Keyword Research: The Ultimate Beginner's Guide
Keyword research is one of the fundamental tasks you will need to perform in SEO.
Keyword research is daunting, though.
Between hundreds (or thousands) of keywords you could target, metrics to be aware of, and prioritizing which keyword to focus on first, it’s enough to make your head spin.
There are plenty of articles and guides on keyword research that cover the basics and leave you with a decent starting point. This is not one of those guides. This page will cover our entire process for keyword research from brainstorming keywords to tools and tactics, and all the way to keyword usage and reporting.
Think of this as Keyword Research 101, 201, and 301 all on one page.
Think of this guide as your pathway out of spinning your head and heading down the road to SEO success. Good keyword research will set your SEO strategy up for success, and give you a massive advantage over your competitors on Google.
We’ve worked with dozens of companies to build effective SEO strategies, and they all begin with rock-solid keyword research.
In this guide, we will teach you:
And more!
Continue reading and you will master keyword research like a pro SEO.
What is keyword research?
Keyword research is the process by which you research how your target customers are using Google to guide a content strategy.
It’s tempting to boil keyword research down to what an SEO tool will spit out for you, but it’s so much more than that. Conducting good keyword research means identifying your target customers, mapping their buyer’s journey on Google, and collecting the questions they ask as they move through the funnel.
It’s one part psychology with another part market research and a healthy sprinkle of creativity for good measure.
Effective keyword research is the bedrock of an SEO strategy that brings in results. On the flip side, poor keyword research can doom your SEO strategy before you even publish a piece of content.
Why is keyword research important?
Keyword research is more than just a process to brainstorm blog topics, it is absolutely critical to your SEO success.
Here’s why.
Keyword research gives you a better understanding of your customer
I’ve talked to many founders and marketers who think they know what their customers want, but they quickly find that there is quite a bit they have to learn.
When you go into keyword research open-mindedly, you will usually walk away learning something new about your customers, the way that they buy online, and the challenges they are facing.
This lightbulb moment is my favorite part of working with clients. It’s when our clients realize there’s a whole new world of opportunity for them to reach their customers, and SEO goes from a chore to an exciting new frontier.
Keyword research gives your content strategy focus
This is an easy one: good keyword research results in a focused content strategy.
Blogging once per week, or even once per day, with no focus will result in a lot of time spent on content with no results to show for it.
Keyword research acts as the guiding focus and compass to your content strategy, giving you a clear direction to run in. Without a thorough review of the keywords your customers are searching online, you just won’t be focused in your content strategy.
Keyword research gives you more intelligent SEO reporting
By doing keyword research you will amass a set of terms to target with your content and have a handy way of tracking your progress. We’ll talk more about reporting later. For now, we’ll leave you with the fact that reporting on your rank for individual keywords leaves a lot to be desired in terms of intelligent insights. By grouping keywords strategically and reporting on on their performance, you will walk away with key insights that will drive your SEO strategy forward.
How to find keywords to target
We like to take an unorthodox approach to keyword research - our approach does not start with a tool, instead, we like to think creatively about keyword research to help you stand out in search results.
We have a few reasons for that:
I do use tools (we built a great one! More on that below) but I like to start with the following tactics first before using tools to enhance my keyword research.
Brainstorm product terms
Brainstorming keywords based on your product/service is usually the easiest place to start, and a great way to invite your team to keyword research without needing much SEO knowledge.
When doing this, try to bring in as many people as possible. It’s great to get people from sales, marketing, and product—even the exec team—in these conversations.
Brainstorm synonyms
Depending on your industry there may be a few ways that your customers would describe your product or service, so it’s important to be aware of the different synonyms your customers use.
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Using our site as an example, our core term is ‘SEO coaching’ but a synonym might be ’SEO training’.
Identify topics/problems your customers care about
This is where we start getting deeper into keyword research, and build out the funnel your customers are following on Google as they search. We’ll explore tactics and tools to help you through this, though you can get a good start without tools just by thinking about your customers, their jobs, and their challenges.
For us, those topics might be organic marketing, SEO (obviously), or organic growth. We can niche down further into topics under each of these, like keyword research, link building, or conversion optimization.
Online forums
Online forums are a goldmine for keyword research. Keyword research tools can only do so much, but by browsing the forums your customers are using online you can see the real questions that real people are asking. And see which answers get the most upvotes and reactions from the community.
Quora and Reddit are great places to start, but many industries will have niche forums you can research.
Customer support and sales conversations
Your prospects and customers are an excellent source for questions you can target with content. Sales conversations are great for giving you insight into the types of solutions your customers are looking for and support conversations give you unique insights into the types of things your customers are trying to do.
Tools to do keyword research
There are plenty of great tools you can use in addition to the above tactics for keyword research. These can be grouped into free and paid tools, which we’ll examine in more depth.
Free tools for keyword research
While the above tactics are an excellent way to brainstorm some keywords, there are a few free tools that are worth using to collect more keywords that you should consider for your strategy.
Google auto-suggest and People also ask
Google auto-suggest and the “people also ask” section are my all-time favorite ways to brainstorm keywords.
Often, I start here before anything else and move on to the other tools after spending an hour or so just using Google.
Why start here?
According to Google, the predictions of what the missing words are in a user’s search query come from the most common and trending queries that other users are making on the search engine.
That means that by paying attention to Google auto-suggest, you can get a glimpse into what your customers are actually searching for—and how those searches evolve based on previous searches.
Start typing in keywords that are relevant to your business, and see what suggestions come up. These suggestions could provide more keywords to you, or long-tail keywords. However, when you’re doing so, keep the following tips in mind:
Check out our?guide to using Google Auto Suggest for keyword research?to learn more.
Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is another classic SEO tool provided by Google. While Keyword Planner is designed to be used for ad campaigns, it can be an effective free keyword research tool for organic search as well.
Google keyword planner gives you the same basic metrics that many SEO tools will provide such as:
It’s a good start to brainstorming some keywords that you might have missed in your initial brainstorm.
Google Trends
Another fantastic, free tool by Google is Google Trends.
Google Trends allows you to track the relative popularity of a keyword over time, and compare two or more keywords to track popularity. Google Trends also will suggest related keywords you can consider.
Paid SEO tools for keyword research
There are a couple paid tools that can help accelerate your keyword research. Paid tools are a great way to extend a good process built by using free tools as they will help you find more keywords to sift through and save.
Ahrefs or SEMRush
Ahrefs is one of the leading SEO tools on the market and a great fit for SEO specialists and experts.
Like Centori, it taps into a massive database of keywords and allows for advanced filtering to refine the keywords that you pull. Ahrefs starts at $99 and allows you to track 750 keywords and only have 5 lists and one user login- if you need more you will have to pay more.
Like Ahrefs, Semrush packs in a lot of power in an interface designed for pro SEOs. It boasts many of the same features as Ahrefs with a few extra features geared towards marketers (like social media management tools) though comes in at a higher starting cost of $199/month which includes 500 keywords and like Ahrefs just one user.
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