How to Find Keywords for Your Website: Complete Guide

Keywords are the phrases and words individuals enter into search engines to find something
they are looking for.

For example, if you want to purchase new shoes, you may enter something like “buy shoes
online” into Google. This term that you type in the search engine is called a keyword.

Now, you may think, why do you need to research keywords for your website?

Keywords are important because your site can get displayed when individuals type them into
search engines. SEO professionals and website owners use keywords to optimize a site
in the hopes of ranking at the top of Google’s results for certain keywords.

When your website is listed at the top search results, the keyword works as a free source
of web traffic for your site.

Now, for your website to show at the top of Google for a relevant keyword, it’s important to
learn how to search and find keywords for your website.
In this blog, we’ll discuss the ways in which you can do exactly this. Let’s begin:

How to do Keyword Research?

Let’s start with the first step you need to take to find keywords for your website, i.e.,
keyword research.

Keyword research offers useful insights into the queries your potential customers are
searching on Google. When you research
keywords, you can find the queries you can target. You also get to know their
ranking difficulty and popularity.

All in all, keyword research helps you know the topics your target audience cares about.

How to Research Keywords for Your SEO Strategy

An SEO strategy
is a process of planning and executing steps designed for increasing organic search engine
rankings. To research keywords for your SEO strategy, there is a step-by-step process you
can follow. Following these steps will help you come with a list of terms you should target.
Let’s begin:

1. Create a list of relevant, important topics

As a first step, create a list of topics you want to rank for. For this, you need to
brainstorm and come up with topics based on what you know about your business. Think about
these topics in terms of general buckets. Chances are, you will come up with 5-10
buckets.

Now, you may think, what’s the purpose of this step?

You will use these buckets to come up with specific keywords at a later stage in this
process.

At the time of deciding the topics, think about your buyer personas.
Imagine the topics they would search for so that they are able to discover your business
online. For instance, if you are an organization selling marketing software, your general
topic buckets will look something like this:

Once you find the topics, the next step you need to take is to find their monthly search
volume by using Google’s Keyword Planner. Then, with the help of this
data, you can know how relevant these topics are to your potential customers and how many
sub-topics you may have to create content on to get success with that topic. To know more about
these sub-topics, keep reading!

2. Add keywords ideas to topic buckets

Now that you have a ready list of topic buckets, it’s time to add some keywords in the
respective buckets. For this, think about some keyword phrases that your target audience may enter into Google to search for content related
to the respective topic buckets.

For instance, if you are adding keywords to the social media marketing topic bucket, you may
come up with types of social media marketing, social media marketing examples, and social
media marketing strategy.

Don’t worry, these won’t be your final keyword phrases. You will get to narrow down these
phrases later in the process.

Tip: At the time of finding keyword ideas, you can chat with your
customer-facing colleagues. They will help you know the terms your customers or prospects
use or the common queries they face.

3. Look at related search terms

If you want to know more ways to find out the keywords people may be using to search a
certain topic, you can do one this: check out the related search terms that appear when you
enter and search a keyword in Google. You can find them at the bottom of Google’s results.
Checking out these keywords can help you come up with new keyword ideas.

4. Use Keyword Research Tools

Keyword research and SEO tools can help you get more keyword ideas that you have not thought
of till now. Here’s a ready list that you can refer to:

You can use Ubersuggest to research some long-tail keywords for your buckets. These are the
types of keywords more specific as compared to generic terms. All you need to do is enter a
term in the tool, and you will be presented with a list of long-tail keywords.

For instance, if you enter the term ‘content marketing strategy,’ here is the list of keyword
ideas you’ll get:

Keyword Surfer shows you keyword ideas from inside the search results of Google. To access
this tool, you need to install its Chrome extension. After you do this, whenever you search
a term on Google, you can see a complete list of keyword ideas.

Answer the Public is a free keyword tool that generates long-tail keywords. It divides its
suggestions into categories, such as:

For instance, open the tool and enter “content marketing strategy,” and you will get the
following suggestions:

This tool helps you get plenty of keyword ideas. Conduct a search for a term and get a lot of
relevant suggestions for your keyword lists.

