how to create research keyword

Find Keyword Ideas in Seconds

Boost SEO results with powerful keyword research

Keyword Research: The Definitive Guide

Written by Brian Dean

Today I’m going to show you exactly how to do keyword research in 2024.

In this comprehensive guide I’ll cover:

• How to find keywords
• How to choose the right keywords
• How to use popular keyword research tools
• Advanced keyword research tips

So if you want higher Google rankings and more traffic, you’ll love this guide.

Let’s get started.

1. Keyword Research Basics

2. How to Find Keyword Ideas + Template

3. Keyword Research Tools

4. Keyword Difficulty

5. How to Choose a Keyword

6. Advanced Tips and Strategies

Chapter 1: keyword research basics.

In this chapter, I’ll cover the fundamentals of keyword research.

First, you’ll practically learn what keyword research is (and why it’s important for SEO ).

I’ll also show you how keyword research helped grow my site’s search engine traffic to 360k+ unique visitors per month.

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is the process of identifying and analyzing the specific words and phrases that people use to search for information online. This valuable insight helps you create content, ads, and videos that directly address your target audience’s search queries, enhancing your website’s visibility and attracting more visitors.

Try the FREE Backlinko Keyword Research Tool . Discover new keywords and performance data to use in your site content, SEO campaigns, and more.

Why is Keyword Research Important for SEO?

Keyword research impacts every other SEO task that you perform, including finding content topics, on-page SEO , email outreach , and content promotion.

That’s why keyword research is usually the first step of any SEO campaign .

Put another way:

Keywords are like a compass for your SEO campaigns: they tell you where to go and whether or not you’re making progress.

As a bonus, researching keywords help you better understand your target audience. That’s because keyword research gives you insight into what customers are searching for… and the exact words and phrases that they use.

In other words: keyword research is market research for the 21st century.

How Keyword Research Helped My Site’s Traffic Grow

Today, my site generates 449,058 visitors every month:

And 362,732 of those visitors (80.78%) come from Google:

Obviously, there are a lot of factors that went into my site’s success with SEO, including content, on-site optimization, link building and technical SEO .

But the #1 factor that contributed to my site’s traffic growth was keyword research.

For example:

A while back I used the process in this guide to uncover a low-competition keyword: mobile SEO.

And I created a piece of SEO-optimized content around that term: The Definitive Guide to Mobile SEO .

Because that keyword wasn’t super competitive, my site quickly ranked in the top 3:

And thanks to that top 3 ranking, that single page brings in hundreds of visitors from Google every month:

With that, it’s time for chapter 2.

Chapter 2: How to Find Keyword Ideas

Now it’s time to get into the nitty gritty of keyword research.

Specifically, it’s time to generate a list of keywords.

In this chapter I’m going to show you proven strategies that you can use to come up with LOTS of keyword ideas.

Let’s dive right in.

Keyword Research Template

Whether you’re starting a new SEO project, want to improve your site’s search traffic, or are looking for target keywords for a new piece of content, this template will help you do keyword research quickly and effectively.

Why Use a Keyword Research Template?

This template brings together all the different tool options and approaches into one place. So instead of bouncing around between a thousand tabs, losing track of where you are in the process…

You can just go through this template. Simple. Step-by-step.

When you’re done, you’ll have a BIG list of keywords. Plus all the metrics to help you pick which to target.

Download Now: Keyword Research Template

Brainstorm a List of Topics

Here’s where you come up with topics that your target customer is interested in.

For example, let’s say that you run a digital marketing agency.

Well, you’d want to ask yourself: ”What topics do people search for that are related to my business?”

Some topics that come to mind would be things like:

• Social media
• Email marketing
• Website traffic
• Content Marketing

Note: These topics aren’t keywords (yet).

Which is exactly what you’re going to learn how to do right now…

Wikipedia Table of Contents

Wikipedia is an overlooked keyword research goldmine.

Where else can you find articles curated by thousands of industry experts… all organized into neat little categories?

Here’s how to use Wikipedia to find keyword ideas.

First, head over to Wikipedia and type in a broad keyword:

That will take you to the Wikipedia entry for that broad topic.

Then, look for the “contents” section of the page. This section lists out the subtopics covered on that page.

And some of the subtopics listed here are awesome keywords that would be tough to find any other way:

You can also click on some of the internal links on the page to check out the Table of Contents of other, closely related entries.

For example, on the coffee entry we have a link to “Coffee Preparation”:

When you click on that link, you’ll notice that the table of contents for the Coffee Preparation page has even more keywords that you can add to your list:

Pretty cool.

Searches Related To

Another cool way to find keywords is to check out the “Searches Related to” section at the bottom of Google’s search results.

For example, let’s say one of your topics was “content marketing”.

Well, you’d want to search for that keyword in Google.

And scroll to the bottom of the page. You’ll find a list of 8 keywords that are closely related to your search term.

Just like with Google Suggest, these are keyword ideas that come straight from Google . So you don’t need to guess whether or not they’re popular. Google is literally telling you: “Tons of people search for these keywords.”

Pro Tip: Click on one of the “Searches Related To” keywords.

Then, scroll to the bottom of THOSE results. This will give you a new list of related keywords. Rinse and repeat.

Find Keywords on Reddit

Chances are your target audience hangs out on Reddit.

Which means you can usually find lots of keyword ideas on this platform.

Here’s how:

Let’s say that you run a site that sells organic dog food.

You’d head over to Reddit. Then search for a broad topic that your target audience is interested in… and something that’s related to what you sell.

Then, choose a subreddit where your audience probably hangs out:

Finally, keep an eye out for threads that have lots of comments, like this:

In this case you’d add “dog food allergies” to your keyword ideas list.

Use Google and YouTube Suggest

Now that you have a list of topics, type each one of them into Google.

And see what terms that Google Suggests to you.

These are great keywords to add to your list.

Because if Google suggests a keyword, you KNOW that lots of people are searching for it.

But you don’t need to stop with Google Suggest.

You can also find keyword suggestions with YouTube Suggest:

Find Popular Topics Using Forums

Forums are like having live focus groups at your fingertips 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The easiest way to find forums where your target audience hangs out is to use these search strings in Google:

“keyword forum” “keyword” + “forum” “keyword” + “forums” “keyword” + “board”

Once you find a forum, note how the forum is divided up into sections: Each of these sections are potential keywords that you can add to your list.

To dig deeper, check out some of the threads on the forum to find other specific topics that your target audience struggles with:

Pretty cool, right?

Chapter 3: Keyword Research Tools

This chapter is all about tools.

Can you find keywords without a tool?

But a tool makes the entire process A LOT easier.

With that, here are the keyword research tools that I personally use and recommend.

If you want to invest in a paid keyword tool, I HIGHLY recommend Semrush .

That’s because SEMrush is a HUGE time saver.

