What is a Keyword?
Keyword is a word or a phrase that you type on search engines like Google and Bing to find out an answer.
Depending on people’s query it can be one word, two words, three words or longer phrases they type on Google.
Importance of Keyword Research for SEO
Keyword lets search engines figure out what people are searching for. Keyword research helps you find out what people are searching for and stops you from making content that no one is looking for. It brings you organic traffic and you save a lot of money on paid ads by doing proper keyword research. Creating content without keyword research means not getting traffic to your website. It lets you know how easy or difficult it is to rank on a keyword and what keywords can help you get traffic and also know if people searching for the keywords can become your customers if you are selling any product.
Getting started with Keyword Research
Depending on what you are going to write on, you need to figure out a keyword yourself first. Let’s say you are writing about coffee. Coffee is going to be your main keyword. But coffee is not the only keyword you are looking for to rank.
Let’s take into consideration that ranking a one-word keyword is going to be difficult. Because people searching for coffee want to know the meaning of coffee maybe, or just an image of coffee and are not interested in the recipe for making a good coffee or a coffee maker. So we need to be more specific and have long-phrase keywords. For example, the price of a coffee maker, cheap coffee maker, coffee shops in “your location” and so on. It is more specific and has less difficulty in ranking. However not every keyword is easy to rank, that is why doing proper keyword research is the key.
Google Search Console
Know from your Google search console what keywords are you already ranking for and try to make a better post on those keywords or edit your content on those topics already for better reach. This is not for a new website.
Keyword research tools
There are many keyword research tools you can find online. For example, ahrefs, SEMRUSH, Majestic, KWfinder , Ubersuggest, and so on. You can use them to know the trends of keywords. It is also possible to find out the SEO difficulty, who is ranking for the keyword you want to be found, CPC, historical data, trust score, domain score, backlinks, and so on. Note that almost all the keyword research tools are not free. As a beginner, you can always use their free trial period for better understanding.
For free keyword research use Google search itself, you type a word and you see a list of suggested keywords, those are common keywords or phrases people are searching for the main keyword you want to rank. Suggested keywords can also be found at the bottom of Google search results. You can check the volume of keywords and also look at your competitor’s title and meta descriptions for better ideas.
Filtering keywords
Researching keywords are overwhelming. Copy and paste the keywords you have finalized on an excel sheet and analyze different factors. Now filter some of them out which do not match your goals. Know your audience and marketplace before choosing any keywords. A good keyword should always bring you traffic otherwise the research has been failed.
Over time, things might change. If you want to keep your old content up to date, keyword research and updating from time to time can still give you the rank. Never think you are done after writing one content, updated content is still worth it for a rank, and search engines also value them.
Conclusion
Keyword research should be a priority for any website optimization. Without keyword research, the website will never get good traffic. Hence, it is advised to have a keyword strategy before putting out any content. One can always keep up to date on their niche through the various platforms, you can also track the trends via Google Trends. There are various tools to track keywords and do research, you need to find what suits best you. Apart from the above-mentioned pro tools, you have plenty of free resources available too, like news and Google Trends for recent news updates. Do not stick to only one place, you have an option everywhere. A detailed analysis is always better for knowing things better.