The Definitive Guide to Keyword Research

Every blogger wants to have a lot of traffic on their blog, and there’s always a struggle to increase organic traffic on one’s blog. If you’re in this category, then you would understand the importance of creating high-quality content to reach a specific target audience. However, if you’re going to be effective in reaching your target audience, you need to know what they’re searching for on Google, and that’s the reason for keyword research.

It is now common knowledge that intelligently organized keyword research tends to increase the traffic on a blog massively. With this in mind, it is easy to become overwhelmed by carrying out keyword researches. Thankfully, it is not so difficult. All you need is the right tools and the proper steps to carry out useful keyword research to create content that people want to read. So, here are some steps that you need to take for effective keyword research.

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Why Do You Need Keyword Research?

There are only two ways with which you can build your blog. It can either be through paid ads or by organic traffic. Organic traffic is free and natural, and that’s what makes it essential. Keyword research helps you gain organic traffic, but there is another importance of keyword research beyond this.

Increases Target Audience Reach

Without the right keyword research, it might be impossible to reach out to your target audience. If you don’t know what keywords your audience uses to search for what they want, you can’t provide the content they need.

Optimizes Social Media Content

Every social media platform works like a mini search engine. This makes it possible to optimize your content for the individual platform based on particular keywords to boost your blog traffic.

Refreshes Old Content

While Google appreciates new content and fresh facts, keyword research allows you to create new content and update existing blog posts. Keyword research will allow you to rework your target keyword and add new sections to some existing blogs.

Top 7 Keyword Research Tips to Help You

1. Make a Keyword List

The first thing that you need to do is to make a list of – what is called – seed keywords. These keywords are the generic keywords relating to your niche and your target audience. For instance, if you own a sports shoe company, some of your seed keywords might be running, running shoes, buy running shoes, stretching, etc. These are keywords that relate to you and what you generally do. With these keywords, you can find other keyword ideas that are longer and more detailed and are useful in your keyword research.

2. Type Seed Keywords in a Search Bar

The next step is to check up your seed keywords in your keyword tool, and all you need to do is type the keyword in the search bar of the tool you’re using. It is also possible that you check the keyword rankings by plugging the URL in the search bar.

3. Analyze Keyword Trends & Volume

The purpose of typing in the keyword in the search bar is to analyze it and what you are looking out for is the trends and volume of the individual keywords. This will give you a good idea of the number of people searching for that keyword on the internet in a month. The graph that comes with it also shows the popularity and trend of that keyword over time. If it is an upward trend, then the keyword has a steadily rising volume (more people are searching for it). This is the right keyword for you to use to increase the amount of traffic on your blog.

4. Browse for Long-Tail Keywords

You must export your result to an Excel sheet as this makes it easier for you to filter your keywords and organize them. Also, it is easy to import that Excel sheet into analytics tools to further your keyword research. However, it would help if you did not forget about long-tail keywords as they’re essential for your blog traffic as well. These long-tail keywords have more than three words in them and give you a better idea of the searchers’ intention than the general keywords.

5. Look for Common Questions

Several keyword research tools allow you to dig deep and uncover the keywords within the content. All you need to do is click on “Analysis” and get an idea of everything you need.

These tools go a long way in increasing the traffic on your blog as they ensure that you are able to deliver high-quality content consistently. Your blog’s goal should be to provide answers to questions that readers seek online and add value to their lives, and you can’t do this if you don’t know what they’re asking.

6. Scrape Keyword Ideas from Popular Content

This is the part where you look for content ideas. The keyword analysis screen has a section for “more content ideas,” where you get to see some of the most shared content for your seed keyword from different websites and blogs across the web. These are some of the content you need to read before writing your blog post for the same keyword. This allows you to create your nuance so you can stand out. It might also be a good idea for you to add some of these top-performing content like links to your content as well for the sake of SEO. Some keyword tools show scores towards the right of the screen. You have to pay attention to this score as it gives you an idea of the timeliness of that topic about long term engagement.

7. Look at Semantic Keywords on Google

This is one of the simplest ways to carry out keyword research. Type in your keyword or search term on Google, then scroll towards the end of the page where you will find some searches related to your search. You can also get inspiration from the “People also ask” section on Google.

Conclusion

There are different ways to boost the traffic on your blog organically, but the top of those is keyword research. With keyword research, it is easy to create content that your audience needs and are willing to read, and this is what drives traffic to your blog.

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Author’s Bio

James Murphy is a full-time content creator at SuperiorPapers and offering term paper help, and other professional writing services. He writes about a wide range of other topics, such as technologies and marketing. He is a father of two lovely toddlers and a dedicated supporter of the New York Yankees.