Here’s why…

Instead of popping random keywords into a tool, Semrush shows you the exact keywords that a site already ranks for.

So if you have a site that you’re competing against in Google, just pop it into SEMrush.

And steal all of their keywords.

The Google Keyword Planner

Google’s Keyword Planner is THE most reliable source of keyword information online.

That’s because, unlike most other tools, the data you get from the Keyword Planner come straight from Google.

(So you know they’re accurate)

The big downside of the GKP is that it’s designed to help people with their Google ad campaigns… not with SEO.

That said, you can still use the GKP to get lists of keyword ideas…

…and find search queries that get lots of searches.

ExplodingTopics.com

This new tool is like Google Trends… but better.

Exploding Topics scrapes the web for terms that are surging in popularity. And it bubbles those terms up for you.

You can even sort the list of topics by category.

Keyword Surfer

Keyword Surfer might be my favorite keyword research tool.

Because it shows you keyword ideas from inside Google’s search results.

All you need to do is install the Chrome extension. And the next time you search for something in Google, you’ll see a list of keyword ideas… and data on each keyword.

Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest was the first Google suggest scraper that I used. And the tool recently got a massive upgrade and overhaul.

Ubersuggest still generates keyword ideas from Google’s search suggestions. But it also gives you data on each keyword (like search volume, CPC, keyword difficulty and more).

Most people consider Ahrefs a link building tool .

But not as many people know that Ahrefs also has a REALLY good keyword tool.

What’s nice about Ahrefs “Keyword Explorer” is that you get a ton of helpful data on each keyword.

Which can help you decide whether or not it’s a keyword that’s worth going after.

My one gripe with Keyword Explorer is that it’s not great at coming up with new keyword ideas. It usually generates keywords that are just simple variations of the keyword I typed in.

When it comes to drilling down to a single term, you can’t do much better than the features found in Ahrefs Keyword Explorer.

Chapter 4: Keyword Difficulty

How do you know if a keyword is too competitive to rank for?

It’s a good question to ask.

Because if you choose a keyword that’s super competitive, you might have trouble getting past Google’s third page.

But if you can find a keyword without a ton of competition, you have a good chance of cracking the top 3.

With that, here’s how to figure out a keyword’s SEO difficulty.

Long Tails Are (Usually) Less Competitive

If your site is brand new.

Or if you want to focus 100% on keywords that aren’t competitive.

Then you DEFINITELY want to target long tail keywords .

I’ll explain…

Most people in SEO (myself included) divide keywords into three main categories: head, body and the long tail.

Here’s a breakdown of each keyword type:

These are usually single-word keywords with lots of search volume…and competition. Examples of head terms are keywords like “insurance” or “vitamins”. Because searcher intent is all over the place (someone searching for “insurance” might be looking for a car insurance quote, a list of life insurance companies or a definition of the word), Head Terms usually don’t convert very well.

Body Keywords

Body keywords are 2-3 word phrases that get decent search volume (at least 2,000 searches per month), but are more specific than Head Keywords. Keywords like “life insurance” or “order vitamins online” are examples of Body Keywords. These almost always have less competition than Head Terms.

Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are long, 4+ word phrases that are usually very specific. Phrases like “affordable life insurance for senior citizens” and “order vitamin D capsules online” are examples of long tail keywords. These terms don’t get a lot of search volume individually (usually around 10-200 searches per month). But when you add them together, long tails make up the majority of searches online. And because they don’t get searches for that much, long tail terms usually aren’t very competitive.

There’s no “best” keyword category to focus on. All 3 have their pros and cons.

But when it comes to competition, long tails are usually the least competitive of the bunch.

Authority of Sites on Google’s First Page

Here’s a quick way to evaluate a keyword’s competition level.

First, search for your keyword in Google.

Then, look at the sites ranking on the first page.

(Not individual pages)

If the first page is made up of uber authority sites (like Wikipedia), then you might want to cross that keyword off from your list:

But if you see a handful of smaller blogs on page 1, that’s a sign that you have a shot to hit the first page too.

Keyword Difficulty Inside of Keyword Tools

The vast majority of keyword research tools have some sort of keyword competition feature, including Semrush :

And Moz Pro :

We recently tested a bunch of them . And we found that they all size up keyword difficulty based on a combination of page authority and domain authority. YET they all tend to come up with completely different keyword difficulty scores.

Bottom Line? If your favorite keyword tool includes a keyword difficulty feature, go with that. It may not be perfect. But they do tend to give you a general idea of how competitive a keyword is to rank for.

Believe it or not, but there’s an entire tool dedicated to keyword difficulty: CanIRank .

What I like about this tool is that it doesn’t just spit out a keyword difficulty number. Instead, it evaluates a keyword’s competition level relative to your website.

For example, I popped the keyword “SEO” into CanIRank.

And the tool looked at Google’s first page competition compared to my site’s authority . And it gave me a “Ranking Probability” of 90%:

Super helpful.

Chapter 5: How to Choose a Keyword

Now that you have a list of keywords, how do you know which one to pick?

Unfortunately, there’s no tool out there that will tell you: “ This is the best keyword on your list”.

Instead, you need to size up each keyword based on a handful of different factors. Then, pick the keyword that’s the best fit for your business.

Additionally, conducting keyword analysis to ensure reaching the target audience takes time and effort. Lucky for you, Backlinko simplified the process to ease your work.

As you might expect, that’s exactly what I’m going to show you how to do in this chapter.

Search Volume

This is pretty straightforward.

The more people search for a keyword, the more traffic you can get from it.

The question is:

What’s a “good” search volume?

Short answer: it depends.

The long answer:

Search volumes vary A LOT between different industries.

For example, a long tail keyword in the fitness niche (like: “best ab exercises”) gets 10K-100K searches per month:

But a long tail keyword in a B2B space like digital marketing (like: “best seo software”) only gets 100-1K monthly searches.

That’s why you want to figure out what a “high” and “low” search volume number is in your niche.

Then, choose keywords based on what’s “normal” for your industry.

Organic Click-Through-Rate

It’s no secret that the number of Google searchers that click on an organic search result is way down .

And it’s no wonder why.

Featured Snippets make it so you don’t need to click on anything to get an answer:

Plus, Google now packs the search results with more ads than ever before:

The bottom line?

Search volume only gives you part of the story. To get a full estimate of how many clicks you’ll get from a first page Google ranking, you also need to estimate organic CTR.

Here are two simple ways to do it…

First, you can look at the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for your keyword.

If you see a lot of stuff on the first page (like a Featured Snippet and multiple Google Ads), then you know that you’re not going to get a ton of clicks… even if you rank #1.

Second , you can use a tool.

Ahrefs and Moz pro both estimate organic CTR.

With all that said:

I wouldn’t avoid a keyword just because it has a low CTR. If lots of people search for that term, it might still be worth going after.

