Top Tips On How to Identify Keywords That Drive Traffic.
best keyword research tool free
Best keyword research tool free: With the world today well on its way to using search engines as its primary source of information, finding the right keywords can be a huge deal for a business. These keywords can help a business improve their business presence online, by boosting their presence in people’s search results.
Now for a small business with a limited budget for marketing and branding, identifying the right keywords that can help them establish a strong digital presence is very important. That is because no matter how well-written or compelling your content if it fails to show up in search results, it will have no impact.
So, without further ado, let’s take a look at the importance of keywords in search engine optimization. After that, we will see how we can find the right keywords that drive traffic and improve your online presence, without breaking the bank.
Why Do Keywords Matter for SEO?
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of optimizing your digital content for better positioning on SERPs. To put it simply, it allows your content to be more visible when someone searched for something related to your content on the web and is one of the most important SEO factors.
Now, how can your content be optimized for better visibility? Well, the easiest way to do that, is to use the right keywords related to your content topic. By “right keywords”, I mean those words and phrases which are used popularly by people when looking for content related to your topic.
Basically, these keywords target the user’s search intent, ensuring that your content seems like the answer to what they are searching for on the web. So if you can identify the search intent of the consumers, and how they are searching for answers to that question, you will be able to create and optimize your content according to those queries.
The Use of LSI Keywords and How They Can Help Boost the Primary Keyword’s Impact
Now, whenever we look for relevant keywords for a topic, there is always one specific keyword that we consider as the primary keyword. Usually, it is the core word or phrase on which our entire topic is based, and the one we want to rank our content for.
However, many other related keywords can help expand the scope of the primary keyword, and help us make the content more relevant to the consumers’ needs. For example, let’s say that we want to rank our informative guide on finding good demonstrative speech ideas that engage users. Let’s take the phrase “demonstrative speech ideas” as the primary key phrase.
First, we enter our primary key phrase into Google Search, and then take a look at the “People also ask” section at the bottom of the page. You will see that there are many related keywords and phrases, which could be used to make the content more relevant to reader intent, as well as expand it for additional related topics.
This is called using LSI keywords. LSI, or latent semantic indexing, refers to the statistical occurrence of specific words together within different pieces of content on the internet. By calculating how often some words appear with specific words, search engines can ascertain your content’s intent better,
How Can You Find the Right Keywords? A Step-by-Step Guide.
Source: ahrefs.com
Knowing the importance of finding keywords that drive traffic is important, but only if you know how to find such popular search terms. Now, for the most part, Google is a great tool when it comes to finding related keywords relevant to your search topic.
However, without knowing how well the keyword performs with your target market, such as its search volume, your research would have no intrinsic value. To improve your research, and help you find the right keywords fast, you can follow our simple, three-step guide given below.
Step 1 – Identify a Starting Point Using Your Knowledge of the Market and Target Consumers
The first, and arguably the most technical part of keyword research, is to find the ideal starting point. This initial search phrase will help you find the right secondary keywords and LSI key phrases, making it an important part of this process.
However, this step can be made easier with some smart research. First, use your intuition to find a keyword that relates to your topic of choice. Once you have that, look it up on search engines like Google or MSN. Open the top-ranking results on that page, and evaluate any specific keywords or phrases that appear repeatedly within their headings and body text.
Once you have evaluated several top-ranking links, make a proper list of the keywords you have found, and then start looking them up on search engines too. Ideally, these selected keywords are the ones your competition is ranking for.
After you have researched the shortlisted keywords, you will hopefully have a good starting point for finding your perfect primary keyword.
Step 2 – Use a Tool Like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs
Next, you can use a premium keyword research tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush to look up the search metrics and related keywords for the primary key phrases you searched earlier. The reason for using these tools is to find the keyword that best encompasses your targeted search intent, as well as has a good search volume with low competition.
The tools mentioned above have a limited free usage limit, which can be extended by opting for one of their paid plans. Google Keyword Planner, on the other hand, is a free and extensive tool that uses Google’s search data to help you find the right keywords.
However, the metrics for the keywords you search are usually quite limited, and the data you find is more suited to PPC campaign research than it is SEO.
Step 3 – Broaden Your Scope with Some Free Keyword Tools
Now, if you wanted to broaden the scope of your target topic, or wanted to look for more related keywords, there are many free tools that you can use to expand your research. And while this can be done on the premium tools we’ve mentioned above too, each of the tools listed below offers a unique feature, making it easy to find related keywords that drive traffic.
This is one of the most popular tools for a digital content creator nowadays. It comes as a free browser extension, which shows relevant metrics like search volume, CPC, competition, and more in real-time while you are using other tools and search engines.
- Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is less of a keyword research tool and more of a topic research resource. It uses Google’s autocomplete feature to help us find ideas and phrases which can be used together for content clusters at the topic level.
- Keyword Guru
This tool is quite different from the ones above. Keyword.Guru is a keyword research tool that specializes in analyzing the search trends on e-commerce sites and search engines like Amazon and eBay.
Top Tips on How You Can Improve Your Keyword Research
By following the step-by-step process we have outlined above, you will be able to find good keywords that drive traffic consistently. However, for those still fuzzy about what makes a keyword good, the following tips will help you understand the concept, and guide your keyword research.
- Focus on the Keyword’s relevancy
No matter how good a keyword’s metrics are, if it is not relevant to the topic and the consumers’ search intent, it will fail to get you the desired traffic. For example, if your business sells custom wooden furniture, and you find a promising keyword like “build a wooden IKEA desk”, the keyword would be of no use to you.
That is because the search intent for this keyword would be quite different from the one that would bring customers to your business. For one, the people who search that phrase would be looking to find how to assemble their pre-built IKEA desk, and would not be looking to buy custom wooden furniture.
- Long-tail keywords are your friend
Long-tail keywords are far easier to rank than shorter, broader scope keywords. For example, searching for “wooden-hand-carved-grandfather-rocking-chair” would bring better-targeted results with less competition than say, “rocking-chair”.
However, when we talk about long-tail keywords, one important thing to note is that while their traffic might be less compared to their more generic counterpart, it would have more value because of the better matching search intent.
- Always TRACK PERFORMANCE
Finally, always track your content. Once you have created and optimized your content with the right keywords, use analytical tools to find out how it performs on the internet. That will help you identify if you need to tweak or fix any issues that might be affecting its projected performance.
Final Words
Well, finally, you have got the list of keywords that drive traffic. What next? Well, your goal should be to use those keywords to create highly informational and useful content that not only looks good, but is in line with the consumers’ search intent, and offers value to them by answering their query effectively.
However, you should NOT overuse the keyword within the content. Make sure that it appears naturally, and does not feel as if stuffed into the content for the sake of relevancy. With content marketing an essential part of many SEO strategies nowadays, using your keywords properly is the way to go.
