Back then when i just started, it was pretty hard to understand what it actually meant when someones said ‘doing keyword research’.

And this is the reason I was inspired to write this blog for just beginners or someone out there who wants to know how to get there content in the search engine and what terms (keywords) to go for.

Truth be said, alot has changed since 5years ago when i started out learning about how the search works. From Google’s algorithm, search tools, search journals and alot more.

The beauty is that everything changes for better in the search world but on the sad part is that, the more time goes, the hard to get on top for certain search terms (keywords).

And this is why i thought writing this article on how to get started with keyword research would be handy or bring value to you. Especially if you’re just getting started.

Background and Brief

As a digital creative, i started out creating websites for clients who wanted to establish there brands online. I found it hard to explain to clients why even in the very first 2-3 months, there website wouldn’t rank for there main keyword (brand keyword). In other words, if its a hospital, there hospital website should by all means be indexed in the search results by there hospital name in atleast the first 3months.

However, i had no profound knowledge on how to go around that. And it really hit me hard when a client said once that i didn’t know what i was doing simply because there website wasn’t showing up in the search results.

Even when they were happy about the services i offered, they were un contented of not appearing in the search engine result pages as most of ‘there clients’ will just Google them by there name instead of typing the domain  name in address bar.

So that lead me to dive deep into learning about how the search works.

To Read: Case Study: What is Site Structure and SiteLinks

 

Beginner Keyword Research 101

For total beginners, the basics should be understood first. Google as a search engine using over 200 ranking factors (thanks to Brian Dean to putting together a complete list) to index and determine the position of a website in the search engine result pages (SERPs). Yes, that’s a whole tone of work.

So, when you’re starting out, its good to first get to learn about the major ranking factors and how Google considers them.

That means knowing about factors like Domain authority, Page authority, Keywords, Backlinks and Brand signals will help you along in your learning experience.

Today, i’ll share only on keyword research. The rest will come in another blog day.

 

What Keywords Actually Are

Keywords are terms that search visitors use to look/search for a service or product using the search engine.

[bctt tweet=”No one dictates which keywords people should use but its search visitors who key in a specific word or search term that in the end, keeps popping up to Google. Then Google will learn about it and will start to index and show results about that specific keyword/search term.” username=”gotechug”]

So at the end of the day, Google will have learnt about several search terms (keywords) that are used by people to access specific information they’re interested in. And that means that we can then start using data already collected by Google in our very own projects.

And that’s how we zero to the term like keyword research.

So, by having access to data from Google using tools that it provides, we are able to determine which keywords performs how. The monthly search queries, visitors, top performing results, how much advertisers are paying for a keyword and it’s competition among others.

To Read: How To Rank Well For A Keyword; Tips For Beginners in 2019

 

Tools Used for Keyword Research

There are a tone of tools you can use to perform keyword research. However in this blog i’ll just mention a few free ones to get you started.

The number one keyword research tool is keyword planner provided by Google. I would term this tool as the mother of all other tools.  And reason for that is that it’s used as a data resource for alot more other 3rd party tools to build upon.

The beauty about keyword planner is that you’re in position to access it using you gmail account, research and be in position to start and run ad campaigns based on data sets you’ve set using this tool.

Keyword planner has been made simpler to use and analyse data however, there are also tutorials made by Google to show you around on how best you can use the platform.

On there other hand, there are 3rd party tools like i already said. I would recommend  a free seo tool by name ubersuggest that you can use to research for keywords and spy on your competition on what content actually brings them traffic and which amount and from where they come.

It can also show you the backlink count, rank position and traffic source. That’s just a hint on how much you can do with this free tool from Neil Patel a digital marketing coach.

Other top performing seo tools that are great and only available upon subscription is, Ahrefs and SemRush.

 

Keyword Research Best Practices

Now that you know exactly what keywords are and which tools to use. Let’s get to know how to make the best use of keyword research tools.

First we need to familiarise ourselves with terms like search volume, organic keywords, paid keywords, domain score, backlinks, search visits, cost per click (CPC), cost per thousand impressions (CPM) among others.

To begin off, search volume calculated monthly is the number of searches a search query (keyword) gets monthly.

Organic keywords are search terms that bring in traffic to a specific website/blog upon a visitor clicking on the organise search results.

Paid keywords on the other hand are those search terms used by advertisers to show up in search queries along with/out organic results. This could also be known as search engine marketing.

To Read: Speed Up WordPress Site with NitroPack Cloud Optimization Plugin

Domain score is the measure of a domains authority and this is made on a scale of 1-100. 1 being that the domain has less domain authority and 100 a domain being with the highest authority. The higher the domain authority, the more trust Google gives to the domain and website owner.

Organic search results are those results queued in the search engine results pages (SERPs) excluding the paid ads.

So, to be in position to start writing your next blog post or to use any of the keyword research tools, the search terms shared above will help to you in determining alot on what you’re actually interested in.

Be sure to know that if you’re starting out, its best to go for low search volume keywords as they tend to be easy to compete and rank for. Recommended low search volume keywords would go for between 250 -750 monthly searches.

 

Inclosing

With all that said, I’ll close it up from here hoping that you’ve gotten a basic idea on how keywords and the search works. Be sure to reach out incase you have any further questions to ask which obviously is. And that’s why i recommend you to develop the GIN mentally.

The GIN (Google It Now) mentally will help you to learn alot about questions you have concerning a specific topic or subject. Especially about learning about how the search works and getting your content on top of Google.

Hopefully your enjoyed this article. See you in the next one…

Talk soon