If your site is new (or doesn’t have a ton of links yet), target low-competition terms at first.

Then, as your site grows in authority, you can start to target more competitive stuff.

When I first launched Backlinko, I targeted almost 100% long tail keywords (like: “how to get backlinks”).

And because I didn’t have a ton of sites to compete with, I was able to get some organic traffic rolling in within a few weeks. Which helped me achieve some early SEO success.

Today, my site has backlinks from over 37k different domains:

So I can target more competitive keywords (like: “YouTube SEO”).

CPC (cost per click) is a single metric that answers one important question:

Do people searching for this keyword actually spend money?

So yeah, search volume is nice and all.

But if that keyword has zero commercial intent, then there’s no point in targeting that term.

Plus, you can sometimes get a great ROI from a keyword that doesn’t get that many searches… if the CPC is high enough.

For example, one of my target keywords is “link building services”.

According to Ahrefs, this keyword gets 1.3K searches per month.

So if I ONLY looked at search volume, I’d say: “This is a horrible keyword”.

That’s why it’s super important to ALSO look at CPC.

The CPC on that keyword is $25.00.

This means that people are spending $25 every time someone searching for that keyword clicks on an ad.

So even though the search volume for that term isn’t that high, the CPC more than makes up for it.

Based on CPC (and the fact that the keyword wasn’t super competitive) I decided to create content optimized around that term.

And that blog post now ranks in the top 3 for my target keyword.

Business Fit

Here’s where you look at how likely it is that someone searching for a keyword will become a customer.

Yup, CPC helps you figure this out. But it doesn’t tell the entire story.

For example, a few weeks ago I came across the keyword: “backlink checker”.

On the surface, this is a great keyword.

It gets a decent amount of searches:

And has a $4.01 CPC:

It’s also not that competitive.

So this keyword is a winner, right?

Well… not really.

You see, Backlinko is an SEO training company. Which means I don’t sell a backlink analysis tool. So even if I DID rank #1 for “backlink checker”, it wouldn’t do me much good.

Contrast that with a keyword like “YouTube SEO”.

This keyword’s CPC is only $2.22.

But considering that I sell a YouTube training course, this term is a 10/10 in terms of business fit.

This is why I wrote a piece of content around that keyword:

Keyword Trends

Finally, you want to see if your keyword is growing fast… or dying slow.

And the best way to do that? Google Trends .

For example, last year I was considering the keyword: “voice search SEO”.

But I decided to pop that keyword into Google Trends before pulling the trigger.

As you can see, interest in that keyword is growing quickly.

Which is why I optimized this page around that term.

Even though that piece of content only brings in about 1k monthly search engine visitors per month today…

…the trend tells me that traffic to this post should increase over time.

Another key trend to consider is the use of AI for keyword research. Think of integrating ChatGPT for diverse SEO tasks including keyword research. Learn all about how this innovative trend can impact your SEO journey in our guide.

Chapter 6: Advanced Tips and Strategies

Now that you’ve mastered the basics of keyword research, it’s time to cover some cool advanced stuff.

Specifically, I’m going to reveal a bunch of tactical keyword research tips that you can implement right away.

So without further ado, let’s dive right into the tips.

Barnacle SEO

Let’s say that you found the PERFECT keyword.

And you rank in the top 3 for that term.

You’re pretty much done, right?

Actually… not really.

As it turns out, you can get even MORE traction from that keyword with Barnacle SEO.

Barnacle SEO is the practice of using other sites’ authority to rank on the first page.

For example, one of my best keywords (in terms of conversions) is: YouTube SEO.

Like I mentioned earlier, I wrote a post about YouTube SEO . And that post ranks in the top 3 for that keyword.

Sure, a top 3 ranking is great. But it’s still only one spot in the SERPs.

That’s why I created a YouTube video optimized for that keyword…

…a video that also ranks on Google’s first page.

Bottom line? If you find an amazing keyword, you want to take up as much first page real estate as you can. First, create content on that topic on your own site. Then, publish keyword-optimized content on authority sites, like YouTube, LinkedIn, Medium and more.

GSC Keyword Research

The Google Search Console is a goldmine of keyword ideas.

Here’s how it works:

First, login to your GSC account and head over to the “Performance Report”.

This report shows you the terms that bring in the most clicks from Google search.

Then, sort the list by “Impressions”.

This shows you keywords that get lots of impressions… but not necessarily clicks.

Finally, create a piece of content optimized around that same keyword.

Why is this a powerful strategy?

These are keywords that you KNOW people are searching for. You also know that Google sees your site as a good fit in the search results.

You just need to publish content that’s super focused on that specific keyword (or optimize a piece of existing content around that keyword) and you’re set.

Optimize Content around Synonyms and Related Keywords

Yes, you want to optimize your page around your main keyword.

But don’t stop there.

You can get even more search engine traffic to your page by optimizing it around synonyms and closely related terms.

I’ll show you how this works with a real life example.

Some time ago I published this post on my blog.

As you can probably guess, my target keyword for that page is: “search engine visibility”.

But I also made sure to sprinkle in variations of that keyword, like: “SEO visibility”.

In the end, I was able to rank #1 for my main keyword…

…and lots of keyword variations.

Ahrefs Content Gap

Content Gap has quickly become one of my favorite features in Ahrefs.

Just like with Semrush, you can use Ahrefs to see the exact keywords another site ranks for.

And with Ahrefs Content Gap, you can take this type of competitor keyword analysis to the next level.

Head over to Ahrefs content gap. And put in 2-3 competing sites.

This will show you keywords that at least 2 of your competitors rank for… but you don’t.

And because multiple competitors rank for these terms, you know that you also have a good chance of cracking the top 10.

Analyze Keywords Based on Searcher Intent

In other words, ask yourself:

What does someone searching for this keyword want to see?

Are they looking to buy? For information? Or are they looking for a specific page (like a login page)?

A while back I created a post that ranks #2 for the keyword “BuzzStream”.

Even though that keyword gets around 2k searches/month, that post only brings in 194 monthly visitors.

What gives?

Well, as it turns out, “BuzzStream” is a navigational keyword.

Which means that most people that search for that keyword are looking for the website… not information about BuzzStream.

So yeah, that keyword looked great at first glance. But because it’s a navigational keyword, VERY few people click on anything but the first result. Which is why that post gets so little traffic.

That’s why I recommend looking at the Search Intent of a keyword.

If Search Intent is “Navigational”, then you may want to avoid that term… even if it has great CPC and monthly search volume numbers.

(As you just saw, this is a lesson I had to learn the hard way)

But if Searcher Intent is “Informational”, then a piece of content optimized around that term could do GREAT.

Find “Shoulder Keywords”

Most people ONLY optimize their site around keywords that are very closely related to what they sell.

