How to Find Profitable Keywords for SEO
Keywords are the backbone of SEO, therefore, it is very important to find the best ones. A keyword can simply be a single word or a combination of certain words. They play a key role in directing visitors from search engines i.e. Google to a specific website. Keywords are added in the website content, meta-tags, and on other content platforms, including social media. In layman’s terms, when a keyword/s is entered in Google, its algorithm searches and displays the most relevant results for that keyword. To display these SERPs, it looks all over the digital world of content and ranks the best possible matches first. Now, the user can choose to click and visit any result displayed to them. Google’s search for the relevant results is dependent on the keyword to bring the best possible results to its users with the help of its efficient algorithms.
How to Find the Right Keywords for SEO?
Since we know that Google, or any other browser for that matter, uses keywords to search and display results, SEO specialists make sure to add the most relevant keywords to a business niche in their optimization efforts. The ideal keyword research for SEO may follow the process below:
- Generate a start off the list with basic terms
- Use SEO keyword research tools to expand the basic term’s list
- Conduct competitive research to refine keyword list
Creating Basic Terms List in 4 Steps
To find the most profitable keywords generate an exhaustive list of keywords that covers all the products and services thoroughly. For example, there can be many possible combinations for searching a cupcake recipe i.e. ‘how to make cupcakes’, ‘best cupcake recipe’, easy cupcake making’, etc. Since all the websites that have this exact phrase in them will be displayed first and then the ones that loosely match it, gather all possible terms in four steps. These terms include:
- Audience research for trending terms
- Trending search terms through analytics tools
- Suggestion form auto-complete search to see what people are looking for
- Competitor research via tools for finding keywords they are bidding on
Expanding Keywords List with Research Tools
If you through a digital coin up in the digital air, chances are it will hit a tool for keyword research for SEO. But there are distinctions that should be considered while researching for profitable keywords for SEO. There are free tools that offer limited support for competitor analysis as well as SEO keyword research. But there are some paid tools provided by reputable sources such as Google, Moz, etc that offer comprehensive support for finding the most suitable keywords for SEO. Google Analytics is greatly helpful in searching trending terms. Google Adwords offers comprehensive assistance in searching and finalizing the best keywords for any given niche. Other tools like Soovle, SpyFu, and SEM Rush are intelligent SEO keyword research tools that can give useful suggestions and let you know what keywords your competitors are using. They are remarkably helpful in narrowing down the keywords with the highest potential of directing visitors to the website.
Refining List to Select Most Profitable Keywords
Now you have a solid list of great keywords however, they cannot be chosen randomly for SEO. There are maybe a hundred different keywords in your list on how the users may try to search for a cupcake recipe. But it is not feasible to do SEO for hundred keywords. So, the solution is, the keywords have to be refined and optimized for favorable results of all SEO efforts. This finalized list is dependent on using the right keywords which require the help of SEO keyword research tools.
It is an intricate process consisting that lays the groundwork for all your future SEO efforts. Therefore, it is imperative to get this part right. But before we start the process of refining keywords, first, you have to define a reasonable limit of keywords for which you can do the SEO. Secondly, do understand that there are no strict conditions to follow here. To narrow the list to the ones that offer the best chance to achieve the goals for SEO, we simply eliminate the less interesting words. However, research is a crucial part of it and the SEO experts use various SEO keyword research tools for this purpose.
Finalizing Keywords for SEO
There are four factors to consider to refining and finalizing your SEO keyword list that offers the maximum benefit to your website:
- Categorize Keywords
Some important keywords categories according to their decreasing importance are brand keywords, product or service keywords, competitor keywords, and audience keywords. Your crude list of keywords will have an uneven number of terms in each category. So, start by eliminating less relevant keywords from the least important category. Do as many rounds as needed.
- Check Competition
This again is the job for tool and at this point, it is always better to use the paid ones. Google and Moz have tools that can easily refine your keyword selection and show which keywords have higher competition and difficulty scores. Simply put these tools help you identify and choose the keywords that give you a better chance of success by avoiding the ones that have too much competition.
- Search the Landscape in Browser
Eliminate the marginal or ambiguous terms that may refer to some different product or service not provided by your business. The best way to do this is to add important keywords in Google and see all the results are relevant and skip the keywords that refer to some other irrelevant product.
- Grouping keywords by semantics
Gather your keywords into groups by semantics, for example, the keywords, ‘chocolate cupcake recipe’ and ‘caramel cupcake recipe’ would be grouped under ‘cupcake recipe’ Such groups are useful in PPC ads however, you should drop the ones with larger word count by eliminating those with lower search count.
Categorizing is a great way to target the audience successfully. Keyword research for SEO is a job for professionals and advanced tools in a digital marketing company. But anyone can do it by following the right track to beneficial keywords. These tools are a godsend, so make use of them wisely to boost your profits digitally.