Keyword Research for Your Blog ?

We are often asked by our users how to do keyword research for their WordPress blogs… and the best keyword research method. The basis of keyword research is to help you find better content ideas that will help you grow traffic and create highly engaging content that users will continue to engage in. In this article, we will show you how to properly do keyword research for your WordPress blog.

Keywords are the foundation of SEO. If nobody is searching for what you’re writing about, you won’t gain any traffic from Google.

 

What is Keyword Research ? and how do you form a keyword search ?

Keyword research is a research technique used by SEO experts and people that create content. It helps you discover words that users enter into search engines to find content, products, and services in your industry.

A lot of new bloggers pretty much don’t consider doing any keyword research, and because of this, they struggle to get visitors to their blog.

Have you ever done keyword research for a blog post and experienced no organic traffic? You may be thinking, “What happened? The terms I optimized for had search volume. Why am I not getting a piece of that?”

 

 

What is a keyword search?

The keyword research , called also search for keywords or keyword research , SEO is the technique through which are searched for key search terms on a certain topic that you type on the major search engines, like Google.

Through keyword research, you can go to not only find new content for your blog , but also understand what are the best topics you should cover to attract new customers and increase your blog traffic .

Effective keyword research answers some crucial questions, such as:

• What are the most searched topics in your niche ?
• How many people are looking for these keywords?
• What are the related topics (and therefore, the related keywords)?
• What are the keywords used by your competitors?

Through keyword research, therefore, you will be able to create the best content for your blog , intercepting the questions your audience asks to provide them with the best answer.

 

Why is keyword research so important?

One of the skills of an SEO Copywriter is also SEO, or search engine optimization.

The SEO is a set of techniques and strategies that are used to position the content of a blog or a website in the top positions in Google search results. In fact, the higher your content in the Google SERP , the greater the chance that users will visit your website.

The blog statistics speak for themselves: keyword research still remains the cornerstone of any blog editorial strategy.

The reasons?

• 92.04% of total organic traffic comes from Google
• 95% of users stop at Google’s first page results
• Almost 50% of all clicks in Google’s search results are made on the top 3 search results.

 

The keyword research is therefore essential to find the best keywords to develop in the blog and position them in the first Google search results, so as to get the most user clicks.

But how is a keyword research done? Let’s see it together.

 

 

Keyword research: how to get started

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To create an editorial plan where to group the topics you will develop on your blog, it is important to first find out what people in your niche are looking for when they do a Google search for the topic you want to cover.

Before starting the actual keyword research, it is therefore important to start drawing up a list of “basic” topics for your blog. Don’t pay too much attention to the form in this step but let it be a kind of brainstoarming.

These basic topics are those that will form the categories of the blog , the main topics to be developed. Focus specifically on the products or services you offer or intend to offer.

For example, if you have a yoga site, these macro-categories could be:

• Meditation
• Practice of yoga
• Yogic lifestyle
• Yoga course.

Once you’ve found the main categories, it’s time to delve into them by looking for the terms your audience uses to describe your products or services .

There are several ways you can do this research. The first is undoubtedly to search in blogs, forums (such as Quora ) or Facebook groups which are the most frequently asked questions.

The second way is to use SEO tools that allow you to further deepen your searches, giving you results also in terms of number of searches.

There are numerous tools you can use for this search, such as

• SEOZoom
• SEMRush
• Answer the Public
• Soovle .
• Ubbersuggest

 

We will talk more about this in a moment.

Another very useful thing you can do to understand what the best keywords you can develop are to check which keywords your competitors are ranking for .

You can do this simply with SEMRush (even with the free plan).

In fact, you just need to go to the side menu> Domain analysis> Organic search and you will be able to find out which are the main keywords for which the competitor sites are ranking and any other competitor blogs you can analyze.

Upon completion of this research, you will have numerous keywords and ideas that you can use. Now is the time to optimize our keyword list.

 

 

Longtail keywords

After doing the preliminary research, you probably used the SEO tools I recommended to also check the search volume of each keyword , i.e. the number of people who search for that keyword on Google.

The instinctive thing would be to choose the keywords with the highest search volume . More people searching means more clicks on our blog, right?

But no, that’s not exactly the case.

An important fact that we must look at, in fact, is the keyword difficulty , that is the difficulty that a keyword has in positioning itself , based on the competition.

I’ll explain.