And it’s a BIG mistake for two main reasons:

1. Product keywords are usually super competitive. 2. There are thousands of keywords that your potential customer searches for when they’re not searching for what you sell.

And if you can get in front of your customer with an awesome piece of content, they’re SUPER likely to buy from you down the road.

For example, like I mentioned earlier, I run an SEO training company.

But I don’t optimize every page on my site around commercial terms.

(Like “SEO training” and “SEO courses”).

Instead, I rank for keywords that my customers search for when they’re not looking for SEO training.

(Keywords like: “link building”, “on-page SEO” and “SEO Tools”).

I call these keywords “Shoulder Keywords”.

These keywords aren’t directly related to what you sell. But they’re keywords that your customers search for. Which makes them worth going after.

How about another example?

Let’s say you run an eCommerce site that sells basketball hoops.

Obviously, you’d want to optimize some of your pages around terms like “buy basketball hoops online”.

After all, someone interested in buying a basketball hoop may also search for:

• How to shoot a better free throw
• Slam dunk highlights
• How to get recruited by college scouts
• Nutrition for basketball players
• How to improve a vertical jump

So you’d want to create content around these “Shoulder Keywords” too.

Now It's Your Turn

I really hope you enjoyed my new keyword research guide.

And now I’d like to hear from you.

Which tip from today’s guide are you going to try first?

Are you going to try Shoulder Keywords?

Or maybe you want to optimize around trending keywords.

Either way, let me know by leaving a quick comment below.

WOWZA! Someone was reading my mind. I was just trying to search your site for keyword research and all of a sudden get an email with exactly what I needed.

As usual, thanks Brian!

You’re not alone, Ashley: keyword research is something a lot of my readers ask me about. I hope you enjoy the guide.

Hi Brian, I love these guides. Besides the graphics which I assume are custom built, is there something special you use to create the general layout of these? The change in colors, etc. just make these really clear to read – would love to replicate that kind of flow.

Thanks as always!

Thanks Jake. That’s right: this guide is custom designed and coded. So we built the layout from scratch so that our guides would be super easy to read and skim through.

Thanks a million Brian. I love your guides, they are informative and hilarious too. Great work.

Brian this is great advice and content. Usually I un-subscribe from some of those ‘other’ email lists – but after visiting your site I can’t wait for the next update! Thanks for your help and advice.

Thanks Mike. Happy to have you as a subscriber.

Great and informative content. Brian, thanks for your excellent keyword research guide.

You’re welcome, Idris.

Absolutely love this guide, it will be something that I can use as a constant reference in the future if I ever need to double check on something, and that convenience is much appreciated 🙂

No worries, Daniel. Happy to help.

And the reason you gave this away for free is…jk. Kick ass guide Brian. Much more valuable than some of the paid guides. Would be sweet if you could package this up into a printable PDF.

Thank you, Matt. I’ll look into getting the new guide put into a PDF.

Looking good – love the design and everything! You’ve done it again, Brian Dean!

Brian, thanks for that. I agree: I’m really happy with how the design turned out.

The word is often overused – but not in this case – this is ‘awesome’ Brian!

Ha! I’m actually laughing out loud right now at just how good this content is.

Folks – this is why Brian is the best in the business when it comes to SEO.

Great stuff man!

Thanks Loz!

Brian, I say this without any bias – every bit of content you provide is Gold. Have been hooked on Backlinko ever since I stumbled here not so long ago 🙂

Great Work!

Hey Zak, thank you. I appreciate that 👍👍👍

Argh the sharing toolbar is destroying the article on my iPad. Can’t read anything on the left.

Thanks for the heads up, Steve. Fixed.

Would you consider offering your guides as single pages or pdfs? I prefer reading longer form content like this when offline/on the road. If on a single page, I can easily Pocket them to read offline. Thanks for considering!

Hey Daniel, we usually add PDF versions to each guide eventually. But it can take some time.

If you are reading on your laptop then simply press the ctrl+s button you have to see the save option to save this. And if you using your phone then open the Chrome browser and you have to see three-dot at the top-right corner, click on that and you see the download button and click on that and download the amazing article.

Awesome write up Brian. Thanks a lot for taking the time to write this and share it with us.

You’re welcome, Mark. I’m glad you enjoyed it.

Brian, you killed it (again) with this article. I have to admit, I opt out of almost all newsletters but from the ones I keep, yours is the only one with a CTR of 100% for me. Keep up the awesome work and thank you so much!

Thanks Volker 👍 👍 👍

Great guide. Sharing with my colleagues in the department now.

Thanks James.

Hi Brian, I think is going be very difficult to make a better content than you period… You are Rock 🙂 Thanks Claude

Thanks Claude. I appreciate that.

This is the best email in my inbox this morning! Great surprise. Wow you’ve been busy crafting another SEO goodie. Shoulder keywords make for easy blog post ideas. I like this guide. Great job Brian.

Hi Jennifer, happy to hear that. For sure: Shoulder keywords are kind of an underrated approach. Of course we all want to rank for keywords that are about our products (“Buy X”). But the fact is, most of the traffic out there is for informational keywords (like “how to X”). And if your content impresses the pants off of people, you can turn that traffic into leads and sales.

I am pretty certain I will be feasting on this article for days if not weeks to come! I can’t thank you and your team enough for the incredible knowledge and insight.

Hey Eric, you’re welcome. This is basically everything I’ve learned about keyword research over the last few years.

Another awesome content. Thank you, Mr. Brian, to share with us. Cheers!

Definitely something I was looking into. Thanks for another great, lengthy, informative and useful post Brian!

You’re welcome, Darshana.

Awesome stuff as usual Brian!

Thanks Davis. Like all of our guides, a ton of work went into this one.

Somehow you always seem to hit me with the right content at the right time 🙂 Thanks for being an inspiration over the years. /Rued

You’re welcome, Rued. I’ve got more cool stuff on the way.

In-depth guide about keywords research. Specially about the keywords to be chosen for new and old websites

Expanding on your keywords using Google Search Console has led us to driving double the amount of clicks so great info there.

Plus effective frequency in ranking in youtube, linkedin articles and other platforms is key because they drive referral traffic back to your page also and this massively helps ranking.

Great guide Brian!!

Thanks James. Nice. Yeah, that Google Search Console strategy is awesome because it’s Google telling you: “we think your site would be a good fit for that keyword”. No 3rd party tool can do that.

I would like to add a tool for finding keyword difficulty – Kwfinder. I have been using this tool since the start of my career and I can say that it provides the most trustable data.

Best Regards, Himanshu Tyagi Founder, CodeItBro

Thanks Himanshu. I actually have the Mangools suite on my tools that I need to check out. I used KWFinder back in the day but haven’t used it in a year or so.

