Last Updated on September 18, 2021 by scottkandh
If you want to bring “targeted” traffic to your blog, you need to understand the methods to mastering keyword research. This post discusses how to do Keyword Research for SEO.
This is the tenth article I’ve written about mastering keyword research strategy. In the previous posts I wrote about:
- A Keyword Research Glossary for Bloggers – please use this to look up any terms that I haven’t covered in this post.
- Need more Traffic Focus on using a Holistic SEO Approach
- The importance of using a Holistic SEO approach
- How to improve your SEO score with Keyword Research
- Keyword Research Strategy to defining your blog’s mission and USPs
- Keyword Research – How to make Conversions
- Using Content in your Keyword Research
- Examining Keyword Research to Optimize your website
- The Basics of proven best Keyword Research
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Majority of people write their blog posts focused around a topic instead of a keyword.
For your blog to be seen, increase the chances of being seen at the top of a Google search. Not only will that increase your blog’s traffic it’ll also increase your authority.
One of the surefire ways to get to the first page of Google is by utilizing Keyword Research. This post explains the process of how to do Keyword Research for SEO. Without using Keyword Research you’re not likely to get to the top of a page in a Google Search. Pro-Tip: Find your keyword and then write your blog content around the focus keyword. Don’t create content and “then” try to find your keyword.
Using the strategy in this way delivers content to people for the items they’re seeking.
This strategy will dramatically increase the probability that you’ll rank high in a Google Search. I’ve only been using this method for the last week and my daily traffic has grown by 60%. Within the last 24 hours I’ve had more than 25 people subscribe to my blog. it’s due in part to spending the time to optimize my blog for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) performance and using this strategy.
For example, the “suggested: keyword for this post was “mastering keyword research”. But following the guidance within this post it’s been changed to: “how to do Keyword Research for SEO.”
There’s a plethora of keyword research tools available on the Internet. I’m going to provide you with three keyword research tools. Two of them are paid tools and the third one is free. Let’s get straight to the freebie first.
It’s a powerful tool called SEOQuake that you can add to Mozilla Firefox, Edge, or Google Chrome. It’ll analyze a whole bunch of factors on a website. As of yet, I haven’t written a post about it, but it’s going to be in the works. Once I’ve written that post, I’ll update it here for you to take a look at.
The two paid Keyword Research tools that I like to use are KeySearch and Ubersuggest (by Neil Patel). My favorite of the two is KeySearch for the sole reason that I’ve been using it longer and I’m more accustomed to it. You can also use a limited free version of Ubersuggest. I believe it’s a free trial period of 7-days.
How to master keyword research with KeySearch or Ubersuggest
Let’s get right to the bottom line because this part is extremely important.
Remember: You’re looking at keyword research to guide you what you should write about, not to find keywords for content that you’ve already have created.
On KeySearch you should focus on the column for Score (it’s SEO difficulty).
On Ubersuggest the column is going to be called SD also standing for SEO difficulty. Another column that you’ll want pay close attention to is Volume. You would think that you may want to focus on the keywords with the higher scores, but that’s not the best choice. Conversely, you’re going to want to find your “optimum” and best keyword by the one that has most volume and the lowest SEO difficulty score.
For Ubersuggest: To see a full list of potential keywords, click the ‘View all Keyword Ideas’ button.
For KeySearch: To see a full list of potential keywords look at the words on the right hand side of the page or you can use the Search Engine Keyword Suggestions located at the bottom left (see example below):
Some Things to Consider
My website (PinArtwork) has only been around for a short time (13 months) compared to the other bloggers that have been around for a lot longer. It’s still in the infancy stage as you can tell my the metrics provided from an analysis in KeySearch and only accounts for 32 keywords out of more than 200 posts. If you have a new blog it’s going to be hard to rank high for your keywords. But your blog will have better rankings as you add more content and posts.
I googled a majority of my keywords about a week ago and only ranked for one post regarding How to make a Tripwire. It takes time for your SERPs to grow and gain higher ranks.
I don’t want to go into details about the math and how you can rank better with mastering keyword research, that would just give me a headache. Let me suffice it to say that with mastering keyword research you’ll notice a big traffic in your website’s traffic. For example, here’s a screenshot that shows how my traffic has improved within the last week when I started to home in on Search Engine Optimization for my website (on the 28th of July) and using a Holistic SEO approach.
Choosing The Best Keyword
This is the part that is not easy to figure out and is going to require some homework on your end to determine the best keyword (or phrase) to use.
Sometimes a slight variation in your selection of keywords can have a higher bullet for your SEO. Pro-Tip: You don’t want to have a keyword that doesn’t have any search volume (I was surprised that when I looked closely at my keywords how many fell into this parameter).
If you want to go through the trouble, you can add the keywords to an excel spread sheet and keep track of the keyword, it’s volume, and it’s SEO score. I personally don’t put the information into a spreadsheet because my research showed me that you shouldn’t use the same keyword twice. What it boils down to and I don’t understand the rationale behind it, is that you don’t want to compete against yourself for the same keywords.
Pointer: To pick the best keyword compare your handful of keywords to see which one will be the best choice. In the end, you want to choose the keywords that you easily create content around that selected keyword. Don’t pick something that has volume that’s too small or too large (think of the three bears, pick something just right – in the middle or so). And select an item that has the “lowest” SEO difficulty.
Please take a look at these other posts on my website. Thank You:
SEO Tools sorted by cache – keyword – or SEO Effectiveness plug-ins
20 ways to take your blog to the Top in Blogging
In Conclusion
I hope that you’ve benefited from this post and that you’ll use some of the recommendations from this post for “your” key to mastering Keyword Research. Please fill in the comment below to let me know if you’re going to be conducting keyword research for one of your next blog posts. Thank you.
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