How to run a kick-ass keyword research and then implement new keywords on your site

To find the best keywords, you need to look further than GSC, and make use of a variety of sources.

In this article we are going to show you a ton of tools that can help you find good keywords.

We will also show you how to spy on your competitors to see how which keywords they are targeting and scoring for.

We will also look at ways to check the volume of those keywords, so you know how many visitors are searching for them, as well as how competitive those keywords are.

That way, you can concentrate on the keywords that have both a high volume of interest, as well as a low competition.

Lastly, we will look at some strategies to add these new keywords to your site.

Let’s begin!

1. Finding New Keywords using a Variety of Tools

 There are a huge amount of keyword research tools which you can make use of. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, which make it a wise strategy to use as many of them as possible in your keyword research. Some of these pull data from Google and other sources (Youtube and Amazon), while some will let you spy on your competitors, and others will even supply volume and competitiveness date.

Let’s go through each one and evaluate what it does well.

 Google Search Console

 Every good SEO should have access to GSC on their site.

Go to: Search traffic -> Search Analytics -> Pages -> choose a page and select queries

This will supply you with 1000 keywords the selected page on your site is currently scoring for. This will give you an insight on how your visitors found this page and what drove traffic to this page.

It will also give you info about the number of clicks, impressions, CTR and average position.

How can you take advantage of this data? Well, let’s say that you are optimized and scoring for the search term ‘online casino’, but some people arrived on your site from a search of the term, ‘new online casino’.

Then you could start to optimize for this keyword to increase the number of clicks you could get for it.

Using GSC when running keyword research is a must, but as the data is only derived from search terms you are CURRENTLY scoring for, it’s use is somewhat limited, as you need to be doing fairly well already on that search term before you are made aware of it.

Other tools will show you search terms which you might have absolutely no idea about and we will look at those too!

 SEMrush

This competitor spy tool has a free and premium version. It gives you an overview of keywords you are currently scoring for and can be used to check how your competitors are doing and which keywords they are targeting.

You can check results for the whole domain or for a chosen page. Be careful when selecting that setting:

SEMrush also gives you a Keyword difficulty score, Keyword trends, and the monthly volume for your selected market (for example UK results will be different from USA results so be careful when adjusting your settings).

USA results:

UK results:

I like the SEMRush tool because of the competitor data and the keyword difficulty, which helps you identify market opportunities.

Free and premium offer the same data, but premium offers a lot more of it, so if you are going to be running a lot of research every day, premium is well worth it. It’s a good all-round tool in your keyword research arsenal, and as it also gives you backlink data for any website out there (who haven’t blocked the SEMRush bot), I recommend it.

 Answer the public

https://answerthepublic.com/

This is one of the funniest tools out there. It has a free and premium version (dependent on which regions you want to search) and seems to get its data from Google Autocomplete.

Just select language and a desired Keyword:

And you will get a list of search queries that your potential customers are searching for. This tool gives you a valuable insight into how people use search engines and what user intents they have.

Keyword shitter

https://keywordshitter.com/

Another fun tool to play around with. It again pulls data from the Google Autocomplete. You put in the keyword, press the button, and it shits out keywords until you tell it to stop.

Pros: gives you a lots and lot of keywords

Cons: gives you maybe too many keywords and you might need to go through them to identify valuable possibilities.

Google Trends

Trending data can give you hot opportunities to jump on board a keyword trend before anyone else. Many tools give you trending data of desired keywords, but not all do. If you wish to refine your results and make sure that your keyword is an ever-green search term, use https://trends.google.com to see how it has performed over time.

LSIgraph.com and lsikeywords.com

 It is always an excellent idea to check for synonyms and related search terms. I recommed you to try well known LSI tools such as LSIgraph.com and lsikeywords.com

How they work:

Type in your desired keyword and hit GENERATE

The tool will serve you with Keywords similar and related to the one you typed in:

Google Autocomplete

One easy way to find keywords related to your niche is to use Google suggested related search terms (here are the suggested results for the keyword ‘shoes’):

Or use the tools like Answerthepublic and Keywordshitter which claim to do this automatically for you.

Key word tool

 https://keywordtool.io/

This tool gives you an option to search in all results, images or videos, you can select a language and find good keywords to add to your pages.

