Keyword research

     SEO has gone through many changes in the past few years, but one thing remains constant every year. It’s the keyword research. Yes! Keyword research still holds a valuable place in Search Engine Optimization and one of SEO’s fundamental tasks. If you want to build a new site or expand and rank the existing site, keyword research is the first task. So it’s an essential factor to know about good SEO keyword research and analysis. 

What is Keyword Research?

     Keyword research is a cycle of finding and deciding the keywords that issue most for a given site’s destinations. All in all, it’s finding not just the keywords you need to rank for yet, also the ones you should rank for (what individuals who need what you have to bring to the table look for). Appropriately done, keyword research likewise yields the subjects for which you should make content on your site.

     When you do keyword research, you know about the phrases and contents the audience is looking for. As a site owner, giving the audience what they are looking for should be the primary task. While researching and finding keywords and analyzing them, you will come across some keywords that have nothing to do with the site’s content. Those keywords are called negative keywords. 

     For example, you want to develop a review site for generators and UPS, and you search for the keyword generator in the ahrefs tool. You will come across keywords like” meme generator” and “password generator,” which has nothing to do with generators. These keywords don’t help your site’s development. So as a keyword analyst and SEO expert, you should know about the keywords that have a value for our site and negative keywords. 

Keyword research process:

     Keyword research process varies from expert to expert, and everyone has a specific way of researching them. But certain fundamentals remain constant while doing keyword research. We will look into the legit ways for doing the keyword research. 

Know your goals for the site:

     The foremost thing to do before keyword research is knowing about your site’s goal and targeted audience. Because without setting your site’s goal, you don’t know about your site’s critical keywords. My goal, we mean brand value and business operation to gain organic traffic for your site. By setting goals, you will know where your site needs to reach. 

     Like we said earlier, you will come across various keywords that are different from your intended content and have nothing to do with your site. These keywords may distract you from your site’s actual goal. And also, some visitors have “buyer keywords,” and some keywords are review related. It would be best if you searched keywords according to your site’s intent. 

Some of the primary goals are:

1. Who is our intended interest group? Who purchases what we sell, and why? 
2. What do we sell, and what is our special incentive in our commercial center? 
3. We should know what are the central requirements or potential wants of individuals who become our clients? 
4. What are their auxiliary, related necessities? 
5. What is our objective purchasers’ need to know to feel optimistic about who they decide to purchase?

Analyzing present keywords:

     After setting your goals and prioritizing the keywords, you should analyze them. If you have a review site about drones, then you will have some set of keywords like “best drones,” “budget drones,” etc. You have to analyze those keywords and know their strength. We use two SEO tools, and we recommend you also use them while analyzing the keywords. Ahrefs and SEMrush are the most frequently used SEO tools for analyzing keywords. 

     If you are developing a new site, you will have some keywords by setting the goals and picking up the audience. If you are taking over some existing site and want the site to rank higher, you will have some predetermined keys. Please remember that ahrefs tools and SEMrush tools are paid tools since they give you better results.   

     While searching for keywords, you will get a lot of details about the specific keyword. For example, if you search for “best drone” in ahrefs tools, you will get keyword difficulty, volume, global volume, and so on. 

Using ahrefs tools:

1. Keyword difficulty tells us about the difficulty of ranking that specific keyword. If you are a new site and the keyword you are researching has 40 and above keyword difficulty, it will be hard for you to rank for that keyword. That’s why for new site developers, long-tail keywords can be helpful as they have low keyword difficulty making them easier to rank. 
2. While searching for the keyword, you should give the country name because keywords and their difficulty differ from country to country. After searching for the keyword, you will have the volume data. The volume data refers to the number of search volumes in the given area at a specific time frame. These data tell you the number of searches the keyword has. The global volume tells about the total number of searches from every country.
3. Below you will have some keywords with similar terms. If you search for the best drones, you will get similar keywords like the best drone for money, best drone with camera, best beginner drone, and so on. These are some of the relatable keywords which can be used for your website’s ranking. 
4. You will also get some questions for your keyword, which can be used for your site’s FAQ. If you search for “best drones,” you will get questions like “what is the best drone for money,” “what is the best drone with a camera,” etc. These questions will also help you in the ranking factor. 
5. The main thing to note down is the DR (Domain rating). This determines your site’s strength and the capacity to rank them. You should also check the backlinks column. The number of backlinks will tell you how authoritative and authentic your site is. Gaining a higher domain rating is also a crucial way for your website ranking. 

Analyze the competitive sites:

     Analyzing the keywords used by the competitive site is an essential task in keyword research. By analyzing the competitive sites, you will get an idea about the keywords and content formation. There are two ways to analyze your competitor sites. 

1. The first way is by using Google search itself. If you search for “best drone for money,” you will get some websites in specific ranking order. Then you can visit the links and analyze the contents. Usually, take the first ten search results and analyze them. Ignore the paid Ad sites because you need organic search results for your site. 
2. The next way is by using SEO tools like ahrefs and semrush. Free tools may give you limited access to your competitor’s keyword, but paid tools will be an excellent benefit for the long haul. By using these tools, you can get to know about the keywords your competitors rank for and also the keywords they rank, but you don’t, so that you can improve your SEO analysis. 

Expand your keyword perspectives:

     By following the steps mentioned above, you will have a set of keywords and their strength and statistics. You will have the base knowledge about your site and will know how to use them. But that alone will not help you to rank your site. You need to expand your keyword horizon and look beyond the competitors. Some of the tools like Answer the Public,

Keyword Explorer, Keywords Everywhere will help you in your keyword research. 

     As mentioned earlier, paid tools will give you a lot more clarity and depth analysis of the keyword. The more significant part of these tools works by scratching Google SERPs (and at times the locales that rank most elevated there) to find the hunt terms and questions searchers utilize most of the time for a given point or keyword. As the last advance, glance through your now-extended keyword rundown to select the elevated level points; at that point, bunch the excess keywords under these as indicated by importance. You can use the created list whenever you want to rank your website on top.