Get your email in the middle of night on GMT+7

Thanks for your sharing Its helpfull

And my i ask I get nothing in email while im trying to join waiting list SEO Course via seothatworks.com

Im also already cek spam/junk And still get nothing

Thanks again for your sharing.

Sorry for bad english and grammar Im indonesian

You’re welcome, Helmi. Re: the waiting list email. If you email support@backlinko someone will look into that for you.

Your email just hit my inbox Brian, I took a look at the size of your post and thought “how do you do it?” haha. I’ve just skim read it because a full read will mean settling in later this evening when there’s more time. One thing that stood out though was how well you have laid this all out, I’m not a huge fan of ultimate guides because they’re bulky but I can already tell that the way you have broken this down into easy to read chunks coupled with nice graphics and illustrated examples means so much (and I’ve not even got to how well you do your research yet LOL). Cheers Graham

Hey Grahman, thanks man! That’s actually how I write these guides. I don’t set out to make them this long post full of random information. I outline each one into discrete chunks. That way, everything it easy to read and skim. Plus, I don’t go off into tangents about this and that. The outline means that I have to stick to the script 🙂

Absolutely great for beginner and expert. I really like your way of keyword research. Thanks for sharing.

You’re welcome, Jose.

Hello sir, excellent article and it did showed me some new tips because I was struggling to find Keyword for a particular topic.

Nice. Glad to hear that.

Amazing, have you actually ever published something that did not look so wonderful. Really you always make all my stuff look drab and boring. Although I have to do it myself, being small but hope to have good looking content like some day, when I am rich and famous like you. Thanks for all the help you give us

Hey Timothy, Thank you. If I had to do this myself I can’t imagine how bad this would look! Guides like this are a true team effort. Thankfully I’m not in charge of the design, LOL. But seriously, it takes a designer and talented developer to make our guides look as great as they do. I just write up a Google Doc and the team takes care of the rest.

cool, now we know the rest of the story

Wonderful guide put up so nicely!

Thanks for new updated keyword research guide for 2020, and especially thanks for Wikipedia strategy

You’re welcome, Rahul.

Great content as always 😉 Content gap tool in Ahrefs is lately one of my favourite place to find new keywords. I usually find there keyword that I would never think of.

Looking forward to your next guide.

Hey Karol, you’re welcome. Have you tried their “link intersect” feature. It’s similar to that but for backlinks.

if you write like this articles one day Google will kidnap you.

Amazing article Brian thanks for taking keyword research to the next level.

you will be #1 for “keyword research” in Google

I hope so. Moz is currently #1 so it won’t be easy to hit the #1 spot.

Great stuff, Brian, as usual! Very smart nuggets that are both actionable & consumable!

Hi Melissa, thank you! I tried to make this guide super actionable (outside of some of the background info in Chapter 1). Glad to hear that I hit the mark.

I start to read your guide and keep reading word by words, this is an awesome piece of content and very helpful for me. Thank You- “Brain”

You’re welcome, Arif.

Thanks, Brian for such a brief but clear keyword research guide. I have a question regarding keyword research. For some keywords, I find a lot of business directories, review sites ranking, but the intent is clear commercial. Can I rank using those keywords?

You’re welcome, Manoj. If there are some results that aren’t directories and review sites, you might. But if it’s literally 9/10 or 10/10, then I’d go with the flow and try to create a page that’s aligned with what’s already ranking.

Ever since I stumbled on your site while searching for “On-site SEO” I’m glued at the level of content you share for free.

Maybe I should ask, what’s your research strategy? Because I do wonder how on earth you dig up these valuable details.

Great one Brian!

Thanks Montfort. My research strategy is more or less “Document. Don’t create”. I talk more about that here .

Excellent. I’m already digesting it.

Awesome again!

This information is exactly what I am looking for to make my SEO more effective. There is so much information for me to digest. Thanks again.

You’re welcome, Henry. With guides like these, chunking is super important. So I try to make it so it’s not a giant wall of info. But more like an SNES strategy guide.

This is a really solid guide. I already knew a few of these tricks… but sometimes you forget about all the SEO tricks you’ve previously learned, and it’s great to get a refresher or reminder 🙂 For example, the GSC opportunities tactic of looking at impressions and then finding opportunities. I think I’ll use that one shortly! Thanks for the reminder on this one!

You’re welcome, Doug. Nice! Yeah, the GSC has a lot of untapped features. If you haven’t seen it already, I’d check out my giant guide to the Google Search Console here https://backlinko.com/google-search-console .

Great content as usual. While reading this post I came across some new tool like Canirank that I will surely start to use for my next keyword research. Really love this guide Mr. Brian.

Thanks for this article.

Hi Rupam, no problem.

Hi Brian, Thanks again. I’m going to visit Wikipedia right now 😉 I personally find it hard to start with the lower keywords competition. But in the longterm it is the way to go for a new website. (Mental note to myself)

Hi Guido, you’re welcome. For sure. I even think there’s a place for low-competition keywords for older + established websites. I’m finding with Backlinko that it still takes a while to rank for anything competitive (although I do usually rank eventually!). But low competition terms can rank within weeks.

Brian this is massive, very detailed and useful to both newbies and experts. Kudos

You’re welcome, Arnold. I tried to tackle some of the beginner-level stuff in Chapter 1. That way, I could focus on more advanced strategies later on in the guide.

Hi Brian. Great content always.

Brian could you please help me on one issue.

What is the reason of website down in google search now a days?

I mean my website was on 1st page in 6-7 months before, but today it is going back and appears on around page 8-9. I am making quality backlinks and doing proper one-page seo. But still nothing happened.

Could you please tell me what should I do ?

Thanks Hermant. That’s a tough thing to diagnose. It could be an update, penalty, a technical SEO issue. It’s hard to say without really digging into your Google Analytics and GSC. That said, one thing I’d look at is if your entire site dropped or just a few pages. Sometimes focusing on pages that did and didn’t get hit can help you figure things out.

My First main competitive keyword was on first page 6-7 months before. which was related to my website home page.

My second Low competitive keyword is coming on 1st rank on first page, which is also related to my Home page.

But I am surprise that my second keyword is on 1st rank but still my website didn’t get even a single click in one month. I checked impression in GSC of that keyword, which is more than 200. And my website not get even single click.

This is horrible thing is happened with me. My all other competitor websites title and description is 90% same.

I am really worried about this type of critical issue in my website ranking. I am sharing my website on social site, building quality backlink, proper on-page SEO, writing content on website, etc. But still not getting any good response.

I also checked Manual Action or penalty by google in GSC. Fortunately my website not penalize.

Could you please give me some steps which I should check according to your experience ?

And could you please make any blog or video related to Google Analytics – Complete Guide 🙂

A super helpful guide, Brian. I’m using CanIRank for a few weeks and found it amazing in keyword research (suggestions and ideas).

