Content is one of the top three ranking signals in a pool of 200+ data points that Google looks at to rank your web pages in it’s search results. Don’t just take it from me. Google Ireland’s Senior Search Quality Strategist spilled these vague and, frankly, confusing beans in a Google Q&A back in 2016. Knowing how to do keyword research is the most critical starting point for great content and highly relevant organic traffic to your site.
After all, great content that can’t be found… isn’t great content. So here at Search Engine Coach, our team of Cleveland SEO experts help people shed organic light on their content. Effective keyword research ensures that your message is easily digestible by search engines. Learning how to perform keyword research isn’t all that difficult in and of itself. Understanding how to do it well, and in a way that gets you consistent results is where you’ll struggle. But first, a refresher for the newcomers… what is SEO keyword research?
What Is Keyword Research for SEO?
Keyword research and analysis is a common search engine optimization tactic that helps internet content rank well in search results. The content creator is able to discover which user queries are frequently searched, and synonyms or related terms that will help add context for search engines. Keyword research is one of the most important preparations for on-page SEO success.
Over the years, search engines have evolved in order to serve up the best results to their searchers. Keyword research has been forced to evolve along with them. Because of this, exact keyword frequency and position in your content is speculated to play a smaller role in your page rankings than ever before.
Creating Context Is Key in Effective Keyword Research
Search engine optimization keyword research in 2017 is more about developing your content around a topic than developing your content around a single phrase. For example, if a user searches, “keyword research,” they might get results for popular keyword research tools, definitions, instructions for how to do keyword research, or even directions to a company nearby with “keyword research” in its name. How do you avoid this confusion while creating your content? How do you write content that not only solves an important problem for users, but also ranks for the terms you had in mind?
Be Mindful of Searcher Intent
Every time a user types a query into Google or Bing, they’re trying to solve a specific problem. At the very highest level, the user is either trying to make a transaction, find information, or navigate to another web page or even a physical location. Use the acronym T.I.N. to remember the three main types of searcher intent (Transactional, Informational, Navigational).
Standard keyword research won’t tell you which query is which, so you’ll have to use your best judgement to sort your keyword research into the appropriate categories.
Let’s go back to our example of a user searching for the phrase “keyword research.”
- Transactional – If the search results mainly show popular keyword research tools on the first page, you can safely bet that Google considers “keyword research” to be a transactional query.
- Informational – If the results show definitions and guides for how to research keywords for SEO, then Google is considering that query to have informational intent.
- Navigational – If the results give you a local map pack of keyword research companies or SEO contractors in your city, then Google is considering the query to have navigational intent.
After doing a quick Google search in an incognito tab, I found that the actual results of the phrase “keyword research,” are a mix between transactional and informational. Using this insight, I would know to avoid creating content around the phrase “keyword research,” that is meant to help a user navigate somewhere. Checking the keyword rankings for your target question could help you avoid a terrible mismatch.
Use Latent Semantic Indexing to Your Advantage
Simply using your target over and over again will not cut it in 2017… and probably hasn’t worked for 6 or 7 years now. Back in the pre-panda days of the web, keyword stuffing could get you results. Today, keyword stuffing will still get you a lot of things: nowhere (best case scenario), demoted, a manual action, or fired if you’re part of a digital marketing team. Using latent semantic indexing (LSI) in your keyword research and analysis to develop context in your message is the law of the land these days.
So… what is LSI, and how do I use it to inform my keyword research for SEO?
What Is LSI?
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is an algorithmic approach to associating keywords, entities and concepts. LSI terms for SEO are considered to have a very similar meaning, or are frequently co-occurring. For example, the term “latent semantic indexing” is almost a synonym to “semantic text indexing,” and will frequently co-occur with the term “LSI keyword tool.”
In fact, these examples were pulled straight from one of my favorite tools over at LSI graph. Simply enter your keyword, and the tool will generate a list of LSI terms to help develop your content. A word of warning: if the Google Adwords Keyword Planner shows that your keyword has no search volume, there’s a very good chance that LSI graph won’t be able to generate a list of related terms for you. Otherwise, this tool will have you well on your way to learning how to do keyword research for free.
