The Ultimate Keyword Research Guide for SEO

A good keyword research project will unearth the words, phrases, queries, and answers that are significant to your users and consumers. Your keywords should also serve company goals, such as increasing the number of page views, acquiring more leads, or making more sales of items and services.

You’ll need to be familiar with how to do keyword research using Semrush if you want to increase the number of properly qualified leads coming to your website. Continue reading to find out more about how it operates, why it is so essential, and how it may assist you in the process of content creation.

What Is Keyword Research? 

Researching keywords is the act of discovering all of the different search queries that might possibly be related to your company and the clients you serve, which you can do using Semrush with 14 days free trial. Your keyword strategy may then be informed by the findings of your keyword research, which involves locating, categorizing, and prioritizing keywords.

Because using the appropriate keywords can assist attract potential customers who are more likely to utilize or make a purchase from your website, it is crucial to make use of them.

However, it is equally crucial to avoid using “wrong” keywords, which can attract people who are likely to bounce away from your website. Using the “wrong” keywords can attract readers who are inclined to leave your page. Researching keywords can help you find out both of these things.

Researching keywords can also assist you in prioritizing the terms you use. If you have a new site or a tiny site, and the sites like Wikipedia and Amazon that are your competitors on a certain search phrase, ranking for that keyword can be a goal for the long run or a lesser priority for you. In the meantime, focus your efforts on other keywords that are easier to achieve in the near future.

What are Keyword/Query Trends?

It’s possible that some SEO professionals would contend that specific “head” keywords won’t be as significant in the future owing to the rise of voice search. Users are able to construct lengthy search queries using their natural language thanks to voice search.

However, this does not imply that shorter keywords, known as “head” keywords, cannot serve as the beginning or basis of your keyword study. Due to the absence of a distinct database for voice search results, a single head phrase might result in the production of a large number of long-tail keyword possibilities.

Voice searches on Google, for instance, produce results that are substantially identical to those produced by text searches using the same search terms. Google will be able to extract the important phrases from the majority of these lengthy long-tail inquiries and then offer the results.

For illustration’s sake, let’s type into Google, “Hey Google, what are the greatest running shoes for someone who has flat feet?” and see what comes up. When looking at the results of a Google search, it is clear to notice that Google delivers a result set that is substantially identical to the one it gives for the query “best running shoes flat feet.”

Brainstorm Your Keywords

Participation from your clients, members of your content team, and other individuals in the process of keyword brainstorming might result in the generation of even more pertinent keywords.

To put it another way: the greater the amount of mental capacity, the better.

Participation from these parties in the process will also boost the approval that stakeholders have for the process of keyword research. Hold quick sessions of brainstorming with the stakeholders to find out what they believe would be valuable based on their knowledge of their website.

Simply compiling your initial list is the first step in conducting your study for SEO keywords. There are many different places where one might obtain potential lists of keywords. For the purpose of this illustration, we will make use of our Keyword Overview tool to investigate the topic of “Best TVs.”

Business Discovery

When commencing a new project including keyword research, the first thing that should be done is to have an understanding of what the company or stakeholder has to offer. If you are an outside consultant or agency, this stage is essential since it is highly unlikely that you will ever understand the company or its consumers on the same level as those employees or customers with whom you interact on a regular basis.

Imagine that you are an in-house SEO responsible for conducting keyword research for a new company or division that you have not previously collaborated with. In such a situation, you need to have an understanding of the products or services that are being provided as well as, more crucially, the requirements and problems that are being experienced by present stakeholders, which includes users and customers as well as internal stakeholders.

If you do not have this understanding, you will not be able to build a complete list of keywords nor will you be able to determine whether or not those keywords are important and relevant.

Geolocating Keyword Research

The majority of keyword research tools like Semrush will, by default, return either the total search volume for all countries or the search volume for a specific nation. It is possible for you to combine different keyword data sets if you have an interest in more than one country.

Many of the keyword research tools on the market today are unable to provide information on a granular enough level for users who are interested in data specific to a city, state, province, territory, etc.

Imagine that you are conducting research on keywords for a company that is restricted to operating in a single state. You are going to want to acquire a clear sense of the overall search volume that is accessible. In that scenario, you ought to seriously consider restricting the search volume to a certain geographical area.

Once again, Google Ads might be of use in this situation. For instance, if you are dealing with a legal firm that is only active in San Francisco and targets “personal injury lawyer,” you may utilize the geographical data provided by Google Ads Planner to assess how much traffic your client could potentially collect.

On the other hand, let’s say you entered “personal injury lawyer in San Francisco” as the search keyword. In this context, you should be able to make reference to the magnitude of the phrase’s national search results because the goals of everyone looking for that word “meet” those of your customer.