How Do You Start Keyword Research? Effective Strategies that Work
Finding the best free keyword research tool is essential for a blog if you don’t want to pay out on an expensive paid service.
A combination of keyword tools will allow a better understanding of keywords metrics.
Nearly all keyword effective keywords strategies begin with a few seed words or phrases. These seed words lead to a list of possible keywords.
Your keywords need to be grouped and trimmed before being checked for suitability.
Just staring out with blogging? Read about How to choose a Niche.
How to Compile a Seed List. Simple Ways to Get Started
When starting to compile a seed list it is best to think in general terms. Your seed words are the topics that your website tackles. Categories or navigation terms would make good seed options.
The seed words would be too broad if used as keywords but are the starting point in your keyword research.
For example, WordPress as a topic would be broad, WordPress Themes could be a good seed word.
What topics do you think the people visiting your site would like to know? It’s best to think in general terms rather than specific questions at this stage.
Visiting similar sites to yours or ones you would like to compete with will give you an overview of their topics.
Try to make sure that your topics are at least loosely tied together. The more relevant your content is to each other will be a ranking factor in Google.
- What is the topic of my website?
- Would my main categories or navigation terms make good seed words?.
- What do l think my readers want to know about?
- What are my competitors ranking for or targeting?
Use Your Seed List for Keyword Suggestions
Best Free Keyword Generator Tools
Tool 1 : Keyword Sheeter
Keyword Sheeter is a simple, free keyword research tool for getting a list of autocomplete results.
Results can use filters to include terms such as how-to or how does for different needs.
The keyword list can be extensive, but it does not contain important data, such as search volume or keyword competitiveness.
You can export the keyword list as a simple text file.
Tool 2 : Keywords Everywhere
Tool 3 : Keyword Surfer
It is also possible to get keyword ideas and traffic details direct from the google search page using browser add-ons.
Keywords Everywhere and Keyword Surfer are chrome browser extensions. When used in combination it is possible to get SEO Difficulty, related keywords, search volume, and long-tail keyword suggestions.
Keyword Surfer
This is a useful keyword research tool for estimating traffic, related keywords. You can add keywords to the clipboard by clicking the star icon.
Keywords Everywhere
The SEO difficulty is a good feature to have although the reliabilty is perhaps questionable. Trend data and long-tail suggestions are also useful.
- You should now have a long list of keywords
- The keywords will be a mixture of long-tail keywords, questions and broad searches
- Combine them into a list, a simple text file or spread sheet.
Practical Steps to Help Refine Your Keyword List
The task now is to see which keywords to discard. Some keywords may be too competitive or have very little traffic. The estimated traffic is often on the low side of actual results. You may get an estimate of 0 traffic but find your phrase appearing in the related questions box in Google. If people are googling a question then there must be traffic.
Keyword Grouping
Webpages can often rank for hundreds of related keywords
Simply using Google Docs or Excel it is fairly easy to divide a long set of keywords into related groups.
Grouping the keywords will also make it easier to work out whether to write separate pages for each group. Again search volume and topic relevancy are two factors here.
Use Google Keyword Planner. Best Free Keyword Research Tool for Sorting
Tool 4 : Google Keyword Planner
Can I use Google keyword Planner for free?
Yes, you can use the Google Keyword Planner for free. It is one of the best tools for finding keywords and estimating the search volume your webpage could receive.
You need to have a Google Ads account if you wish to use the Google Keyword Planner Tool.
After setting up your ads campaign, you can pause the campaign and still access the Keyword Planner Tool.
Entering topic groups of up to ten related keywords will give you an estimate of traffic volume and competition difficulty.
Choosing the “Start With a Website” option in the keyword planner allows you to view keywords featured in a webpage article. The webpage searched need not be from your website.
It often makes sense for new websites or those with little domain authority to target lower competition keywords. If you manage to rank well for a number of keywords your site authority will grow,
Ranking well for multiple keywords will help improve your site authority, this, in turn, will enable you to target more competitive keywords.
- You should now have a groups of related keywords
- Decided on keywords you believe you can rank for