Let’s go back to our yoga blog. The dry keyword “yoga” certainly has a very high search volume. But it also has a very high competition and therefore a high keyword difficulty.

 

This means that you will hardly be able to position yourself in the first search results , overtaking giants such as Wikipedia, especially if your blog is still young.

The solution, therefore, is to focus on what are called long-tail keywords , ie keywords long tail .

These keywords are made up of 3-5 words and, as also reported by Hubspot , keywords of more than 4 words represent 50% of all searches that are done on Google.

Very often, in fact, people use conversational queries , ie keywords that represent a question , a bit as if users “conversed” with Google.

Users are in fact more likely to search for phrases such as “How can I do …” rather than looking for the dry keyword.

These keywords therefore have lower search volumes but less competition and it is therefore easier to be able to position themselves in the first search results.

The best keywords to work on, especially at the beginning, are therefore those that have:

• high search volumes
• low competition

features that you can control with the tools I mentioned earlier, such as Semrush .

Being able to intercept and exploit these keywords is not only one of the best ways to be able to rank well on Google in a short time but it is also easier to convert visitors and monetize your blog , since you are giving them exactly what they are looking for.

 

 

Avoid ambiguous terms
When the time comes to choose the keywords it is necessary to ask about the possible ambiguity of the keywords taken into consideration. A trivial example? Said and done: using the keyword ‘pens’ to optimize a page where we talk about fountain pens would be a mistake, because that same keyword could refer to the type of pasta, USB sticks, other types of writing pens and even to the Abruzzo town of Penne. It is always better to be specific: in this case, therefore, it will certainly be better to use the keyword ‘fountain pens’.

 

Don’t focus on single keywords
Choosing the right keywords is still extremely important, but this operation is no longer as crucial as it once was: Google is continuing to work on semantic search , and therefore a future in which keywords will lose their value entirely. Therefore, the text as a whole will increasingly count. What does all this mean? It means you need to keep using the right tools and techniques to choose keywords for your blog, but it also means you don’t have to build your texts around just one keyword . Related words, synonyms, terms in the same semantic field: a keyword, to be truly effective, must be surrounded by equally powerful text.

 

 

Analyze the top search results on Google

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the article on SEO Copywriting we talked at length about the fact that articles must be relevant to both your readers and Google. And another way to find out which topics Google prefers is to ask Google .

But in what way? Simple.

Type the keyword in the Google search bar and analyze the top 10 search results . These are your main competitors for that keyword and if they are positioned on the first page of Google, it means that Google liked that content.

Then open all the first 10 results, try to analyze the contents and understand what structure and what format you should give to your article. Are they long or short articles? What are they focused on? Do they contain infographics, videos, images?

This will give you valuable information on what you should focus on most.

Generally, however, the more you search for keywords, the more you will understand how to respond to your audience ‘s search intent . But what exactly is meant by research intent? Let’s see it together.

 

 

How to choose keywords for your blog posts using Google services ?

With today’s post I would like to introduce you to 6 tools to select keywords for your blog posts. How to understand which words are better or where to look for inspiration? As an example I use the same phrase “electric bike” on all six instruments. Let’s say I’m in the mood for spring and sustainable development 😀.

1. Google Search 
The simplest, fastest and most intuitive. Have you noticed that by starting to enter the words, Google tries to guess your intentions based on what other people are looking for the most? Google is a valid source of inspiration that you can also use by searching for longer phrases

2. Google Keyword Planner
It is the best known and used tool to set up keyword sponsorship campaigns (AdWords) with Big G. To access the keyword planning tool you need a Google account (but who doesn’t?), register, insert a credit card and start a first advertising campaign for selected keywords. Once the campaign has started, you can access the complete panel and stop it without affecting your current account. This tric-trac is for you to use the keyword planning tool.
By entering the keyword you will be able to see from the results how often the phrase was searched for as well as a list of similar phrases.

3. Google Trends
Another Google tool for choosing key phrases. Thanks to it you can check the seasonality of your keywords and know similar words. That is to find out what else people on the net interested in electric bikes are looking for.

For the electric bike, the seasonality of the questions is noted, this naturally affects not only the prices of any Google AdWords campaigns, but also the traffic to your blog if you set these keywords. There will be moments more intense than the others.

 

What keywords does your blog already rank for?
If you already have a blog, you can use some tools to understand which keywords your blog is already ranked for and with which keywords your readers are finding your website.

