Keyword Research and SEO Guide for Beginners

Keyword research can help your online business in many ways, but the most important one is that it helps you to be found and to position your site on Google. There are millions of websites online and you need to position yours so that it’s easily reachable by the people that you want to target.

Keyword research doesn’t only help you position your site in search engine rankings; it also helps you increase your organic traffic, improve the quality of your content, promote your site, and boost your link-building strategies.

Keyword research can also help you get to know your customers better by identifying what they are interested in, searching for, and how they are searching for it. Helpful, right? Basically, keyword research helps you define and discover where you want to go, which is why it’s normally the first step of any SEO strategy.

What Are SEO Keywords?

SEO keywords commonly called “keyphrases” are words or phrases that content writers or marketers add to their content, whether it be social media posts, captions, articles, etc. so that they rank higher in search results. To know what keywords or keyphrases have a good search volume requires some research on your part.

Here are a few easy things that I strongly recommend you start with:

Brainstorm your target topics

To get familiar with the platform, I recommend playing around with keywords related to your niche. View the top articles and the brand behind it, and if they are a competitor.

Use Google and other search engines to auto-complete items

Start typing your brainstormed topics on Google or YouTube and see how they autocomplete your entered keyword. The results could be interesting for your strategies as they’ll be some of the most common keywords people use that start with the keyword you enter. 

“Searches related to”

At the bottom of the Google results page will recommend related searches. Also, try clicking on some of those related keywords to extend a bit more your search.

Use social media

Find which social communities your target audience hangs out on, and check what type of threads, questions, or comments they are creating, and which keywords they are using.

These are all easy ways to find some keywords to start working with, but if we want to multiply them, we should use a keyword tool. 

Top SEO and Keyword Research Tools

There are a few keyword tools that can be really useful for related keywords based on your brainstormed ideas. A keyword planner will not only help you find more keywords but also make the entire keyword research process a lot easier.

Google Keyword Planner

Google’s keyword planner can help you find tons of keywords and it gets data directly from Google’s database. Even if this tool is not SEO focused, but SEM (Search Engine Marketing ) focused, it can help you get extensive lists of keyword ideas.

The only hiccup with this tool is that you’ll need to create a Google Ads account to have access to it, but don’t worry, there are some other tools in this list that you’ll be able to use freely. 

Clever Ads Keyword Planner

Clever Ads keyword planner is also SEM-focused, but with the advantage that it takes keywords and data from many sources, not only Google, which makes it more accurate and not as biased as Google’s.

Being SEM-focused also provides you with extra information to have, not only the search volume for each keyword but also the search trends and competition levels, which is also of importance. Here’s an example:

This keyword planner allows you to filter your keywords, create different lists, and download them, so you can easily plan your SEO strategy. In case you decide to use them for your paid marketing strategies, it will give you the possibility to upload your keywords directly to your Google Ads account.

Clever Ads also has a free Chrome extension that allows you to scrape any website and it provides you with a list of the keywords they’re targeting. This is especially useful for comparing with your competitors and checking if they are using any keyword that you missed out on.

ExplodingTopics.com

The Exploding Topics tool scrapes the whole web for terms that are rising in popularity and search volume, allowing you to search by category.

SEMrush

SEMrush is SEO-focused and shows you the exact keywords that a site already ranks for, so you can easily compare what you have and what you’re missing. The only issue is that it’s not free, so you would need to pay for this tool.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is originally a link-building tool, but not many people know that you can also use it as a keyword tool. The “keyword explorer” feature helps you decide if it is worth bidding for or not, but it’s not a tool I would recommend for finding new keyword ideas.

Keyword Tool

Keyword Tool is an online instrument that helps you find trending keywords and keyphrases for Google, Bing, Amazon, eBay, App Store, Play Store, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Etsy, TikTok, and Google Trends.

All you have to do is simply choose the platform you want to search for keywords for and type in your topic. Here you can choose between Keyword Suggestions, Questions, Prepositions, and Related Keywords. See below for an example:

How to choose the right keywords

Now you know how to get tons of keyword ideas for positioning your business online, but how do you know which ones to choose and how to filter so you start positioning the best ones first?

The answer is to find a good balance between keyword competitiveness and search volume. Keywords that people search the most will be very competitive and, thus difficult to rank, so you might have trouble getting past Google’s third page. On the other hand, long tail keywords are less competitive but also have a lower amount of searches. 

Another important factor to look at is conversion rates: Which keywords normally have higher conversion rates? Long-tail keywords. 

These keywords have 4+ word phrases and are more specific. While not getting a lot of search volume individually, when added together, they make up the majority of online searches.

The type of keywords you’d prefer to position also depends on your objectives and your current status. If your site is new, nearly 100% of the keywords you’ll try to position will be long-tail, but as your site grows in authority, you can start to target more competitive keywords. 

4 SEO Best Practices

Below we will explain some SEO best practices and tips to be sure to keep in mind when creating quality content.

Synonyms and related keywords

Optimize your page not only around the main keywords you choose, but also around their synonyms and related terms, so you also rank for those keyword variations with little effort. Even if some keywords don’t have the highest search volume, they could result in conversions.

Find shoulder keywords

Don’t optimize all your landings around commercial keywords that are very closely related to what you sell. These keywords are highly competitive, and you would also be limiting your positioning to people who already know what you offer. You should combine both types, product keywords, and other keywords, that your target audience searches for.

Track performance

You can use tools such as Google Search Console, Metricool, Amplitude, and Google Looker Studio to track your website’s performance. View performance report, clicks, impressions, traffic sources, page views, CPC’s, search rankings, and other metrics, which reveals your content’s performance.

You can order the keyword lists by impressions or clicks, and pick the right keywords depending on your goals, creating brand awareness, or getting conversions.

This strategy is really powerful as you’d be getting keyword ideas to include in your strategy that you know people are actually looking for.

Use internal links

Using internal links in your content will help the hierarchy of your content, provide your audience with extra information, and make it easier for search engines to assess the information. This tactic also helps improve your pages that do not have a lot of searches. By linking your more popular pages you can leverage your more dead pages.

View Your Website Performance With Metricool

Within Metricool, you can connect your website or blog to track your content’s performance and overall website growth. View web analytics, your website’s top locations, page views, and traffic sources. Create your free account, and analyze your website as well as all connected social media networks.

Want to learn more? Try out our completely free platform!

Laura Sánchez , 05 January 2021