Keywords are the keys to the SEO castle. Without a solid understanding of how to do keyword research, including how to know what keywords to use, SEO will remain a mystery. The good news is, keyword research is actually not that hard. There are tons of tools to help you, and with this guide in hand, you will be able to find the perfect keywords to draw in your ideal clients!
That’s the goal, right?! And that’s why it's so important to get keywords right. The first part of that is knowing how to do the research, and once we have that nailed, we’ll learn how to pick the best-fit keywords to draw in your perfect clients and get your website ranking right out of the gate.
In this blog, we’re talking about the basics of how to do keyword research, including what tools to use, how to find keywords, and what makes a keyword “good”.
And, if you're brand new to SEO, be sure to check out my full guide to SEO for creatives to get up to speed!
Let’s dig in.
What is a Keyword?
If you are totally new to content strategy, you might be asking, What is a keyword? A keyword is a focus word that describes the content on your page best, according to Yoast. You might also hear the word ‘keyphrase’ or ‘long-tail keyword’, both of which describe a string of words. ‘SEO’ is a keyword, and ‘how to optimize my website for seo’ is a keyphrase. If it is also low competition and low volume in terms of searches, it would also be classified as a long-tail keyword.
Simply put, keywords are things people search for. The word or string of words that individuals type into a search bar in a search engine to find information they need. These are considered keywords.
How Do Keywords Work?
Maybe I should have titled this section “how do search engines work” or “why are keywords important”. Knowing how keywords work is helpful to know when you’re learning how to do keyword research. At the beginning of this blog, I said that keywords are the key to the SEO castle because what keywords you choose to target is foundational to how and if your website will get seen.
Search engines are nothing more than something that provides answers to questions. You type your words or question into the search bar, and the search engine serves up websites (and now, AI overviews) that it thinks could answer your question. It’s able to do this because it spends time crawling every website and indexing pages it thinks are useful so that when someone types something into the search bar, it can go into its index (or library of web pages) and pick out the best options to answer that person’s query.
When it indexes pages, it's assessing what that page is about, and it does that by analyzing the content. We ensure the search engines can easily understand what our content is about by optimizing (or writing in depth) for a specific keyword or keyphrase so it can easily pick up what our page is about.
More on writing great content later.
Our search engine friends are pretty smart and are getting smarter every day, but we still need to provide some guidance as to what our page is about, and we do that by focusing each page on a single topic (or keyword).
Why Do I Need To Do Keyword Research?
You might also be wondering, Why do I need to research keywords if I already know what my ideal client is searching for? This is an excellent question and something people ask me a lot as we’re discussing getting started with SEO!
Technically, you don’t have to research keywords if you don’t want to, but in order to get results with SEO, I highly, highly recommend learning how to do keyword research to inform your content strategy. Remember, we are savvy and we use our resources wisely, right?! Writing “willy nilly” without confirming a few things first could be a huge waste of your time.
SEO requires a little strategy which we’ll talk about soon, but the two main reasons keyword research is necessary is to find keywords with search volume (aka people actually type these exact words into Google to find information) and to find keywords that are low enough competition that you as a “new on the organic search scene” website will be able to rank for.
Don’t worry, I am going to teach you exactly how to do all of this, but for now, just know that doing keyword research is a part of your new SEO gig.
How To Do Keyword Research
Now that you know what a keyword is and why it’s important, let’s talk about how to do keyword research. There are a few foundational steps involved when you’re first getting started, but once you have those down, you’ll be set up to research any keyword quickly!
Identify Your Ideal Customer
Before you do anything, it’s important to know who you’re talking to. Building a focused, targeted keyword strategy set up to help you crush your goals relies on understanding your ideal customer and their pain points (or what they need help with). Even though many businesses have multiple client avatars, it's best to pick just one to start out.
Knowing your ideal customer is foundational to any business, so if you haven’t done this, take a beat and do it now. Check out my simple business planning blog for some tips.
I will also mention the importance of identifying a niche here. Not too long ago, content about the importance of “niching down” was all over the place, and I found it sort of funny that it was trending. Finding a niche is one of the most basic business concepts and is crucial to success, no matter the size, age, or industry of your business. It comes in especially handy when you’re creating your SEO strategy, especially if you find a niche that’s not competitive.