To do this, you can use SEO tools such as Semrush or SEOZoom or through the Google Search Console .

On the Search Console, you just need to go to Performance and in the box below you can see:

• all the keywords through which people found your blog
• the relative impressions (i.e. how many have viewed the link to your blog)
• how many actually clicked on the link
• the ratio between impressions and clicks (CTR, i.e. click to rate )
• the SERP position of that keyword.

12 best  keyword research tools (free and premium)

Now that we’ve talked in depth about how to perform a keyword research , you will definitely want to start doing your first keyword research. But what are the best SEO tools to do it?

So here are my favorite tools. All of these tools are free or offer a limited free trial so you can try them out.

Obviously, paid tools offer a lot more and are much more useful in helping you rank your blog on search engines.

If you’re just starting your blogging adventure though, even a free tool may be enough

1. Semrush

One of my favorite tools and also one of the best tools for a blog is without a doubt SEMRush .

Among the myriad of features of Semrush, it is worth mentioning the one concerning keyword research. In fact, you just need to enter a keyword to immediately obtain search volumes, competitors, related keywords, questions that are asked on the subject and so on.

 

If you want to change your blog in terms of traffic, then I recommend that you start using SEMRush.

Don’t be fooled by the paid plans : to get started you can use it totally free. Of course, the functions are more limited than the paid plan but for a single blog, especially if at the beginning, it is more than enough.

To use SEMRush for free, create a new account and then create a new project with your blog data. Et voilà, SEMRush is ready to use!

 

2. SEOZoom

Another SEO tool I use frequently is SEOZoom , a 100% Italian tool.

It works a bit like SEMRush although its features are a bit more limited . The point in favor of this tool is the price. In fact, if you have only one blog, you can subscribe to the blogger plan which costs only € 19 per month but which will give you excellent returns in terms of visibility and positioning.

If you also combine the strategies I explained to you to earn with a blog , you will get back the amount spent in a few days. For this you must always use at least one SEO tool for your blog : it is never an expense but always an investment.

3.Ahrefs

Ahrefs is arguably the most powerful all-around SEO tool for bloggers. It has many features such as:

• Backlink check
• YouTube, Amazon and Bing keyword tool
• Keyword generator
• Link check
• Checking the positioning of keywords
• Check for broken links
• Keyword Difficulty.
  Ahrefs offers four paid plans, each with more features. You can try it for 7 days

 

 

4. WordTracker

Another cool keyword research tool is WordTracker .

It works a bit like TwinWord but has an edge as it analyzes not only the keywords for a blog but also the keywords of Amazon, YouTube and Ebay .

To do this, simply enter the keyword in the search mask and choose the platform in which the keyword search analysis is to be carried out in the menu on the left.

 

 

5. AnswerThePublic
AnswerThePublic works a bit differently from most other keyword research tools. They present keywords in a nice visual format although you can also see them in a list or download a .csv file of results.

If you’re just getting started with SEO and keyword research, then this is a great tool to try, because you don’t even need to create an account to use it. Just type in your keyword and take a look at what comes up.

AnswerThePublic’s question wheel, showing the keyword WordPress Themes and lots of questions

The keyword results from AnswerThePublic are based on Google and Bing’s auto-suggest / autocomplete features. You can click on any of these keywords to search for it in Google, and it’ll open up in a new tab.

 

6.Spyfu

Spyfu specializes in providing a database of keywords based not just on organic rankings but also of keywords used with Google Adwords. The result is the ability to track not just keywords but also keyword variations used by competitors, in both organic and paid search, allowing for a powerful analysis and keyword research platform.

The keyword research tool itself offers to provide deeper insights than Google’s own keyword suggestion tool, with the ability to not just track ranked keywords but also keywords used in PPC campaigns. This means you can source both sets of information for your own keyword research.

 

Features:

• SpyFu provides recommendations that will help you to drive clicks to your SEO or AdWords campaigns.
• You will be able to monitor your paid and SEO rankings on Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
• It has functionalities for filtering by search volume, CPC, SEO difficulty, number of advertisers, etc.
• It provides a Keyword Grouper tool that can organize the list of keywords into groups and can provide search volume and CPC data to them.
• It provides the features to find specific ranking factors for each keyword.

