Keywords are the bricks of the great wall of seo and determine how strong your content would rank on search engines, and eventually how much traffic would be come in.
If you want to dominate the search results in your niche or market, make sure to find the right kind of keywords with correct intent and competition levels that you can tolerate, and then publish relevant content.
In this post we shall take a look at some simple techniques that you can implement right away to boost your existing keyword research techniques to get some extra mileage.
1. Use multiple sources for keyword research
Google keyword planner is the principal tool to start keyword research with. The data it shows comes directly from google, which is the biggest search engine and receives the highest number of search queries.
Feed one seed keyword or phrase and it will instantly show upto 800 keyword related to the seed.
However it is quite limited in terms of the data it shows. For any given seed keyword or phrase, google keyword planner shows only around 800 keyword ideas, all of which may not always be related to the actual seed keyword.
To overcome this limitation make it a habit to use as many different sources as you can to find more keywords and ideas.
Some of the best places are:
1. Google keyword suggestions – 7 best free tools to get keyword suggestions from Google in 2016
2. Related keywords
3. Forums – How to do keyword research on forum sites to find great content ideas
4. Question answer sites
5. Competitor sites
6. Social sharing sites like Pinterest, Instagram.
Widen your spectrum of tools for doing keyword research. You would find more and more keywords and ideas.
2. Look for topics/ideas rather than plain search terms
The very process of keyword research tells our mind to look for new and different words in order to come up with content ideas. You just keep running automated tools to extract more and more keywords out of all known search engines and sources.
This process is correct but has certain limitations. Firstly there are a lot of keyword that even the tools are unable to report. Automated keyword extraction tools will most of the time show only those keywords that are most popular or in-demand. These keyword have great traffic potential, but at the same time they are also highly competitive.
The goal of keyword research is to bring up topics and ideas around which content can be and should be developed.
Therefore its quite important to think in terms of what are people looking for and what do they want to know about a something.
Suppose you building a website on japan tourism. Some keywords could be –
1. japan travel guide
2. japan tourist attractions
You could write a lot of content around those kind of keywords.
You would soon run of ideas because the list of such specific keywords is usually small.
You are just writing another piece of content like many others that would weakly compete with rest, and get you no lead in marketing.
Now consider this keyword – Best places to see in japan in winter
It has a much stronger search intent and a much more unique topic to write content that would stand out distinct from the rest. Of course there are benefits of it being a long tail keyword that will likely have less competition and would be easier to rank.
The goal of keyword research is not to find words to fill your titles, h1s and content with, but to discover a topic to write about. Its not a big technical thing, just a different approach with lots of marketing benefits.
So start writing for “intent” rather than just “word”. Think!
And where to find ideas
Where-ever there is content, there are topics and ideas. Go out to other sites in your niche, like forums, question answer sites. Search popular content sharing sites for your main keywords and see what people are talking about. And you would find some great topics and ideas.
3. Keep an eye on trends to find great and easy keywords
Lots of tools out there can help you find topics that have become very popular recently or will be in near future. Here you can find some really exclusive keywords that you can grab early before others start chasing them.
Start with Google trends to see what is actually trending. The rising keywords would give you an insight of popular terms in your market.
Check the forums and question answer sites related to the niche and see what topics are being discussed at present. These would give you a complete insight into the market status.
Dig deep for Long tail keywords
Long tail keywords is
Analyse keyword competition
Avoiding the mistake of picking up a highly competitive keyword can save you a lot of time and energy. The idea is simple enough. Pick up keywords that you can easily rank for without immense SEO power.
Check the Geography – Localize
Check the search intent
Do it more and more
Keyword research is the core of your content marketing strategy and it must absolutely be done right without the slightest mistake. The more you do it, the better