A few years ago, I started a company solely based on the “blue ocean” (demand + low/no competition) I discovered for a particular niche within a very competitive industry. If you can find that, it’s like striking gold. This touches a bit on business planning and market research, but it’s worth mentioning here in case you haven’t thought about it.
Pick a Keyword Research Tool
There are many many tools available for keyword research, some are free, some are cheap, and some are expensive. There are two that I use depending on my goals for the quarter or the month. I recommend checking a few out to see which one fits your budget and your style. Most have free trials, and some even have free versions that you can use with limitations instead of a paid subscription.
Before you go any further on learning how to do keyword research, you’ll want to have a tool by your side so you can follow along. Here are the two I use regularly.
Keysearch
I love Keysearch for its simplicity and affordable price, and it’s what I use most of the time. The screenshots in this blog are from Keysearch. Keysearch gives you everything you need, including unlimited searches, competitive analysis, and even keyword research for channels other than Google (I haven’t vetted these, but the option exists).
This is my “daily driver” if you will, because it gives me enough data to make decisions if I need it once I have the bulk of my content plan in place for the quarter.
Snag a 7-day free trial here and follow along while I teach you how to do research!
SEMrush
This is one of the best things to use to do keyword research, especially as you’re developing your website structure and initial content plan, because it gives you all the data you need to make solid assessments of keywords and find the best ones easily.
I spin up my subscription about once a quarter when I want to spend considerable time digging into the details of my competitors, doing backlink analysis, and especially when I’m refining or developing my content strategy. It’s expensive, which is why I don’t have this all the time (it pains me every time I shut it off), but the data is soooo good. SEMrush does have a freemium version, so if you’re curious about it, grab a free trial and then just keep your freemium version any time you want to do a deep dive into a specific keyword.
If you can swing it, I highly recommend grabbing a subscription for at least a month when you’re ready to really start getting your website and content SEO strategy in place.
Grab a 7-day free trial here to compare it against Keysearch.
Like I mentioned, there are tons of tools out there. Here’s what to look for if you want to explore other tools:
Keyword volume for Google search
Keyword difficulty score
Search intent
Ability to track your ranking
Competitor research
I don’t recommend getting wooed by tools that promise to “get you to page one on Google”. There is no fast track to page one, and oftentimes those tools are just gimmicks that end up distracting you from the most important things you need to do to get SEO right. Spoiler alert…getting SEO right isn’t that complicated.
Make a List of Possible Keywords
Now that you have your ideal client in mind and you have a keyword research tool, it’s time to make a list of keyword ideas! Right now, we’re just talking generally about how to do keyword research (as opposed to developing a content strategy and plan), so try and think about all the things they might search for.
We’ll just create a list, and then we’ll use our keyword tool to learn more about the keywords in the next step. I like to use a spreadsheet because then, when it’s time to analyze the keywords, I can easily populate my findings right into the sheet.
You can grab a copy of my keyword research spreadsheet here.
Brainstorm Keyword Ideas
The first step is to spend some time brainstorming ideas about what your ideal client might be searching for online. You know your people best, so I recommend starting with any initial thoughts you have.
Write down every keyword, keyphrase, and question you can think of in your spreadsheet. Just get all your ideas out onto a page. We’ll learn how to figure out whether or not they’re worth using later.
I’m sure you’ll have a lot of good ideas, but you’ll be amazed at what people search for, specifically how people phrase things, and there are great ways to uncover those keywords without too much work. Here are a few ideas to help you find more potential keywords.
Use a Chatbot
Hop into your favorite chatbot and plug in some details about your business, services, and products you offer, and your ideal client, and tell it you’re looking for potential keywords for your blog.
Turn to Your Search Engine’s Search Bar
Type your keyword/phrase into Google and see what other suggestions show up in the dropdown
Refer to “People Also Ask”
Type a few of your keyword ideas into Google and scroll down to the “people also ask” section for inspiration.
See What Your Competitors Are Doing
If you know of any competitors, use your keyword research tool of choice to dig into the keywords they rank for. In Keysearch you can go to the competitor research tab, type in a competitor’s website to see more keyword ideas.
Use “Seed” Keywords
A seed keyword is a word or short phrase that serves as a great starting point for keyword research. Usually, it’s a specific topic or focus that would be relevant to your business. Terms like watercolor, watercolor paint, or watercolor painting could be seed keywords.
Type that into your keyword research tool and you’ll get hundreds of words that could be potentials for you.
