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Keyword Research
About Lesson

By the end of this chapter, you’ll have a basic understanding of what is keyword research. You’ll learn how to how to conduct keyword research for different types of websites and use that to identify the right set of keywords to target from existing pages as well as opportunities to target new keywords by creating more pages. Key concepts like search volume, intent, and clusters will be covered.

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is the process of understanding what users search on search engines like Google about a specific industry, category or topic.

The end goal of keyword research is to understand what queries or keywords you need to rank for in order to get more people to come on your or your client’s website.

Keyword research helps us understand how many people search for a specific keyword, how difficult it might be to rank for it, what type of a page to create in order to rank for it and 

Keyword Research Basics

  • Topics > Keywords

Google has grown over the years from evaluating a website at a keyword level to evaluating a website at a topical level.

What this means is Google ranks websites for a specific keyword based on their topical authority on that subject along with other factors (Technical & links etc.)

Topics are also known as entities. There are different types of entities like people, places, things etc.

For e.g. 

  • Tom Cruise is an entity, but tom cruise age and tom cruise daughter are keywords
  • SEO is an entity, but what is seo and how to learn seo are keywords

In order to rank for these keywords, a website will first have to build authority for their parent topics. In the above examples, Tom Cruise and SEO.

  • Relevance

Google ranks content that is relevant to their searchers. This means that along with including keywords on your page, you also need to satisfy the user’s intent when he searches for that keyword.

For e.g.

  • When a user searches for a release date of the next season of Game of Thrones and a news article targets the keyword Game of Thrones release date, but doesn’t actually mention the release date in the content (Bad example of relevance)
  • When a user searches for best running shoes and a website shows a ranked list of the best shoes for running (Good example of relevance)

 

  • Authority

Not all websites can rank for everything. Every website needs to build its own topical authority by creating content within the natural cluster of their business and then slowly branch out into newer clusters. 

For e.g. A dentist won’t be able to treat a broken bone in your knee and a History teacher won’t be able to teach you math

There will be a gradual curve in how a website can expand its wings and starts with content with no/low search volume and slowly increases its tier and starts competing with higher competitive keywords as their traffic starts to increase. 

  • Volume

Keywords that get searched by people should be targeted or else ranking for a random keyword won’t help generate any traffic to your website.
However, it’s not the best idea to start with highly competitive keyword ideas when your website is new or doesn’t have enough authority. Instead, you can start with keywords with a low search volume and then slowly build traffic and authority over time which is the snowball effect. More details about this can be learned in the SEO Avalanche theory technique by Chris Carter.

  • Intent

Understanding the intent behind a keyword is key. If incorrect content is created for a keyword by missing user intent, it will not rank and won’t drive any engagement.

At the same time, you need to select keywords which have a high search intent related to your product/service/business in order to drive meaningful traffic and not just traffic which becomes a vanity metric.

How to Do Keyword Research?

  • Research what types of searches happen in their target industry using GSC, Keyword Planner, competitor site monitoring and using keyword research of Ahrefs
  • Try out different combinations of keywords and topics within the niche and figure out what clusters and angles get searched
  • Identify top level pillars and clusters which are relevant to the client
  • Create a copy of the keyword research template in the client’s folder on Google drive
  • Expand on these pillars as per the steps outlined in the keyword research sheet in the INSTRUCTIONS tab
  • Add keywords in the 1. Keywords Ahrefs tab
  • Make sure the clusters for these keywords i.e. parent names are added after grouping the keywords togethr appropriately rather than using the parent keywords given by Ahrefs as is. This will help in all future clustering exercises
  • Use the 3. Cluster Insights – Filter tab to understand which pillars have the most potential and which pillars can be further expanded
  • Make sure that all relevant keywords are added in our research and it is exhaustive
  • Make sure all tabs and formulae are working properly in the sheet. Resolve errors if any come up
  • Add insights and learnings from the keyword research, provide information on what opportunities are meaty and how they can be capitalised in the Insights tab
  • Share final sheet with Swapnil for review
  • Review the final sheet and share with the client if ready

Goals:

  • Get a better understanding of the niche and industry the client is a part of
  • Identify the search patterns and trends within an industry
  • Identify which keywords to target from existing pages
  • Identify what new content to create in order to drive traffic and conversions

 

Learning Resources:

 

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