You should do keyword research for organic and paid marketing. You may want to focus on different metrics depending on whether you are targeting organic or paid visits. For organic search, it’s important to take note of the domain authority of your competitors. For paid search, take note of the average CPC to decide which keywords are worthwhile.

How does keyword research relate to SEO?

Keyword research is a fundamental part of SEO. It’s only by finding relevant search terms and assessing your suitability to rank for them that you have something to optimize your website with. The more thorough your keyword research, the more likely you are to find high-volume, low-competition keywords that bring in tons of organic visitors.

Conclusion

Hopefully, you now have a good idea of how to do keyword research.Completing thorough keyword research is crucial if you want to drive traffic to your website. Otherwise, you risk wasting time on terms people aren’t searching for or keywords that are too difficult for your site. It’s even important if you are optimizing for other types of search engines like YouTube. So start building your toolkit and dive into keyword research for your site using the process above.