4. Find “Good” Keywords
Ok, so “good” is subjective, but not all keywords are created equal and it’s important to know how to decide which ones are the best for your site and for your goals — this is the basis of how to do keyword research. That’s where your keyword tool comes in. In my opinion, good keywords have four qualities:
helpful to your audience and will attract your ideal client
search volume
search intent that matches the content you’re planning
low competition (especially when your site is new to SEO)
Let’s break that down.
The Topic is Helpful to Your Audience
The most important thing to think about when considering a keyword to target is whether or not it's relevant to your audience. This is why one of the first things we do is identify our ideal client. Once you understand that, it should be easy to know whether or not a topic will be helpful or interesting to your people!
Now, sometimes you will be guessing, but generally speaking, you should know the types of things your audience will want to learn about.
Let’s say you teach watercolor classes online. Your ideal customer is looking for information about learning how to watercolor. Choosing keywords related to hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park probably wouldn’t be as good a fit.
Search Volume
Once you’ve confirmed the topic is one that your audience will find helpful or interesting, you need to be sure people are actually searching for the keyword or phrase you’re thinking about writing about. Seriously, you’d be surprised how many times people give me a few keywords they think their audience is looking for, only for us to discover absolutely no one is searching using the words they think they are.
Now, not every single piece of content has to be optimized for SEO, but if you want that content to be found via organic search, then you will want to make sure someone somewhere is searching for the keyword you’re thinking about writing about.
Let’s learn how to see if a keyword has any search volume. Type one of your keywords into the search bar in your chosen research tool and see what results you get!
Staying with the “learn watercolor” example, using Keysearch, here’s what you’d get.
There’s a lot of information here, and it’s likely that no matter which tool you use, you’ll get similar results, but they might just be organized differently. The first thing we’ll look for is how much search volume that exact keyword or keyphrase gets.
According to Keysearch, “learn watercolor” gets 880 searches per month in the US. That’s quite a bit! Any search volume is good — even 10!
There are people that even say keywords with zero search volume can get results. I have written blogs targeting zero-volume keywords, and they definitely get traffic, so you don’t have to count them totally out.
Record the search volume for your keyword in your spreadsheet now.
Search Intent
One thing that search engines try to assess is what type of content a search query or keyword is looking for. That’s called search intent, and there are four different categories.
Informational – Looking for information or answers
Navigational – Trying to find a specific website or page
Transactional – Ready to make a purchase or take action
Commercial (Investigational) – Comparing options before buying
As you’re planning your content, you’ll want to ensure your content matches search intent. The way you figure that out is by looking at the types of results Google is returning.
Using our “learn watercolor” example, this is what the search engine returns as the top results. (You can also do this exercise right in Google to see what shows up)
Based on these results, the search engine feels that the person who typed in “learn watercolor” is looking for information as opposed to purchasing a product or looking for a specific webpage. As a result, the first page of results is full of guides, tips, tutorials, and instructional videos.
In contrast, a search for ‘watercolor paint’ results in a few different types of results.
When you look at the results, you can see that there are more commercial results as the search engine assumes someone looking for “watercolor paint” may be interested in making a purchase. You can also see that there are some informational results mixed in as well.
Take a look at the results for your keyword and record the type of results being returned in your spreadsheet. If you notice more than one type of search intent, record them both.
Low Competition Keywords
Lastly, the key to choosing “good” keywords when you’re learning how to do keyword research and when you’re first starting out with SEO is finding keywords that you actually have a chance to rank for.
I’ll break this down in even more detail in a future blog, but the gist of it is that when you’re just starting out with SEO, you’ll want to target relevant keywords that are low competition.
A keyword is considered low competition when the following things are true:
There is search volume
There are websites with a low domain authority ranking on page one
There are very few search results with the exact keyword or phrase in the title
There are millions of keywords, and you’ll find that a single keyword or phrase can have tons of variations, which is awesome, but an important part of SEO is knowing which keywords to choose! And that’s exactly what we’ll talk about next, now that you know how to do keyword research.
Learning the basics of keyword research is important as you're starting on your SEO journey. Knowing your audience or ideal client, understanding how to use a research tool, knowing how to come up with good keyword ideas, and what makes a "good keyword" are all things that will set you up for success as you continue on your organic traffic journey.
Stay tuned for the next step — learning all about choosing the perfect keywords to reach your goals!