In the paid version of this tool you get even more info, such as volume, trends and competition:

Soovle

https://soovle.com/

I personally find this tool too messy and busy as words start to appear already when you are typing and once done the results are just all over the page, but it gives good ideas:

Keywords Everywhere

keywordseverywhere.com

I have fallen in love with this free Chrome plugin. Whenever you search Google, Youtube, Amazon, eBay and (i think) some other places, it gives you info on search volume for different countries, Cost-per-click (CPC) and even a difficulty score. Best of all, it gives you related search terms. Here it is in action for a Donal Trump related search term (more on this later):

Spyfu

https://www.spyfu.com/

This tool lets you download your competitors' most profitable keywords, covering paid and organic search. It’s probably the best spying tool out there. It also lets you group keywords by niche which can save a lot of Excel work. And there is a historical ranking graph which is good for incurable SEO nerds who want to know why a website stopped ranking for a keyword 20 years ago.

Google Adwords

If you have a Google Adwords account, you can get even more accurate volumes and keyword suggestions than any of the other tools. Depending on how accurate you need your data, it might be worth spending money on ads just to get this organic data.

 Now is probably a good time to mention that not every tool will find the same keywords, volumes and trends. The data might be a bit different tool to tool and even how your website is currently scoring for some keywords in SEPRs will be different.

The reason for this is simple. Each tool has got their own keyword database, their own APIs and their own understanding of how your website is behaving in the SERPs.

It is the same as the different calories readings on your fitbit compared to the treadmill you have just ran for an hour on. Your fitbit measures calories and their usage differently than the machine.

Which of these is more accurate? I am not sure, but if you can track as many data sources as possible, then you can get a good overview. Keep in mind that common sense is an SEO’s best tool and the strongest weapon.

Now you know which tools to use to see which keywords your users are searching for, your competitors are scoring for, and what the competition is like, it’s time to start adding the keywords to your website.

 2. Adding keywords to your website:

There are two ways to add keywords to your website. One is to add them to current landing pages. The other is to make brand new landing pages based around those keywords (or group of keywords).

The choice of which strategy to use depends on how close the subject of your current pages fit to the high-volume, achievable-competition keywords you have found in your research.

If you already have a page about sportsbook bonuses, and you find a keyword “wagering requirements for sportsbook bonuses” which you want to target, then probably you should add this keyword to the existing sportsbook bonuses page.

But if you find a keyword “donald trump impeachment odds sportsbooks” which has lots of related keywords, a lot of trending volume and low competition, and you don’t have anything remotely related to that, then consider creating a page about how likely the Donald is to be impeached and where to bet on that. Or even create something like a political betting page where you could cover Trump, Brexit or anything else that may happen in future.

These two examples are pretty clear-cut, but a lot of situations you will face will be in the ‘grey area’, so you will have to use your judgment on this one.

Sometimes, you may even face a situation where there is a keyword which could really be put on an existing page, but it’s high-volume, low-competition and the user-intent is clearly to make a purchase. In that case, you might create a new awesome landing page around that keyword, send it some links, and then dominate that search result.

A good example of this might be “wagering requirements calculator” – according to Keywords Everywhere it has a volume of 40 UK searches a month, and a CPC price of ￡4.38. If those are attractive metrics (I am not a PPC person, so I don’t know), then it might be worth creating a page with a calculator for that term.

The point is, there isn’t always a definite right or wrong answer to the question of adding the new keyword to an existing page or creating a new page with it. The important thing as an SEO is to always be thinking about the issue ??

Whichever way you choose to add the new keywords (add to an existing page or create a new one around the new keyword), here are some important Do’s and Don’ts to keep in mind when adding new keywords to a site:

 DON’T overoptimize (2011 called, they want their keyword-stuffing back)

I shouldn’t have to explain that keyword stuffing is bad. But sometimes we overstuff keywords by accident, especially when adding new keywords to a page.

Accidental keyword stuffing is quite common in the casino world where there are not many decent synonyms for the word ‘casino’ (as any iGaming copywriter will know.)

But as the SEO in the team, you still need to keep an eye on the keyword density issue.

You can check which keywords your page is currently optimized for using the following tools:

-        Google Search Console (check on the page level)

-        Ahrefs (but MOZ, SEO clarity and most other SEO tools also do a decent keyword scoring analysis, so you could use those too if you are already paying for them)

You can then check the density of keywords on your page using this free tool: https://smallseotools.com/keyword-density-checker/-

 Or if you are using Wordpress, the Yoast plugin can also warn you if you are overstuffing.

