we are talking about Keyword Research Tutorial, From Start to Finish
Keyword Research is not about search volume
I will even argue that it’s no entirely about traffic either
it’s about choosing topics that potential customers are searching for, serving their needs, and eventually converting them into customers.
so in this keyword research tutorial,
I am going to show you how to do keyword research that will help you increase traffic and revenue.
stay stunned
What’s up SEO ?
here with Ahrefs, the SEO tool that helps you grow your search traffic, research your competitors and dominate your niche
Now, this keyword research tutorial is going to be a bit different than what you might be used to seeing.
Rather than focusing on things like low competition topics, I want to show you how to find and map keywords that will actually drive revenue for your business
so whether you are creating a new website or you want to revamp your current keyword targeting, the processes I will outline today will help.
Alright, so let
s say that I’M starting a new e-commerce store selling computers, parts, software and accessories.
I will obviously need product and category pages.
but I will also want to use a blog to fuel my traffic.
The first step is to generate keywords Ideas.
and I will be using Ahrefs Keyword Explorer for this.
so I will start by typing in a few board keyword related to my online store like computer, computers, laptop, laptops, and PC.
Next, I will go to the having same terms report which shows us all keyword ideas that contain the target keywords as a board match.
and there are well over 17 million keyword ideas.
Now, the point of this exercise is not to find as many random keywords as possible.
it’s to filter them down and group them by search intent.
what is Search Intent ?
Search intent just means “the reason behind a searcher’s query”.
Now, these can generally be categorized into four groups.
First, are informational keywords.
and these are queries where a searcher is looking to gain general knowledge on a topic.
For Example “what is DDR4 ram?”
Next are Navigational Keywords.
for these, the searcher usually knows the destination they want to reach.
For Example, something like “Newegg DDR4 RAM”
Third, are commercial investigation queries.
these generally show that someone is looking to get information on something that they want to eventually buy
so these will often be comparisons and include keyword modifiers like “Best DDR4 Ram”.
Finally, are transactional Keywords, Which show that someone is ready to make a purchase like “buy DDR4 ram”.
And if you are familiar with the sales conversion cycle, you will see each of these groups, fit into one of the four stages.
Now, you might wondering, why not just go after transactional keywords since these are the ones that are going to drive direct revenue ?
two things,
First, you will limit your reach.
you will limit your reach.
Generally speaking, search demand will be lowest for transactional keywords.
so if you are ignoring things like informational queries, you will be missing out on opportunities to squeeze yourself into your target audience’s conversion journey.
informational content can also help you build trust and authority,
so that when someone actually comes to a point of commercial investigation, they may recognize your name.
or when they get to the transactional stage, having previous exposure can be the difference between choosing you over a competitor.
the second distinct advantage you have is that you can accelerate people’s buying journey through internal linking
the second distinct advantage you have is that you can accelerate people’s buying journey through internal linking, retargeting, or whatever method to get your content in front of them.
for example, if my store had a blog post on “what to do with an old laptop”, and the post mentioned a buy-back program we do, it could lead to a conversion quickly.
Now, how can you determine search intent for a keyword phrase ?
with some of them, you can’t from the keyword alone.
but a good chunk of them can be found using keyword modifiers.
What is Modifier ?
a Modifier is an add-on to a base keyword
for example, that could be best, top or current year.
here’s a short list to get you started.
take a screenshot and let’s keep going
Now I am back in our keyword ideas report and I want to filter for keywords by search intent category.
So I will grab our list of informational keywords, and paste them into the include box here.
make sure to set the tap to “any”, which will show us all keyword ideas that contain any of these keywords.
alright. so the filtered result still show over there million keywords.
so let’s set another filter, if you are looking for low competition keyword targets, then you can set a maximum keyword difficult score of something low like 10.
Personally, I prefer to focus on search demand by setting the volume in tiers.
so we will set a filter to show only keywords that have a minimum search volume of 1000
and we have narrowed our 17 million results down to around a thousand.
Now you will need to manually filter through these.
Since we are focusing on keyword research that drives revenue, you will have to focus on the business potential of a keyword
at Ahrefs, we assign a score between 1-3.
the larger the number, the greater value the keyword has to our business.
an easy way to determine the business value is to ask yourself this question:
Can I plug my products or services into these posts naturally ?.
or ask yourself, would someone searching for this query be interested in purchasing my my products or services ?
if the answer is no, then you should probably move on.
A quick way to sort through this list is to sort the table by parent topic.
Since a single page can rank for hundreds or thousands of keyword, you can use the parent topic to see if you can rank for your target keyword while targeting a more general topic on your page instead
For example, you will see high volume keywords that all have the same parent topic of “xbox one controller driver”.
Rather than creating numerous dedicated articles of these queries about connecting an Xbox, controller to a PC, just choose the one with the most search volume as long as it provides value to your business.
for example, this keyword on “what is a computer worm”, could be a good one for our computer shop since we provide anti-virus software.
so while it is an informational topic, we could easily link to the different software products in our store.
so I will add a checkmark to it.
then select the rest of the keywords in your filtered list by scanning the parent topic groups.
Now, before we switch to the next page, scroll to the top and click on “Add to” and create a list with the keyword category as the name.
so these would be informational keywords.
if you find that your keyword list is too short, then just change the volume filter.
since we have already gone through searches with greater than 1000 monthly searches,
I will set the next one to searches that have 500-999 monthly searches and do the exact same thing until I have a large enough pool.
Now, do the same thing for your other keyword categories, and you should have a nice list of topics to target in every stage of their buying journey.
but there’s still some work to do.
Keyword Research Tutorial, From Start to Finish
Also See
How to Quickly Approved and Setting Google Adsense
5 Free SEO Tools by Ahrefs to Improve SEO
How To Quickly Raise Moz And Ahrefs Domain Authority
