How to Do Keyword Research for SEO: A Complete Beginner’s Guide

To optimize your website content and improve your platform’s position in search engine rankings, you need to build a semantic core. This is a set of keywords and phrases that best represent the topic of your platform and for which users most often search for your products/services. These words will need to be harmoniously integrated into the text content: headings (H1, H2, H3, and so on), Title, Description, descriptions of goods and services, etc. To quickly and efficiently build a semantic core, you can use various convenient services. The team of our Digital Marketing Agency shares some tips on how to do keyword research and what tools can be used.

This is the process of finding the right keywords for your website. It is usually the first and basic step in SEO optimisation.Through this analysis, you can identify different types of relevant keywords:

• High-volume: maximally used in searches;
• Mid-volume: average traffic;
• Low-volume: rarely used, often specialised, and long;
• High-competition: frequently used by competitors, they are usually as generalised as possible;
• Low-competition: specific, used less frequently;
• Informational: will attract visitors who are looking for specific information;
• Navigational: aimed at visitors who want to find your brand and so on.

Without adding keyword phrases to the text content of your website, SEO optimisation is impossible.And it determines your platform’s position in search engine results. Without relevant keywords, search engines may struggle to understand your website’s topic, the risk of misclassification will increase, and as a consequence – your platform will be recommended not to your target audience (TA).Without relevant phrases, it will be impossible to achieve stable organic traffic, the emphasis will have to be on paid advertising.

A thorough preliminary analysis and a well-structured semantic core will help create SEO-optimised, high-quality content and descriptions. What benefits relevant keyword phrases will provide:

• Will attract exactly your target audience to your website;
• Save your money on advertising;
• Help you gain a better understanding of your audience’s queries. Based on this data, it will be possible to improve the site;
• Increase brand awareness by improving search engine rankings;
• Help you create quality and useful content that is of interest to your target audience (TA);
• Increase conversion rate, i.e. improve your revenue by boosting sales of your products and services.

When selecting relevant words, you should pay attention to such characteristics of phrases:

• Search Volume: how frequently users search for these words. The higher the indicator, the more traffic you will be able to attract;
• Keyword Competition: how difficult it will be to compete with other sites on such a query. The higher this metric, the more difficult it will be;
• Keyword Trend: changes in user interest over time for a particular query;
• Ranking: the position of a webpage in search engine results for a specific keyword;
• Difficulty: How difficult it will be to get the site to the top for that query;
• Density: How often relevant words are used per page of text (used when analysing competitors and your own pages to assess effectiveness).

Conducting research and selecting relevant phrases for further website optimisation is a multi-step process. Regardless of the SEO strategy you have chosen (content, link, local, and so on), in any case, you first need to create a semantic core. You can do this yourself or order SEO Services from a marketing agency. This involves several steps: choosing tools, selecting phrases according to various parameters, creating a catalogue, and implementing key words in your content.

Use keyword research tools

You can use various online services and browser extensions to make a quick word search. Many of them offer a free version with limited functionality. Examples include:

• Ubersuggest: picks up phrases + shows basic metrics;
• Keyword Surfer: allows you to evaluate basic metrics, such as query volume, through the browser;
• Ahrefs Keywords Explorer: a multifunctional tool for collecting data and analysing, gives access to all metrics in paid mode;
• Serpstat: a handy service for analysing competitors;
• KWFinder: effectively finds highly specialised keywords.

Discover the Keywords Your Website Ranks For

At this stage, you need to analyse your site to understand which queries bring traffic to your site, what popularity different pages have, and what your audience is interested in. You can also use various services for this purpose:

• Google Search Console: a handy free tool (see the “queries” section);
• SEMrush;
• Ahrefs;
• Serpstat and others.

Find Out Which Keywords Your Competitors Rank For

You should also analyse your niche and your main competitors. You can use the information about their relevant phrases that bring traffic and improve your text content (description, articles, and so on) with it. Finding your competitors is simple: type in the main keyword phrases that visitors are searching for on your site on Google/Bing and look out for the top 5-7 links. Then use online services (Ahrefs, Moz, SimilarWeb, and others) to analyse their semantic core. What metrics are important:

• Top page of the site by visits;
• Trends in keyword popularity over time;
• Most popular phrases;
• Ranking of webpages for relevant keywords and related search terms;
• Types of keywords and their demand, and so on.

Create a List of Key, Relevant Topics Based on Your Business

To develop a comprehensive SEO strategy, you need to structure your topics. Start with broader topics and narrow them down. That is, the first point is to identify the main topics. Such questions will help:

• What specific customer problems can you solve?
• What topics are popular with your main competitors?
• What is your TA interested in?
• How do your topics fit with trends?

This way you can briefly articulate the main topics, e.g. Natural cosmetics, Eco-Friendly cosmetics brands for health, and so on. After that, move on to creating subtopics, for example, Natural lip glosses and so on.

Organize These Topics into Categories and Fill Them with Targeted Keywords

Once you come up with the topics and subtopics, write them down in a structured way. You can use services such as:

• XMind or MindMeister (lots of options for visualisation);
• Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel (simpler variants) and so on.

Then assign relevant keywords to each topic and subtopic. Make selections with different types of words (high-frequency, low-frequency, local, and so on).

Research Related Search Terms

To expand your semantic core and attract a larger audience, you need to find additional terms (synonyms) that users use when searching. These include:

• Extended queries with specific details;
• Phrases using synonyms;
• Reformulated phrases and so on.

Such queries can be found using online services: Google Search, YouTube Search Suggest, People Also Ask (Google), and so on. Pay attention only to relevant phrases.

Measuring and Tracking Keyword Performance

SEO optimisation is not a static process. You need to regularly update your content and keyword/LSI database based on audience behaviour and trends. Keep an eye on parameters such as:

• Organic Traffic Volume;
• Search Volume;
• CTR;
• Conversion Rate and others.

We have told you about the main stages of semantic core creation. However, it is important to remember that for successful promotion and optimisation of your content, you need to keep an eye on trends, change the policy in time, and avoid mistakes in the form of overspam, adding irrelevant phrases, and so on. Later on, you will also need to harmonise all these words into your textual content. Therefore, the best solution is to order a package of services from a marketing studio. Our team at VOLL offers comprehensive assistance: from Web development services to semantic core creation and content optimisation. We know how to do keyword research quickly and as efficiently as possible. Write to us!