Nice! Yeah, it’s a cool little tool. I like that it has a standard keyword difficulty score. But also takes your own site’s authority into account.

Thanks so much for this!

Search results question:

If I see a competitive search term that does NOT have any videos ranking on the first page…is that an opportunity to make a video and get it to rank there? As in, there just AREN’T any videos for the term to rank

Seeing no video results means that Google is just not going to show videos for that particular search term?

You’re welcome, Amanda. It’s definitely “Seeing no video results means that Google is just not going to show videos for that particular search term?”. In my experience, if there’s no video, Google doesn’t see video as a good fit for that keyword. Of course, that can change over time. But I try to focus on keywords that already have videos in the search results.

Great help – thanks!

Brain, I am blown away with the expert detail you put into your articles and the amount of quality content you give away for free. I have learned so much from your work, please keep it up!

Hey Rick, thanks man! I appreciate that. I’ll definitely keep it up. We have some cool stuff on the way.

Thank you for such a lovely post brian dean. I must follow your tips

You’re welcome, Ankush.

Do you have an SEO agency? If not, can you recommend a couple?

Hi Michael, I don’t have an agency. Backlinko is an online training company that sells online courses.

Definitely useful information which I will use developing my new website.

Hi Sergy, great. Let me know if you have any questions.

Great read Brian, surely helps when you’re working for an SEO agency doing keyword research for pitches day in and day out.

HA! AS someone that used to run an agency, I can 100% relate to that.

I am almost following you since you were explained a Skyscraper Technique & learned from you that no one is perfect to initiate, experience makes us perfect.

I keep my close view on your strategy from video, text content to graphics & keep on following them for my clients as & when needed.

Thank you for supporting & sharing your experiences to improve my experience. Just by following you I am motivated & left the JOB to started my own business & initiated everything last month.

Although, this is just a beginning a day will come with the help of mentors like you & Neil.

Keep it up & help us to share your knowledge

You’re welcome, Ahmed. Congrats on the new business!

Leave a Comment

How to Do Keyword Research for SEO: A Beginner's Guide

Published: April 04, 2024

While Google keeps us on our toes with all the algorithm updates they keep rollin' out, one thing has stayed pretty consistent for inbound marketers looking to optimize their websites for search: keyword research.

In this post, we’ll define what keyword research is, why it’s important, how to conduct your research for your SEO strategy, and choose the right keywords for your website.

Table of Contents

What is keyword research?

Why is keyword research important, elements of keyword research, how to research keywords for your seo strategy, how to find and choose keywords for your website.

Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing search terms that people enter into search engines with the goal of using that data for a specific purpose, often for search engine optimization (SEO) or general marketing. Keyword research can uncover queries to target, the popularity of these queries, their ranking difficulty, and more.

Keyword research helps you find which keywords are best to target and provides valuable insight into the queries that your target audience is actually searching on Google.

Insights from these actual search terms can help inform your content strategy as well as your larger marketing strategy.

People use keywords to find solutions when conducting research online.

So if your content is successful in getting in front of your audience as they conduct searches, you stand to gain more traffic. Therefore, you should be targeting those searches with content that features those keywords in a meaningful way.

Additionally, inbound methodology focuses less on creating content around what we want to tell people. Instead, we should be creating content around what people want to discover.

In other words, our audience is coming to us for helpful content that provides the answers they’re looking for.

In a nutshell, all of this starts with keyword research.

Conducting keyword research has many benefits, the most popular being:

Marketing Trend Insight

Conducting effective keyword research can provide you with insights into current marketing trends and help you center your content on relevant topics and keywords your audience is in search of.

Traffic Growth

When you identify the best-fitting keywords for the content you publish, the higher you’ll rank in search engine results — the more traffic you’ll attract to your website.

Customer Acquisition

If your business has content that other business professionals are looking for, you can meet their needs and provide them with a call-to-action that will lead them into the buyer journey from the awareness stage to the point of purchase.

By researching keywords for their popularity, search volume, and general intent, you can tackle the questions that most people in your audience want answers to.

Keywords vs. Topics

More and more, we hear how much SEO has evolved over just the last 10 years and how seemingly unimportant keywords have transformed our ability to rank well for the searches people make every day.

And to some extent, this is true, but in the eyes of an SEO professional, it’s a different approach. Rather, it’s the intent behind that keyword and whether or not a piece of content solves for that intent (we’ll talk more about intent in just a minute).

But that doesn’t mean keyword research is an outdated process. Let me explain:

Keyword research tells you what topics people care about and, assuming you use the right SEO tool, how popular those topics actually are among your audience.

The operative term here is topics, plural. By researching keywords that are getting a high volume of searches per month, you can identify and sort your content into topics or buckets that you want to create content on.

Then, you can use these topics to dictate which keywords you look for and target.

Keyword Research Template

Build your SEO strategy with this free template.

• Search Volume
• Keyword Difficulty

Download Free

All fields are required.

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

There are three main elements I have discovered that you should pay attention to when conducting keyword research.

1. Relevance

Google ranks content for relevance.

This is where the concept of search intent comes in. Your content will only rank for a keyword if it meets the searchers’ needs.

In addition, your content must be the best resource out there for the query. After all, why would Google rank your content higher if it provides less value than other content that exists on the web?

2. Authority

Google will provide more weight to sources it deems authoritative.

That means you must do all you can to become an authoritative source by enriching your site with helpful, informative content and promoting that content to earn social signals and backlinks.

If you’re not seen as authoritative in the space, or if a keyword’s SERPs are loaded with heavy sources you can’t compete with (like Forbes or The Mayo Clinic), you have a lower chance of ranking unless your content is exceptional.

You may end up ranking on the first page for a specific keyword, but if no one ever searches for it, it will not result in traffic to your site. It's like setting up a shop in a ghost town.

Volume is measured by MSV (monthly search volume), which means the number of times the keyword is searched per month across all audiences.

• Make a list of important, relevant topics based on what you know about your business.
• Fill in those topic buckets with keywords.
• Understand how intent affects keyword research and analyze accordingly.
• Research related search terms.
• Use keyword research tools to your advantage.

I’m going to lay out a keyword research process you can follow to help you come up with a list of terms you should be targeting.

That way, you’ll be able to establish and execute a strong keyword strategy that helps you get found for the search terms you actually care about.

Step 1. Make a list of important, relevant topics based on what you know about your business.

To kick off this process, think about the topics you want to rank for in terms of generic buckets.

You’ll come up with about five to 10 topic buckets you think are important to your business, and then you’ll use those topic buckets to help come up with some specific keywords later in the process.

If you’re a regular blogger, these are probably the topics you blog about most frequently. Or perhaps they’re the topics that come up the most in sales conversations.

Put yourself in the shoes of your buyer personas . What types of topics would your target audience search that you’d want your business to get found for?