 

7. Majestic
Majestic tool for keyword research
Majestic is an all-in-one SEO tool to keep a track of your site’s health. It’s an ideal tool for new blogs and small businesses that don’t have the resources to invest a lot of complicated support for search engine optimization.

• Standout features
• All SEO features are available in a single toolkit
• Find easy-to-target phrases
• Research competition on each keyword
• Trustworthiness vs. authority graph for website analysis

 

8. Moz Keyword Explorer
The Moz Keyword Explorer serves up easy to use, out-of-the-box keyword recommendations. Moz’s SEO tool boasts all the features you’d expect from the very best keyword research tools, plus two very unique data points.

Organic CTR score – This click-through rate demonstrates the number of clicks you’re expected to attract on page 1 of Google.

Priority score – The priority score is a mixture of all the individual factors a typical tool uses to suggest keyword options. It combines data on CTR, search volume, and keyword difficulty to help you select the best terms for your project.

 

9. Long Tail Pro

Like most premium keyword tools, Long Tail Pro shows an overview of data about your keyword, with a particular focus on how you rank against your competitors on the first page of Google.

 

 

10 Serpstat
Best for small to large businesses and freelancers.

Serpstat is a growth hacking tool for SEO, PPC, Search analytics, Marketing, and Content Marketing. It will help you to find the keyword variations and search suggestions.

To determine the value of keywords, it has the features of comparing your keywords to different performance indicators like search volume, cost-per-click, competition level, etc. It can provide a list of proven and profitable keywords that are used by your competitors.

Features:

• Serpstat has features to discover international data that will help you to adapt keywords for targeting countries.
• The tool has features for identifying the most relevant pages to specific queries.
• You will be able to measure a page’s relevance compared to competing pages. It can identify the missing keywords that can be added to your page.
• It can provide an easy to understand graph that will show the fluctuation of user’s interest in a keyword over the last year.
• It has many more features and functionalities for advertising analysis, search analytics, content marketing ideation, competitor research, rank tracking, market intelligence, reports & infographics, and on-page audit.

 

11.Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is an all-in-one tool that will help you to grow your SEO traffic. It provides a keyword tool and generates more suggestions. This tool has functionalities for keyword suggestions, content ideas, and backlink data.

Features:

• Ubersuggest can provide long-tail phrases. It provides hundreds of suggestions.
• Backlink Data feature will give you the exact content in your space that people are linking to.
• It can provide content ideas.
• It can provide reports per day.

 

12.QuestionDB

QuestionDB is a free content idea generator. You will be able to search a massive collection of user questions that will help you to get original ideas for new content. Its free plan is for casual ideation and to understand your readers. Paid Plan is to deep dive into topics and ongoing content ideation.

Benefits of Using QuestionDB:

• Generate Better Blog Topic Ideas
• Grow a Blog
• Find Hundreds of Questions to Turn Into Content

The Top Features of QuestionDB:

• Content Ideas Generation
• Not a Regular Keyword Tool

Features:

• The free plan will allow you to sort by question popularity or topic, download CSV, and provide max 40 results per search.
• A Paid plan can provide up to 1000 results for the search.
• Pro Plan will allow you to sort by new questions added to QuestionDB.
• It provides API access and unlimited searches.

 

What are keywords and how are they interpreted by Google?

“Keywords“, also known as “Keyword”, are the search terms or phrases that people type in the Google bar to find information and answers to a specific question or problem.

Keyword research (or keyword research ) is a basic step of any SEO strategy aimed at optimizing the positioning of a website to get more traffic, and is part of the so – called On-Page SEO .

Now let’s see how to choose the most effective terms for your business using the first tool, the brain , to better understand how the two main actors of this scenario, users and Google , behave .

How are keywords used by users?

Users use search engines to find information, products or services , or a website that can meet particular needs quickly and efficiently.

To do this, the user writes a word (or more than one) in the search bar with the intention of finding a series of content related to that type of search.

A simple concept on which, however, we must dwell.

To do a search and select effective keywords it is first necessary to try to understand the psychology behind user research , because it is the users who “impose” a pattern or a trend.

An example: Let’s imagine we are launching a new product or service on the market.

The product or service is called “x”. It will normally take some time for the name “X” to become popular in its target market.

A nice puzzle for SEO : if no one knows “x”, no one will search for “x” on Google.

But then which keyword will I have to choose to position that product?

