Starting your blog used to be much easier. All you needed was a visually stunning website and, of course, engaging content. But we are way past these simpler times. There are so many blogs on any given topic nowadays that you must deliver exactly what the reader wants to get ahead of the competition.
Keyword research is a broad topic that takes a lot of time to master. Reading the theory can take months. This short guide will present you with three actionable steps you can implement on your newly-found blog right away.
What is keyword research?
Let's start with a few definitions. Keyword research is an essential part of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It's a practice aimed at improving the number (and quality) of visitors that reach your website from search engines such as Google.
The higher the ranking of your website, the more traffic will reach it. In fact, it's known that the first three positions take more than half of all traffic that comes from Google. However, no matter how good your blog is, it cannot rank everywhere. It has to rank for certain keywords.
A keyword is a word or phrase that describes the content of your page or blog post the best. When someone enters that keyword into Google, you want your website to be found. In such a context, keywords are also called search terms.
Keyword research is a part of SEO that focuses on finding the best keywords you want (or should) rank. If you think strategically, it should be the first step when creating a blog. Before creating the design or writing the content, you should research what people are searching for in your niche.
Unfortunately, some bloggers view SEO and keyword research as something alien to their projects. That's a mistake, as they are missing out on the main source of traffic. Even if they won't be relying on visitors from Google, understanding what the readers want through keyword research is useful.
The three steps provided below will help you start practicing keyword research and get ahead of those who do not practice SEO. What's more, they are fundamental to further parts of SEO - competitor analysis, internal linking, and others.
1. Make a priority keyword list
In many ways, keyword research is understanding your audience. So, the first step is to get rid of the idea that you'll write something that only you want to write. To be successful, you must write what people want to read.
That's where keyword research starts. Try to approach the big picture and brainstorm the main keywords your blog will target. Usually, these are short-tail keywords - ones that refer to a broad range of topics. For example, digital marketing or SEO are short-term keywords.
A good idea here is to focus on terms and phrases common in your industry. Look into competitor blogs and try to find what they are writing about. Note the topics and formulate broad keywords that you then start to narrow.
Such narrowing often means you are looking for topics for your concrete blog posts and not the whole blog or its section. This search is all about finding long-tail keywords - ones that target specific areas. For example, "best blog about keyword research for blogs" would be a long-tail keyword.
Once you compile a list of keywords, you will start seeing a complete picture of what your blog will look like. However, now you only have what your audience might want to read. You need to support your guesses with data.
2. Collect data
SEO without data can be successful only by accident and with a lot of luck. That’s why, before starting any new blog post or its section, you must use tools to collect data from the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Searching for the keywords and using Google Trends is a good start for brainstorming and coming up with data-based keywords.
More advanced keyword research will require you to use better tools. Solutions like Keywordtool, Ahrefs, and Semrush are often recommended for getting insights into how much traffic each keyword brings and what its keyword difficulty is. If you are a small player, you want to target long-tail keywords that are easy to attract at least some traffic with.
Using these tools and finding excellent keyword opportunities from the get-go isn’t easy. If you are just beginning, I recommend using a simple Google search with a good proxy server. SEO proxies allow users to change their IP location and collect data more fully.
A good proxy buy is one that can ensure enough speed, is affordable, and covers many locations. You’ll need a lot of fast proxies from many different locations to collect versatile data for your keyword research.
3. Strategy and new keywords
Once you have enough data on how much traffic each keyword can potentially bring and how difficult it will be to target it, you can start creating your keyword strategy. It’s a process of determining what keywords are the best to work on first and which ones are better left for later.
However, it’s a mistake to think that keyword research is a one-time task. Once you find a few keywords that bring some traffic, you still need to keep track of your page’s performance. Google Analytics is enough to track most blogs, but monitoring competitors might require paid tools.
A good keyword strategy relies on mirroring competition to some extent, but you should have your own approach. Try to build different keyword clusters and provide original takes in your articles. It's the best way to stay ahead of the competition, both in the eyes of Google and the readers.
Conclusion
A keen reader should have noticed that the three steps above are curricular. You must rinse and repeat them to grow your blog based on data gathered from keyword research. It's a never-ending process that will ensure the topics you write about are actually in demand from readers.