Drill down into your website’s traffic sources, and sift through your organic search traffic bucket to identify the keywords people are using to arrive at your site.

Repeat this exercise for as many topic buckets as you have.

Remember, if you’re having trouble coming up with relevant search terms, you can always head on over to your customer-facing colleagues — those who are in sales or service. Ask them what types of terms their prospects or customers have questions about.

Those are often great starting points for keyword research.

Here at HubSpot, we use the Search Insights Report in this part of the process. This template is designed to help you do the same and bucket your keywords into topic clusters, analyze MSV, and inform your editorial calendar and strategy.

Featured Resource: Search Insights Report Template

Download the Template

Step 3. Understand how intent affects keyword research and analyze accordingly.

Like I said in the previous section, user intent is now one of the most pivotal factors in your ability to rank well on search engines like Google.

Today, it’s more important that your web page addresses the problem a searcher intended to solve than simply carries the keyword the searcher used. So, how does this affect the keyword research you do?

It’s easy to take keywords at face value, but unfortunately, keywords can have many different meanings beneath the surface.

Because the intent behind a search is so important to your ranking potential, you need to be extra careful about how you interpret the keywords you target.

Let’s say, for example, you’re researching the keyword “how to start a blog” for an article you want to create. “Blog” can mean a blog post or the blog website itself, and what a searcher’s intent is behind that keyword will influence the direction of your article.

Does the searcher want to learn how to start an individual blog post? Or do they want to know how to actually launch a website domain for the purposes of blogging?

If your content strategy is only targeting people interested in the latter, you’ll need to make sure of the keyword’s intent before committing to it.

To verify what a user’s intent is in a keyword, it’s a good idea to simply enter this keyword into a search engine yourself and see what types of results come up.

Make sure the type of content Google is displaying relates to your intention for the keyword.

Step 4. Research related search terms.

This is a creative step you may have already thought of when doing keyword research. If not, it’s a great way to fill out those lists.

If you’re struggling to think of more keywords people might be searching about a specific topic, take a look at the related search terms that appear when you plug in a keyword into Google.

When you type in your phrase and scroll to the bottom of Google’s results, you’ll notice some suggestions for searches related to your original input.

These keywords can spark ideas for other keywords you may want to take into consideration.

Don't forget to share this post!

Related articles.

The 12 Best Keyword Research Tools to Find the Right Keywords for SEO

Finding the Best Search Terms for Your Business: 10 Tools and Tips

6 Ways That Nonprofits Can Improve Their Keyword Research

How to Figure Out What Keywords Your Potential Customers are Using

The Definition of a Long-Tail Keyword [In Under 100 Words]

Keyword Research 101: How to Discover New Keywords for Your Business

How to Use Keyword Tools to Brainstorm Blog Topics [Quick Tip]

Is 2013 the Year Marketers Lose Keyword Research?

7 Keyword Research Mistakes That Stifle Your SEO Strategy

How to Identify Long-Tail Keywords to Fuel Your PPC Strategy

Discover opportunity for growth in your keyword strategy with this easy-to-use template.

Marketing software that helps you drive revenue, save time and resources, and measure and optimize your investments — all on one easy-to-use platform

• Do Not Sell My Personal Info

•  ⋅ 

Keyword Research: An In-Depth Beginner’s Guide

Keyword research is the foundation of search engine optimization. This guide covers what it is and how you should do keyword research.

Keyword research is the foundation of search engine optimization, and without it, you cannot expect to create sustainable and repeatable visibility.

Today, SEO is a much wider discipline than in the early days of the industry and has been segmented into many verticals.

But, at the core, SEO is about finding opportunities online and capturing relevant traffic to a website through visibility in search engines. Keyword research is at the heart of that SEO strategy.

This guide explains what keyword research is, why it’s important, and how you can make a start for a successful SEO strategy.

What Is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is a process of finding words, queries, and phrases that users are searching for, which means a keyword that has search volume.

Research involves connecting the relevance of keywords to a website and its individual pages so that the user can find the best page to answer their query, known as search intent.

Keyword research also involves categorizing search queries into the different stages of a user journey and different categories of search, such as transactional, navigational, and informational.

Good keyword research enables users to find what they need:

• Shoppers who want to buy something can find the right product page.
• A user that wants to know ‘how to’ can find a page that explains a process in-depth.
• Users who want to research a person or brand can find out about that entity.

Keyword research should also carefully consider if ranking on a keyword is worth the effort it would take to rank highly and get visitors. Not all traffic is equal.

Download the ebook, How To Do Keyword Research For SEO .

Why Keyword Research Is Important For SEO

A search engine is an information retrieval system built around the queries that a user inputs to find an answer or relevant information to their search query.

The predominant focus of Google is to connect a user with the best answer to their query and the best website page so that a user is satisfied. Understanding this underlines SEO.

Good keyword research is the foundation of how a business can connect with its potential customers and audience. Understanding this helps to understand a good SEO strategy.

A business strategy starts with understanding its audience and their needs.

• What do they want?
• What do they need?
• What keeps them awake at night?
• What could solve their problem?

Keyword research is an extension of understanding your audience by first considering their needs and then the phrases, keywords, or queries they use to find solutions.

Keyword research is also important for SEO because it can show you where the opportunities are by knowing what your audience is searching for.

This will help you to find new areas of business and to prioritize where to focus attention and resources.

Keyword research will also help you to calculate where you can expect a return on investment to justify your efforts:

• Can a keyword deliver relevant traffic that has the possibility to convert to an end goal?
• What is an estimation of that traffic, and how much is each visitor worth to your business?

Basically, keyword research is the ultimate business research tool.

Read more: Why Keywords Are Still So Very Important For SEO

Keyword Research Basics

Monthly search volume.

Monthly Search Volume (MSV) is a predominant measure of keyword value. It’s a useful metric as a starting point to consider if anyone is searching for that keyword, but it shouldn’t be used in isolation or as the only measure of value.

Just because a keyword has a high MSV doesn’t mean it is the right keyword for you to rank on.

High-volume keywords generally deliver ‘browsing’ traffic at the top of the funnel. They are useful for brand awareness but not for direct conversion.

Low-volume keywords can be much more valuable because they can deliver users who are ready to buy a product.

Read more: A Complete Guide To Keyword Search Volume For SEO

User Intent

User intent refers to what type of result they want to see when they search for a query – the intention of their search.

You will hear user intent talked about a lot in keyword research, as it is one of the most important factors in the process.

User intent is important in two ways, firstly because your primary aim in creating content and pages on a website are to provide a user with information that they want to know.

There’s no point in creating a page about what you care about – your user only cares about their problems and needs.

You can have the best page in the world about the history of cupcakes, but if a user searching for [cupcake] wants a recipe for cupcakes, then they will not click on your link.

