Keyword Research
Researching keywords entail the following:
- Identifying keywords our domain is currently competing in.
- Identifying keywords we could and should potentially compete for.
Domain Keywords
Using Moz Keyword Explorer on our domain, subdomains, and pages we’ll see exactly what keywords are currently indexed for our website, enabling us to create human and index digestible content per those specific keywords.
Relevant Keywords
Using either Google Keyword Planner or Moz Keyword Explorer, we’ll be judging each potential target keyword depending on its volume, difficult and click through rate - Volume indicates at the amount of traffic the keyword is getting - Difficulty or Competition indicates at the amount of brands competing for this keyword and the difficulty we’ll face in getting to first page. - The Click-Through-Rate (CTR) indicates at the percentage of clicks on organic results vs. amount of SERPs generated per that keyword .
We’ll aim to target keywords with high CTR, Low Competition, and a decent amount of traffic.
Another tool for measuring keyword viability
The Keyword Golden ratio (KGR) is another method for estimating keywords viability by the amount of results for the term and it’s overall monthly search volume. The lower the KGR the better.
$ \frac{All in Title}{Search Volume} \le 2.5 $
You start by searching for your keyword on google and counting how many results it has in the SERP, this is your “All in Title” parameter.
You can find the monthly search volume via Moz or Google Keyword Explorer
Latent Semantic Keywords
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is the manner in which search engines contextualize content via closely related words to the search term.
For instance when searching for Egypt, how would a search engine know whether to show:
1. News in Egypt.
2. Egyptian gods & mythology.
3. Ancient Egyptian history.
4. Travel information, flights and accomodation in Egypt.
5. Shops in Egypt for bicycles, cell phones, laptops, pet food, etc.
With LSIs such as synonyms, names, descriptions, etc. the search engine recognizes the context of how the page relates to the search term of ‘egypt’.
Thus, When we’re targeting relevant keywords in our SEO articles our content will not be crammed by our main target keyword, like in the old days (~late 90s), instead we’ll be using LSI optimized content along with main keywords for maximum SERP results.
LSIs can be found at the bottom of the google search page, search for other relevant terms to collect an array of LSI to use in your content.
Longtail Keywords
Often times, when we’re just starting out with our content creation, the viability of high traffic keywords is practically non-existent, and our attempt to compete in those will just leave us in despair when there are no results after six and more weeks. For that reason, it’s best to target longtail keywords when starting out, i.e very specific search terms with 3+ words, and very low ranking competition. Once we start winning those niche terms, we’ll be able to better compete for high traffic keywords.
Longtail keywords are phrases that comprise of 3-5 words that describe what you are trying to promote. Often times, when we’re just starting out with our content creation, viability of high traffic keywords is practically non-existent, and our attempt to compete in those will just leave us in despair when there are no results after six and more weeks. For that reason it’s best to target longtail keywords when starting out, highly specific multi-word phrases tend to be far easier to rank well for the more generic single key word or double keyword phrases. For instance, very specific search terms with 3+ words, and very low ranking competition. Once we start winning those niche terms, we’ll be able to better compete for high traffic keywords.
Fortunately, Google likes sites that have more pages as it makes the site look more substantial, more natural, and even more real in the eyes of the world’s most popular search engine. Thus, make sure that every page has the unique words that emphasize your offering by using longtail keywords that you chose for each specific page. Therefore, instead of focusing on just two or three highly competitive general keywords, target the dozens or even hundreds of easy-to-rank-for long tail keywords. However, if you target phrases which are too specific, you might not get enough traffic to sustain your business.
In conclusion, there are two components that your website needs to have : - a few pages sending you large amounts of less targeted traffic; - a large number of pages with each sending you small amounts of highly targeted traffic.
Keywords Research Sources
Use Reddit for keywords researching as internet users discuss every topic in this community and the results might surprise us. Firstly, we search for topics that are relevant to our keywords and head over to that community; OR find threads about our topic in search results as people tend to ask a lot of questions. Secondly, scan the threads for potential key words which appear iteratively. Finally, there probably be something that Google Keyword Planner will never show us.
After finishing up our strategic keywords targeting we’ll begin creating content targeting those specific terms and concepts.
Google Adwords
Google Adwords Ads are an untapped goldmine of words and phrases that are super-optimized for clicks and you can use in your page’s title and description tag. To ethically get more organic traffic for the website, there are three steps to follow:
- Step 1: Find Adwords Ads for your target OR related keywords as those ads are optimized to maximize clicks.
- Step 2: Include words and phrases from Advords Ads in your title and description tag.
- Step 3: Get more clicks
Calls to Action i.e Power Words
People tend to be impatient when scanning the first page of Google and they want to read the content right now. So use the words and phrases following which emphasize fast results in order to attract clicks to your Google result:
- Today
- Right now
- Fast
- Works Quickly
- Step-by-step
- Easy
- Quick
- Simple