Keyword means keyword in Turkish. It refers to the phrases that users type in search engine tools to find them. Keyword research, on the other hand, is a basic research process to get popular search terms written to search engines in the first place in SERP (search engine result page). Keyword research is one of the most important steps of SEO work. Keyword research should be done carefully not only in terms of SEO but also in all users who want to advertise on Google.
What is Keyword Research?
Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing search terms that people enter into search engines to use this data for a specific purpose, usually search engine optimization (SEO) or general marketing. Keyword research uncovers the popularity of their targeted queries, their ranking difficulties, and more.
Keyword research tells you what topics people care about and how popular those topics are among your audience, assuming you use the right SEO tool. You can define your content by researching high-volume keywords.
Keyword Research for Your SEO Strategy
I’ll walk you through the keyword research process below to help you create a list of terms you should target. That way, you’ll be able to create and implement a strong keyword strategy to help you get found for search terms you truly care about. Now let’s take a step-by-step look at how to do effective and accurate keyword research.
1- Make a List of Important and Relevant Topics Based on What You Know About Your Business.
To start this process, think about the topics you want to list in general. You will create topic groups that you see as important to your business and use these topic groups to help find specific keywords later in the process.
If you’re a regular blogger, the topics you choose will likely be your most frequent blog topics. Even if you have an e-commerce purpose, this section will also be the most popular topic in sales. Put yourself in the place of the users who will come to your site, what topics will your target audience search for in your business? For example, you have a digital marketing agency and you want to create your site with various services.
Digital marketing (8,100)
SEO (27,100)
Social media marketing (590)
The numbers in parentheses to the right of each keyword above are the monthly search volume of the keywords. This data will help you measure how important these topics are to your target audience and how many different subtopics you need to create content in order to be successful in these words in the future.
2- Fill in the Subject Groups you have chosen with Keywords.
Now that you have identified the topics you want to focus on, it’s time to identify the keywords that fall into these topic groups. These keywords are phrases you think are important to rank on search engine results pages because your target audience is likely searching for these specific terms.
While more and more keywords are being encrypted by Google every day, another way to find different keywords is to find out which keywords your website is suitable for. To do this, you will need website analysis tools such as Google Analytics. Examine your website’s traffic sources and review organic search traffic to identify the keywords users use to reach the site.
3-Understand How User Intent Affects Keyword Research and Analyze Accordingly
User intent is now one of the key factors in getting a good ranking on search engines like Google. It is more important that your web page addresses the problem the searcher is aiming to solve, rather than carrying the keyword the searcher is using.
To verify what a user’s intent is for a particular keyword, it’s a good idea to scan that keyword in a search engine and see what kind of results come up. Make sure Google’s content type is related to the content you want to generate for the keyword.
4-Use Keyword Research Tools for Accurate Results
Keyword research tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, Ubersuggest, and Keyword Planner can help you come up with volumes of those keywords or similar related keyword ideas based on the ideas you’ve created so far.
How to Choose Keywords?
If you have an idea about the keywords you want to rank for, now is the time to customize your keyword list that best fits your strategy.
1-The 2 Main Factors You Need To Understand To Choose Good Keywords
Relevance
Google ranks content on the results page based on relevance. Therefore, if you create your page with the most relevant keywords describing your content, it will also meet the request of the incoming user and will enable you to rise to the top in Google rankings.
Volume
You can be on the first page for a certain keyword, but if no one searches for that phrase, it will not bring traffic to your site. Volume is measured by monthly search volume, which means how many times per month keywords are searched across all audiences.
2-Check Key Terms and Long-Tail Keywords in Each Group You Create
Key terms are often shorter and more general keywords, which may also be referred to as generic words. Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, are longer keyword phrases that usually contain more words.
3-Research How Your Competitors Rank on the Keywords You Choose
Just because a keyword is important to your competitor doesn’t mean it’s important to you. If your competitor is ranking for the keywords in your list, it’s definitely a good idea to improve your ranking for those keywords.
You can see which keywords your competitors are ranking for and in which positions their keywords are in the browser manually, as well as allowing you to work through a free report that shows the keywords for the domain you entered in the Ahrefs tool. Thanks to this, you can see the keywords your competitors are ranking for.
4-Narrow Your Keyword List
Now that you have the right keywords as a result of your research, it’s time to narrow down your keywords file. You can use Google’s Keyword Planner tool for this. Keyword Planner can also get traffic estimates on the volume of keywords you choose.
We can briefly list the factors that should be considered in the selection of keywords as follows;
Before doing any word study, definitely determine the goals you want to achieve on your website and choose your word groups according to your goal according to the desired category. While creating a keyword list, the following steps should be followed;
- Create a draft keyword list for targeted and generated phrases.
- Remove similar keywords from the list.
- Determine the search volumes of the words you choose.
- Analyze the competition and difficulty levels of the selected words.
- Analyze the results and select the most appropriate keywords.
The Importance of Keywords for SEO
Keyword work is one of the most important steps for you to rank higher in search engines. When you write quality content, the number of keywords you use is of great importance. You should use keywords in the content you create in a way that is not excessive. If you write it just for use, the semantic integrity of your content will be lost and it will not benefit the user who comes to your website.
SEO studies are very important for corporate companies. Especially if you have a site with an e-commerce structure, you need to have a professional SEO done in order to strengthen your site and attract more traffic. If you want to increase your ranking in Google, you should constantly follow the content made in the field of SEO. For this reason, you can review the results of all studies by getting SEO service.
Tools You Can Use When Doing Keyword Research
- Ahrefs
- SEMRush
- Google Adwords Keyword Planner
- Ubersuggest
- Keyword Tool
- KWFinder