Which Keyword Research Tools do I Absolutely Need?
Now that we’ve talked about modern keyword research on a conceptual level, let’s take a closer look at the tactical layer involved. In addition to LSI graph, you’ll want to have a short list of keyword research tools at your disposal.
Google Adwords Keyword Planner
The keyword planner is arguably the most widely used keyword research tool out there. Any guide about how to do keyword research for SEO will mention the keyword planner. The data comes straight from Google, so you can trust (to an extent) that it is fairly accurate.
When I was just getting started in SEO, I struggled to understand why Google would provide access to such a wonderful tool if it could be used for such manipulative purposes (namely, gaming the search results). If you’ve never run paid ads through adwords, you might wonder the same thing. The fact is, the keyword planner is there for Adwords customers to figure out how to best target their customers. Google couldn’t possibly eliminate access to the keyword planner while still generating revenues from the green ads you see at the top and bottom of most search results, right?
Well, that’s technically right, but in August of 2016, Google stopped granting full access to the keyword planner data for users that weren’t spending a moderate amount of money for Adwords advertising. They opted to display search volume ranges instead of precise numbers for the SEO marketers who had manipulative intentions and shallow pockets. Still, for small business owners and freelance bloggers, volume ranges should provide enough keyword insight to create a high ranking web page. Learning how to SEO your site is still possible with the scaled down Keyword Planner.
How to Use Google Keyword Planner
Once you create a free account, click on “Tools” in the top navigation. This will prompt a drop down menu to open up, and you’ll want to click on “Keyword Planner” (third item from the bottom of the list).
If you just need to know how to perform keyword research for organic search, clicking on “Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category” under the green section at the top of the page will take you to the right place. Enter your keyword ideas in the top text box (separate multiple ideas with commas), then click the blue “Get Ideas” button. You’ll notice that there are a variety of filtering options above the “Get Ideas” button as well. You can use these filters to target a specific location, language, date range, or create your own exclusion list.
The results page has two main sections. The top section includes the data for keywords that you entered manually, and the bottom section includes related keywords that Google scored as relevant to the terms you entered. For organic keyword research, the most important column is the Avg. Monthly Searches. This will tell you how frequently Google users search for any given term.
Competition and suggested bid are for paid advertising, so don’t take them too literally. However, these data points can be a good indication of whether or not a given keyword has commercial intent. You can bet that a high competition term with a high suggested bid is showing a handsome return on investment for advertisers, otherwise they couldn’t continue to shell out capital to appear in the search results for that keyword. Thus, keywords with a high suggested bid and competition must be correlated with searchers who are interested in making a transaction (as opposed to finding information or navigating somewhere – remember Transactional, Informational, and Navigational).
SEMrush
It would be hard to do effective keyword research without SEMrush. You can use a limited free version of this tool if you’re not a full time content marketer or SEO. I use SEMrush to do competitor research and find seed keywords. If you don’t know what I mean by “seed keywords,” this is a great time to talk about the two approaches to keyword research.
Two Approaches to Effective Keyword Research
Whatever business you’re in, you will have competition to some degree. My experience as an SEO and content strategist has shown me that keyword research and content creation originates from one of two places. You either have a piece of industry insight that you know will be valuable to your target market, or you see that your target market is engaging with a piece of competitor content that you’d like to recreate in your company’s image.
Starting With a Content Idea
Starting with an idea for a piece of content is the more difficult keyword research option of the two. You might have a lot of valuable insight to offer, but you need to consider these 3 things first.
- Are people interested in your content?
- Are people searching for your content?
- Do people know what queries to use to find your content?
Maybe you’re writing about a unique aspect of your industry that only years of experience could uncover, but no one actually cares about. Do a Google search for your idea, and see if anyone else has written similar content, and whether or not it has any comments, inbound links, or social shares. If it doesn’t display any signs of user engagement, you may want to move on to the next idea.