 You need to stay aware of this and ask the copywriter to reduce the density if the page gets too stuffed.

 DO optimise pages for relevant keywords ONLY

Google loves relevancy, almost as much as users do.

Don’t add irrelevant, random keywords that might be found in Google Search Console (GSC) or suggested by other keyword tools if they don’t make sense in the context of your page. Doing so will cost you in terms of content cannibalisation and in SEO performance.

Some SEO’s want their homepage to score for every single keyword in their niche, but that’s not how a great website does it.

If you have a new keyword that is relevant to your website, but not really all that relevant to your homepage, then consider creating a new landing page and then linking to it from the homepage, with that keyword as an anchor, or to another page which already exists that discusses that topic.

For example, let’s say your homepage is about free spins and your GSC reports that “NetEnt free spins” is a keyword that drove one visit to this page in the last 30 days. You also have a dedicated page for NetEnt bonuses (including NetEnt free spins). It might be tempting to add a short paragraph about NetEnt free spins to your home page. However, since you already have a page discussing this, a better strategy might be to create a good internal link navigating to the NetEnt page and share some top page authority to that page.

If you add random seemingly connected keywords to every page, you will eventually create a cannibalisation problem and you might find your important pages pushed to Google’s supplemental index.

Again, this requires some sound judgment and should be considered on a case-by-case basis.

DO remember that you are the one in charge – SEO tools are not cat-proof

You are the one in charge here, not the SEO tool. You don’t have to necessarily add all new keywords to your content, as any rule like this is pure insanity!

Remember the ‘Garbage in, garbage out’ (GIGO) rule applies to keyword data too. I have a copywriter colleague who once had to create text targeting a keyword phrase which made zero sense, just because it showed up in a list of recent search terms from Google Search Console. It was a string of characters that any cat or dog owner will know sometimes get accidentally typed on a keyboard – and yet the copywriter was asked to target it, because GSC suggested it.

SEO’s should use the tools available to get an understanding of any website and any page, but keep in mind that your strongest SEO tool is your experience and your common sense.

Identify and act on keyword opportunities that are likely to drive traffic in future, and don’t base your strategy on cats walking on keyboards.

DO add the keywords to your Meta Title and Descriptions

When optimising a page, do not forget to optimise the meta data. New keywords found when running your research can be used in the meta title and meta description to potentially increase the CTR.

Make sure to include your most valuable keywords in meta titles, and the catchiest ones in the meta descriptions.

DO create awesome new content to surround your keywords

Once you have your list of keywords and have identified the best opportunities, start to work on a content plan which can make the best use of these keywords.

Make sure to write a natural-sounding text that is easy to read, and include videos, images and infographics which make the user’s experience so much better.

Consider embracing the skyscraper method to create the best possible content you can. Brian Deane uses this method to identify the top-scoring page for a certain keyword, analyse how that page does it, and how he can do it better.

You can even use some of the surprising findings of your research to create whole new pages or categories.

For example, now you know there seems to be a demand for a wagering requirements tool – imagine how awesome such an asset would be to your site and your visitors.

Or how about the demand for betting odds on Donald Trump? That sounds a great potential piece of content, maybe with a user poll and a regularly-updated summary of what the best odds are of him making it to the end of his first term.

And with every news site on the planet wanting to cover the Trump phenomenon, then this could be a way to pick up the kind of high-authority dofollow links that iGaming sites only dream of.

Now do you see the amazing possibilities of keyword research? I hope so ??

Summing it all up:

Keyword research is fundamental to any good SEO strategy as it shows you what users want to read about.

Keyword research can be performed using many tools and through many creative ways. Don’t get lazy and rely only on suggested keywords found in one tool. Don’t ignore LSI (related) keywords or keywords suggested by Google autofill.

Use volume and competition data to find the keywords which people want to know more about but aren’t being covered by anyone else.

When optimising pages with your new keywords, rely on your common sense, write for human users, and do not go down the route of Keyword stuffing and overoptimizing.

Make sure to include your newly discovered Keywords in meta data, in H1s, H2s, and also in the alt texts of your images.