The most effective way to boost your website ranking or your blog’s readability is through the use of the right keywords. Prospective customers always search for certain keyword phrases before they land on a site. Therefore, writing quality content is indeed one of the most exciting and challenging tasks you will do for your blog. When you use the right keywords, search engines will display your content for more people to come to you. Here are some easy ways to do keyword research.
1. Use search engines
Yes! The easiest way to find what people are searching for in your niche is through Google and other search engines. There’s really no other easy way to do free keyword research. For example, when I wrote my most popular blog post on this site easy ways to get rid of bed bugs, I first searched for the long tail keywords, ‘how to get rid of bed bugs’. This gave me all the FAQs or frequently asked questions that real and genuine people were searching for. This keyword research tip helps me in writing all my articles on this and other websites. Scroll down to the end of Google’s page and you will get even more topics and words to write on.
2. WordTracker keyword tool
This is another popular and useful (and free) keyword research tool. Here are the keyword research tips that will help you when using this tool:
- Use your web browser and go to WordTracker.
- Suppose you are writing on cats and cat behavior, you need to enter ‘cat behavior’ in the search box.
- After typing your phrase or word, click the magnifying glass symbol.
- Within a few moments, WordTracker will display results from Yahoo, Google, Bing and other search engines along with a list of top performing key phrases.
- Now all you need to do is select a few keywords relevant to your niche and get writing!
3. Other SEO keyword research tools
Apart from WordTracker there are many paid and free keyword research tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Lambda SEO and LSI Keywords. You can also use Soovle and I especially love this free keyword research tool as it allows me to see all popular searches about a particular topic on not only Bing, Google and Yahoo but Answers.com, YouTube and Wikipedia as well.
4. Find your main niche keyword
When you are worried what keyword research is all about, then you must start with the basics. And by basics, I mean the long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are keywords that have immense potential value although they may not be the highly searched terms in your niche. For example, if you have a website about pizza, then one example of long tail keyword is ‘how to bake a pizza?’ Other long tail keywords include pizza delivery or, to narrow it down further, pizza delivery in NYC. The latter would have the highest engagement while just ‘pizza delivery’ would have moderate engagement. What this means is that as a part of your ways to do keyword research in 2018, you must understand the difference between search volume.vs. search engagement vs. number of words. Long tail keywords are a promising start as they help you build authority. If your score is high, you can start ranking for keywords with higher search volume and difficulty. A great keyword tool to use here is KWFinder.com.
5. Find more niche topics too
Apart from long tail keywords, an important part of your keyword research template includes sub topics. Continuing the above example of pizza, you may want to also use topics like ‘history of pizza’, ‘types of pizzas’ and so on. The more keywords and sub topics you use, the better are your chances of getting a higher rank in search engine listing. Add several hidden niche long tail keywords to your site. For example, ‘shoes’ niche will do well with keywords like ‘best price of size 10 shoes on Air Jordan’ as a person with this search is more than ready to buy shoes online.
6. Use forums and other competitor sites
You can also do your free keyword research using forums like Reddit, Quora etc. These tools can give you latest topics that people are searching for. You can also find hot topics and controversial topics, if any, as these are the ones that get more user engagement.
7. Work with metrics
Metric analytic sites are an important arsenal in your SEO keyword research tool . These include sites like MOZ, that give you search volume trend over a year. The tools also give you basic information about Cost Per Click and Pay Per Click etc. This means the keywords and their average cost per click in Google ads. Most CPC are below $1 but there are some keywords that can go up to $50!
8. Keep an eye on your competition
Tools like MOZ also help you see the ranks and metrics of your competitors. This can help you find out what you need to do in order to improve your blog/websites.
9. Stay up to date with latest updates
I frequently use Search Engine Land as it gives latest search engine optimization tips. The site explains everything latest in search engine optimization techniques along with latest SEO marketing strategies. I also recommend that every blogger/website owner download and use the free PDF on Search Engine Optimization starter guide. It has many great tips to help you get started and rank higher in SERPs.
10. Keep things organized
I definitely recommend creating keyword lists and writing as many blogs as you possibly can. Just make sure they are useful to your readers. If you are busy, you can use voice recorder to organize your thoughts on the go. Also make sure that your site is user friendly. If needed, use some tools to remove clutter of advertisements and images from the pages. User experience goes a long way in improving your site’s ranking. Ensure that the site loads quickly. Other tools that can help you include Grammarly to check your grammar and punctuation, Copyscape to ensure there is no plagiarism and Pixabay for some nice, royalty free images.
I hope this brief guide helps you rank higher. Check out my other articles on the topic here and here.