Perhaps your search for a similar idea shows that similar content has been created and engaged with, but is it ranking for any keywords? This is where SEMrush comes into play. Take the top three results for your Google search, and enter the page URLs into SEMrush. If no results are returned, that might indicate (95% of the time) that users aren’t searching for this type of content. But what about that other 5% of the time?
If web pages with content similar to your idea exist, but SEMrush isn’t showing any keyword data for those pages, it could be that users don’t know which terms to search. For example, before LSI terms became a popular subject in the digital marketing field, an article all about latent semantic indexing may have gone unnoticed because users have never heard of that keyword and didn’t know to search for it. Instead, they may have searched for “keyword synonyms” or “how to find related keywords,” which would then have delivered information about LSI terms after the fact.
Yet again, we see why adding context to your blog posts, white papers, ebooks, and videos is so critical to SEO success and search visibility. Use keyword planner, SEMrush, and LSI graph to hunt down any related keywords that will create a strong foundation to shape your idea around. This is leading us to the second method for performing keyword research.
Starting With a Keyword
Instead of starting with an idea and shaping it around a group of keywords, you can start with a group of keywords and form a content idea. It could be argued that this is a very tactical approach to forming an SEO strategy, and that it could be dangerous to your overall content marketing. Keep in mind that at the end of the day, search engine optimization isn’t an art. There may be multiple paths to the same result, but your web pages are being evaluated by an algorithm… which operates on a tactical level in every sense of the word. So why not meet a tactical problem with a tactical solution? (Sorry for saying “tactical” so many times)
If taken to an extreme, writing content for the sole purpose of ranking for a keyword could be dangerous. You might start over-optimizing your content, or make it so robotic that humans avoid it like the plague. This could end up being bad for SEO if your engagement metrics become so poor that search engines couldn’t justify letting your page rank well in the search results.To keep this approach on the up-and-up, make sure that every group of keywords is relevant and supplementary to your overall goal… and readable by your target (human) audience!
Here is how you use this method. Check out some keywords that your competitors are ranking well for by searching for their domain in SEMrush. Clicking on “Organic Research” in the left side menu will show you which keywords they rank for, as well as the estimated percentage of traffic to their site that those keywords account for. In other words, SEMrush will show you which keywords are getting your competitors results. If any of those keywords make sense for your site and overall business goals, you’ll need to create a relevant keyword group.
There are expensive tools that can create a relevant keyword group for you, but using a little bit of common sense will get you far if you’re on a budget (of zero dollars). Simply click on the URL that corresponds to the keyword of interest, and SEMrush will display a complete list of keywords that the page ranks for. To create your keyword group, it would be safe to stick to keywords that rank on the first page (top ten) for that URL. You’ll also want to be keeping an eye on the search volume for the terms you select. I usually keep my keyword groups around 5 deep, with no more than ten for a popular subject. So if you have a big selection to choose from, be careful not to only pick the terms that have an average of ten searches per month. On the other hand, if your site doesn’t have the SEO strength of your competitor’s, you will want to stick with the lower volume keywords that may be less competitive to rank for.
Summary on How to Do Keyword Research for Free
Remember that your content needs to be aligned with searcher intent. Users will want to make a Transaction, find Information, or Navigate to another site or physical location, so create your content with the goal of solving only one of those problems.
Use LSI terms to build a solid foundation for your content instead of beating a single keyword to death at the expense of your readers (and rankings if search engines deem it as keyword stuffing). Use LSI graph, Keyword Planner, and SEMrush to find the different keywords that will empower your content to float to the top of the search results.
Not sure where to begin? Start with an idea and hunt down keywords and LSI terms to include, or have a look at the keywords that your competitor uses and put some meat on those bones.
At the end of the day, doing keyword research for free is not only possible, but it can snag you first page rankings. Following these steps will put your company or blog on the fast track to SEO success!