Soovle is a free keyword research tool that provides you keyword ideas from Google, Yahoo,
Bing, etc., in a single place.

All in all, when faced with the question of how to find the best keyword
ideas for your website, these tools will definitely come in handy.

How Do I Find Good Keywords for My Website?

With a ready list of keywords for each topic bucket, it is now time to take
steps to refine your list. This will help you find the best keywords
for your website. Here’s how you can do this:

1. Curate keywords for three main things

Understand the main factors for choosing keywords that will give results. These factors
include:

Relevance

Google ranks content based on relevance. That’s why you need to pay attention to a concept
called “search intent.”

Search intent is the reason that drives an individual to conduct an online search.

Your content will only rank for a keyword if it meets the needs of the searchers.

Also, your aim should be to create the best resource that exists on the web for a particular
query.

Volume

You may get a spot on the first page for a particular keyword, but you won’t get any traffic
to your website if no one ever searches for it.

Volume is measured by “monthly search volume.” It is the number of times a specific keyword
gets searched in a month (across every audience). As discussed before, you can find the
monthly search volume by using Google Keyword Planner to take care of this
factor.

Authority

Google gives more weight to an authoritative source. To become one, you need to enrich your
website with useful, informative content and then promote it to get backlinks and earn
social signals.

2. Check if you have long-tail keywords apart from head terms

Firstly, let’s define both head terms and long-tail
keywords in detail. Head terms are the keyword phrases that are more generic and
usually shorter (typically one to three words). On the other hand, long-tail keywords are
longer keyword phrases consisting of three or more words. For instance, “blogging” is a head
term, and “how to write a blog post” is a long-tail keyword. With long-tail keywords, you
can easily tell what people are actually looking for.

It is crucial to check if you have long-tail keywords in each bucket and not only head terms.
When compared to head terms, long-tail keywords bring in more desirable traffic. Why so?
This is because they are highly specific in nature. A person searching for something so
specific can probably be a much more qualified searcher for your service or product.

Tip:Whenever you create a final list of keywords for your
website, ensure it is a mix of head terms and long-tail keywords.

3. Check how your competition ranks for these keywords

Checking and analyzing what keywords your competitors are trying to rank for will help you
evaluate your lists of keywords so far. If you find that your competitor is ranking for
keywords that you have on your lists too, you can aim to improve your ranking for them.
Also, if you find important terms that your competitors are not paying any attention to, you
can try to rank for those keywords.

Note: Your final keyword list must have a healthy mix of the terms that will
be more difficult to rank (because of competition) and the terms that are more realistic to
rank for.

Now, you may wonder how to find the keywords your competitors are ranking for?

SEMrush is a paid keyword tool that
lets you view the keywords your competitors rank for. Pop your competitor’s site into the
tool to know the list of keywords they rank for.

4. Narrow down your lists

You can use a mix of Google’s Keyword Planner and Google Trends to cut
down your keyword lists.

Use Keyword Planner to get search volume and traffic estimates for different keywords you
have in your lists. Use it to flag any terms on your keyword lists that have way too much or
way too little search volume.

But before you omit anything, check the trend history and projections in Google Trends.
Google Trends helps you check which terms are trending upwards and need your attention.

Note:For using Google’s Keyword Planner, set-up an Ads account and turn off
your example ad before paying any money.

Wrapping it up

Keyword research helps optimize your website for search. Ensure you properly execute all of
these steps to get a ready list of keywords for your website that can help
you focus on just the right topics. These keywords can help you get some quick wins and move
towards bigger SEO goals.

In the end, remember, as your authority in SERPs increases with time, keep on adding more and
more keywords to your lists. Learn how to
do keyword research for SEO and come with more keyword ideas with time.

About author

Sean Davis currently works as a content developer at DashClicks, a digital marketing platform that
helps small and medium-size agencies scale. He has been working in the digital marketing
industry for several years. With that experience and expertise, he wants to help readers
understand the technical aspects of digital marketing through his writings. Follow him on Twitter to read his work.

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