How to do perfect keyword research to get best SEO results

by Alok K. Web Desginer, Digital marketer

Since the time Google has come into the limelight, search engine marketers have been trying to win Google’s first page by ranking their page between 1 to 10 of the top search results. And everything revolves around the keyword. It is one element of the game that entails each & every marketing activity on the web. Therefore, it becomes necessary to gain an edge over this. To do this, the first & foremost requirement is to master the keyword research activity to skew the odds in your favor.

Keyword Research is the most valuable, significant, and result-driven activity in any search engine marketing campaign. This is because choosing the right keywords that need to be targeted decides the fate of your website. This activity won’t help you not only in determining the most productive keywords to target but also in understanding your customers as a whole.

According to search engine marketers, keyword research is not only about attracting visitors to your site but about getting the right kind of visitors. There is no doubt about this part of your search engine marketing campaign as with this you can anticipate the demand, plan your resources, respond to varying market scenarios, and make changes to your website to target them.

Let’s go through the below points that would help you derive more out of keyword research.

Create a spreadsheet template

This is the first & foremost activity you need to do using Google Sheets. This can be used every time you execute your keyword research process.

Name it, and fill the headers with relevant points such as Keyword, volume, competition, keyword difficulty and notes. To avoid treating your header row as data, don’t forget to freeze it.

This is where you should start on by populating it with keywords that are going to play a vital role from hereon.

Dig out the most perfect customer’s search terms

Before doing anything, the first thing you should do is brainstorm all the keywords that come in your mind with respect to the product you’re targeting on. Go deeper as much you can and try to increase your reach. Go more specific as it’s not about the history of keyword research or keyword research for e-commerce on-page SEO, it’s about the keyword research process. Put that on the sheet.

At the bottom of the search page, you’ll notice Google’s suggestions. They can be considered though they’re not the final ones.

Count on a list of synonyms

Keyword research is meant to help you get various ways to target your audience. One wonderful way of making the best out of these ways is to search for synonyms of all popular keywords you’re focusing on.

But this doesn’t mean that you should focus only on them. Instead, a better alternative is to go for a mix and match option. Check out new but relevant alternatives that not only look captivating but make sense too.

Search for a relevant Wikipedia article

Over the years, Wikipedia has emerged out as a well-inscribed platform for content related to people and companies. Going this way, you would get to know the ideas on what’s important and the language the target audience interested in the field use to talk about it.

Get a long list of suggestions from your most relevant keywords

UberSuggest is a great tool when it comes to keyword research. If used sagaciously, it can give you some truly magical keywords. But with the wrong standings, you’ll get a lot of garbage so niche you’d need to calculate its volume since the ‘90s to get a number above 10.

This tool scraps the autofill suggestions Google gives you when you type the first word of a phrase into the box. But it works well if you enter the most relevant, most typical, shortest keyword.

If you come across another synonym that people are using in relation to your subject, it’s better to do more than 1 pass with UberSuggest.

Find out how real people talk in their niche communities

Besides the great sources your target audience hangs out, you can be assured that there is a certain group of people with questions that your content may answer on Quora.

The reason Quora is highly significant is because you tend to get an understanding of the exact words your audience uses when they look for an answer you could provide them with. That makes it valuable for producing content ideas along with the keywords.

In fortunate cases, you may a whole section of Quora dedicated to your niche. This would include a list of most relevant questions that need to be answered which were asked by the Quora community as they were not answered properly in Google search.

By focusing on this aspect, you could get new keywords that would help you get awesome results in the long run.

Have a look at your competitors

Due to their increased level of visibility, it is much easier to find competing pages. Just enter your high-level keyword in Google and check what emerges out.

Now, navigate to the Google Keyword Planner.

Tap on the ‘Find new keywords and get search volume data’ option, and paste a competitor’s page into the ‘Your landing page’ field.

This is pretty much easy. Move forward and add new keywords to the sheet, repeat as much you like and move to the further step.

Check out Ahrefs Site Explorer to get competitor’s keywords

The Ahrefs Site Explorer is a great option to get information on competitors. Use the same competitors you entered in Google Keyword Planner, search the URL to get a list of keywords. This is indeed the best SEO tool rated by search engine marketers.

Focus your list down to only the most relevant keywords

Now the real thing starts. First, remove all duplicate keywords as you might have included the same keyword twice or thrice. For huge lists, it’s better to check for duplicates to make sure you’ve got a focused, genuine list.

Paste your list into Google Keyword Planner!

The time has finally come. It’s time to get search volume. That’s because it’s the quickest way to filter down your keywords which nobody will search for.

Once you’ve prepared the spreadsheet, which will contain a flock of redundant info in it, you want to take the good elements and paste them back over to your original sheet.

Delete everything apart from the Keyword, Volume and Competition columns, then paste it again. If there’s no volume data, don’t worry. Those keywords aren’t relevant enough to be much help to you.

Delete the keywords that don’t make sense

The language that makes sense is important. Therefore, it is suggested to remove keywords that make no sense such as ‘keyword research free’ and ‘computer learn now easy’. Try to be as natural as possible.

If you picked everything you could see in UberSuggest or made a huge export, then now’s also the time to get rid of the silly ones like ‘keyword research’ and ‘keyword research Google'.