As anticipated, it is the users who “impose” a search trend and it is therefore from the users and their “problems” that we will have to start.

Let’s go back to the example by imagining that “x” is a keyword research tool.

A hypothetical keyword search on “tool x” – excluding its name because it is still unknown – could focus on terms that refer either to the general type of product (eg. SEO tool ) or to the function it performs (eg. Program for keyword search ).

The secret to the success of this type of SEO optimization lies in understanding what kind of research users potentially interested in purchasing that specific product will be doing .

Continuing with the example, a search of the type “best SEO tools” should arise from the intention of a user to evaluate the best program to buy. Which is a great situation if your intent is to sell this tool.

Different situation if a user searches for “free SEO tools”. In this case the user could have the intent to find a 100% free program. This will change your SEO strategy. If your goal is to sell a paid tool, you could first provide a free version – in order to intercept the traffic of the keyword “free SEO tools” – and then implement a strategy to get the premium version purchased.

This is just a simplified example but gives an idea of ​​the reasoning behind choosing the best keywords.

To help you in this research there are specific programs (which we will see later) but, as the example shows, it is always and mostly about being able to understand the psychology of users.

How are keywords interpreted by Google and other search engines?

On the one hand there are the users and their “psychology”, on the other the search engine and its “algorithm”.

When Google receives a request from a user, the algorithm automatically searches for indexed content in its database containing that keyword (or a different one with the same meaning) and concepts related to that topic.

It then displays a list of results for that search trying to highlight the content most relevant to the question posed by the user.

In other words, Google imposes its own relevance criteria to show content in one location rather than another.

Google uses hundreds of criteria , more or less complex, and every day changes the algorithm to refine them and add new ones.

 

 

How to interpret the keyword research data?

Start by removing “useless” keywords , for example all those that do not fall into the correct group or that refer to concepts that are totally unrelated to your business.

Now you have to start using 100% the most important tool: your brain .

The success of your keyword research will depend on your ability to select the right keywords based on the search intent behind each of them.

Each user enters a keyword into the search engine with an intent they want to find something specific, not something random.

The aim is to study the possible scenarios to understand what intentions are hidden behind the search for a user.

In this sense, we can distinguish five general classes of research referring to specific intentions :

• Information research : carried out with the intent of obtaining specific information without a commercial purpose. For example, “What is keyword research?”.
• Navigational search: when a user already knows the site or brand he wants to search but does not remember the precise url. For example: “Marketers Media” or “Facebook Marketers group”.
• Transactional search : are all those searches aimed at an action, such as buying a product online or booking a specific service.

These general categories are used to give you a rough idea of ​​the potential that the keywords you have selected have.

Your goal is to understand with what intention a user enters a certain keyword.

Basically you have to be able to put yourself in the user’s shoes as much as possible. How?

For each keyword that you find potentially effective, answer these 3 questions:

• What is the interest of the user who enters this keyword?
• What do you want to achieve?
• What are you looking for?

For example, if the search is “how to find keywords for the blog”, we can make the following assumptions:

• The user is interested in getting more traffic for his blog.
• He wants a technique or a tool to do effective keyword research.
• He is looking for a guide to show him how to do it in practice.

The idea of ​​this exercise is to understand user behavior to create content that fully satisfies the search . If the result is quality content that answers specific questions, Google will rate it positively.

All these details affect the visibility of content and the ability to attract users and get conversions.

The advantage is multiple:

• use the right keywords based on your goals (sell, inform, educate, etc.).
• use the right keywords for the user, and therefore build content that can answer their questions.
• Use the right keywords to rank as high in the search results as possible.

As you can see, the interests of users and the search engine coincide. If you do quality work, all the “actors” – including your business – will benefit.

 

Final reflections
The search for keywords is the basis of a structured editorial plan strategically and, consequently, is the foundation of any successful blog.

Through keyword research you can ensure that you always create top-notch content , which answers your audience’s questions, in order to increase traffic and conversions on your website.

One last tip before saying goodbye.

When doing keyword research, don’t stop at the numbers. Percentages, search volumes, traffic …

Remember that when you write, you don’t do it for numbers – you do it for people .

So try to understand your audience ever more deeply , listen to their questions, doubts and fears and try to offer concrete answers and solutions.

Find new topics that people want to read but other blogs don’t offer. Keyword research is just a stepping stone.

Thanks