The Best Keyword Research Method In 7 Easy Steps

Every day, millions of internet users use search engines by entering certain queries or keywords as commands for search engines to find the products, services, and articles they need. 

Doing keyword research is an important step before writing articles for a blog or website. It also functions to determine what keywords are suitable for use on your website.

Before getting into how to do keyword research, you must first understand what it means and its supporting metrics.

What is Keyword Research

Keyword research is the process of determining what keywords are suitable for use when creating articles on a blog or website based on those used by users in searching for products, services and content. By doing research, you can find out what phrases people use when searching on search engines such as Google, bing, and so on.

Keyword type

In conducting keyword research, it is important to understand the types of keywords, in general the types of keywords are divided into 2 namely; Short Tail Keywords and Long Tail Keywords. But some people say there are 4 plus perpetual keywords and seasonal keywords.

Based on the user's search intent. There are 4 types of keywords that are categorized based on the user's search intent. 

• Informational keywords: searchers looking for answers to specific questions or general information.
• Navigational keywords: searchers want to find a specific site or page.
• Commercial keywords: searchers want to investigate a particular brand or service.
• Transactional keywords: the searcher wants to complete an action or purchase a particular product or service. 

Benefits of Doing Keyword Research

Keyword research functions to determine potential keywords or find out what topics people are searching for on Google.

When you know the topics that people are looking for on Google, you can create quality articles by targeting those keywords. With this research, you can also find out the estimated number of visitors looking for keywords and see competition on search engines.

Keyword research has several benefits for an SEO specialist:

• Understand trends in user behavior and the topics they are looking for related to business.
• Website traffic growth can increase when the keywords chosen are relevant to what users are looking for on search engines.
• Increase the conversion rate. From a marketing and business standpoint, the use of keywords that match the user's search intent can increase the acquisition of new customers.
• Makes it easy to make traffic projections and their contribution to set business goals.
• To measure the performance of content on search pages based on a list of keywords used.

Metrics to Look For When Doing Research

There are several metrics that you should pay attention to when doing keyword research.

• Trend – Measures the search trend of that keyword.
• Volume – Measures the number of searches for that keyword in a month.
• CPC (Cost per Click) – Measures the average price per click that you have to spend when advertising with these keywords. The more expensive, the higher the keyword value.
• PD (Paid Difficulty) – Measures how hard the competition is if you try to advertise with that keyword. The higher it is, the harder it is to compete.
• SD (SEO Difficulty) – Measures how difficult it is to rank high for that keyword. The higher the number, the higher the level of competition.
• Keyword suggestion - keyword suggestions related to the keyword you are looking for. Generally, the keyword tool service will provide long tail keyword suggestions.
• SERP (Search Engine Result Page) - shows the page that is ranked top in the search results for the keyword you are researching. Its function is to see what kind of quality pages can rank at the top of Google search results.

How to Keyword Research

To do keyword research there are several steps that need to be done. We summarize In 7 Easy Steps

1. Set Goals to Achieve from Keyword Research

Before doing keyword research, you need to set goals to achieve. Are the keywords that you aim to get as many visitors or to get potential buyers.

Without clear goals, keyword searches will be difficult. For example, you want to get lots of visitors for your business website, you can search for keywords related to business ideas and tips.

You can also use keywords related to development and business activities. This will make it easy for you to get visitors and traffic.

Meanwhile, if your goal is to do keyword research to get potential buyers, then the keywords to target are keywords with commercial or transactional search intent. That is, these keywords must be related to buying and selling activities, transactions, and the like.

2. Look for Main Keywords First

After you have set your goals, then look for the main keywords that match the goals you want to achieve.

Main keywords or short tail keywords usually consist of only one to two words. Examples of main keywords, for example: buying and selling, sales, how to sell, online shops, cheap shops, cheap goods, and so on.

3. Looking for Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are derived keywords which usually contain a more complete description or detail of the main keyword.

to find longtail keywords, you can use free tools, such as UberSuggest or keyword planner, which could be an option. With these tools, you can still get a list of potential keywords.

4. Identify Search Intent

To create the right content for readers, of course you have to know what they want. That's why you have to identify search intent.

Search intent is the intention of the reader while doing a search. Why is this important? Because if you misunderstand the reader's intent, of course your content will be misdirected.

For example, let's say there are Google users who search for "online shopping " on Google. To find out what they are looking for in more detail, you can check these keywords on Ubersuggest.

Based on the results, you know that one of the most visited pages is the page about “online shopping grocery ”.

So, if you want to get lots of views, you can target the search intent.

5. Choose Keywords

For example, the search intent you choose is “online shopping grocery”. The next thing you need to determine is keywords.

You need to know, is the keyword "online shopping grocery " a keyword worth targeting?

So, at this stage, you can use the keyword research metrics that you learned before.

Read Also: Choosing The Right Keywords For SEO

6. Applying Keywords

Okay, let's say you are targeting the keyword "online shopping grocery ". Next what do you need to do?

So, you need to include these keywords in your content. So, Google knows that your content is relevant to these keywords.

Apart from including it in the body of the content, you should also write it in the following places:

• Title – Make sure the keyword appears in the title first. Examples such as "the cheapest online shopping grocery"
• Meta Description – The meta description is a short description of your content. When describing content, make sure you include the keywords in it as well. You can write meta descriptions with a WordPress plugin like Yoast SEO. 
• Heading – By adding headings, it will be easier for readers to understand your content. And headings tend to be easier to catch than content. So, attach the keyword also in the heading. 
• Alt Text – Alt text is a description of the image you are uploading. So that the images are relevant to the keywords you are targeting, make sure the keywords also appear in the alt text.
• Media Title – To make the image or video in the content relevant to the target keyword, make sure you include the keyword in the file name.

7. Monitor Keyword Performance

After successfully finding the right keywords and including them in the content, is everything done?

Of course not. You still have to keep an eye on the performance of the keywords. Does it live up to expectations?

So, to find out whether the performance is good or not, you can measure several metrics. You can find these metrics in Google Analytics.

• Traffic – Measures how many visitors you get after targeting that keyword.
• Click-through Rate (CTR) – Measures the percentage of people who click on your content when viewing it on a search page. The higher the percentage, the more interesting the content.
• Bounce Rate – The percentage of visitors who leave your content in a short period of time. The lower the percentage, the better. Because it means, visitors feel comfortable reading your content.
• Apart from that, you can also check Page Authority (PA), which is a score that measures the likelihood of your content ranking high in Google search results.