Secondly, Google considers relevance when serving results pages (as we said above, they want to deliver the best result for a query). So, the better your page fits user intent, the better it might rank.

Read more: How People Search: Understanding User Intent

When Google considers which pages it will show in search results, the algorithm will look at other pages that users are clicking on for that query.

If we have a query such as [cupcake], Google has to consider if a user wants to know what a cupcake is, how to make a cupcake, or wants to buy a cupcake.

By looking at a search result page, you can get a good idea of user intent from the other results.

Reviewing the search results page of a query should be part of your research process for every keyword you want to consider.

Keyword relevance and user intent are much the same things. It’s about knowing what the user really means when they search. This is more ambiguous for head keywords and less so for long-tail queries.

Long-Tail keywords

Long-tail keywords are called long-tail because they fall to the right of the search demand curve – where the graph looks like a long tail stretching to the right.

The search demand curve is a graph that shows keywords with high volume to the left and lower search volumes to the right.

Longer queries that are more focused fall to the right. Head terms with broad meaning and high volume fall to the left.

The value of long-tail keywords is that they are usually highly focused terms that convert well, as users are actively looking for something very specific.

For example, [iPhone 13] is a head term with high volume (2.7 million MSV), and [Best affordable iPhone 13 cases] (210 MSV) is a long-tail keyword with far fewer searches but would have a high conversion rate.

Long-tail keywords are useful to include in a keyword strategy because they are usually much easier to rank for and achievable for a new website, and the cumulative volume of many long-tail keywords adds up to considerable targeted traffic.

This is a much more stable strategy than focusing on one high-volume ambiguous keyword.

Read more: Long-Tail Keyword Strategy: Why & How To Target Intent For SEO

Types Of Search Query

There are four types of keywords that are useful to understand as they categorize the different user intents and can help when planning a keyword strategy.

• Informational – users looking for information or an answer to a question (top of the funnel).
• Navigational – users wanting to find a specific brand, site, or page (brand searches).
• Commercial – users researching brands, products, or services (middle of the funnel).
• Transactional – users ready to complete a purchase or action (bottom of the funnel).

Local keywords can also be considered another category.

How To Do Keyword Research

Now that you have a better understanding of the basics of keyword research, we can look at where you would start with your research and keyword strategy.

1. How To Find Keyword Ideas

The first stage of keyword research is to brainstorm ideas for seed keywords, and there are several ways to do this.

Your Target Audience

Everything starts with your audience and what they want. Think about their needs, wants, and especially their pain points and problems.

Start to compile your wide list of words, ideas, and topics that surround your niche or business.

Think About Questions

Question-based keyword queries are valuable as they can help you to capture featured snippets and can be a way to jump rank on highly competitive keywords.

Ask your sales team and review CRM data to find the questions that your audience is asking.

Also, think of question modifiers that will start to build out your list:

• What [is a road bike].
• How to [ride a road bike].
• When is [the best time to service a road bike].
• What is [the best road bike].
• Where is [road bike shop].

Current Site Queries

If your site already has some online history, then Google Search Console can tell you what Google thinks your website is relevant for. This is insightful to tell you if your site is conveying the right message and to find opportunities.

If Google is showing a lot of queries that have nothing to do with your product or brand, then you need to apply more keyword focus to your pages.

Look for queries that are position 10 or greater, have reasonable impressions, and you think are relevant to your business.

These are potential quick-win opportunities that you can capture by making improvements and optimizing pages for the query.

Read more: A Complete Google Search Console Guide For SEO Pros

Competitors’ Keywords

Your competitors are a gold mine of information because they might already have invested in extensive research.

A business should be constantly monitoring its competitors anyway, so keep an eye on what content they are producing and the terms they target.

A keyword gap analysis will help you find opportunities your competitors are targeting that you might not have considered.

Read more: Competitor Keyword Analysis: 5 Ways To Fill The Gaps In Your Organic Strategy & Get More Traffic

Seed Keywords

Start with high-level ‘seed’ keywords that you can use as a starting point to then open up variants and related queries.

Seed keywords are ‘big’ head terms such as [iPhone], [trainers], [road bike], or [cupcake].

For each seed keyword, start to think of topics that are related:

• Road bike maintenance.
• Road bike training.
• Road bike clothing.
• Road bike lights.

Also, use question modifiers and buying modifiers such as:

• Best [road bike].
• Buy [road bike].
• Price [for women’s road bike].
• [road bikes for hire] near me.
• Reviews [of road bikes under $1,000].

When you have finished this process, you should have a raw list of potential keywords grouped in topics – such as maintenance, clothing, training, etc.

2. How To Analyze Keywords

Once you have your raw list, it’s time to start to analyze and sort by value and opportunity.

Search Volume

Search volume will tell you if anyone is actively searching for this term.

For a first-stage strategy, you should aim for keywords with a mid-range and long-tail volume for quick wins and then build up to approach more competitive terms with higher volumes.

Head keywords with super high volumes (like ‘iPhone’) are not the best keywords to focus on as they can be too ambiguous and rarely have a specific intent.

Also, the amount of work that is needed to rank can be too high a barrier for entry unless you have an established domain of significant authority.

If a tool shows a keyword with zero search volume, this doesn’t always mean you should discard the term.

If the keyword is shown in the tool, then there can be value to consider targeting it in your strategy. However, make sure you know your audience and what is relevant to them before you invest resources in a zero-volume keyword.

Read more: Why You Should Target Zero Search Volume Keywords

Search Intent

After you have sorted your raw lists by search volumes, it’s then time to review the intent for each keyword that you would like to target.

The SERP will tell you everything that you need to know, and you should always review SERPs for clues on how to construct content and rank.

Look at the other listing that rank highly:

• Are they ‘how-to’ guides that indicate it’s informational?
• Do the titles say ‘buy,’ ‘best,’ or include product names?
• Is there a shopping carousel that indicates a buying keyword?
• Is there a location map that indicates it’s a local search?

Tag each keyword type and then consider which are the strongest keywords from each group.

You can also use a research tool that will tell you the type of keyword.

Topic Clusters

Grouping keywords into topic clusters is an advanced keyword strategy that can help to strengthen the topic authority of a site.

To do this, you would start with a high-volume head keyword and then research a series of keywords that supports that head term.

After creating pages of content that target each keyword, you use internal linking to connect pages with the same topic.

Read more: Keyword Clusters: How To Level Up Your SEO Content Strategy

3. How To Choose Organic Keywords

After sorting the volumes, intent, and topics, you will need to decide if you have a chance of ranking on a term by looking at how much competition there is for each keyword.

Keyword Difficulty

Keyword difficulty is one of the most important keyword metrics when doing your research.

If a keyword is so competitive that you need hundreds of thousands of dollars to rank, then you need to get strategic.

The easiest way to calculate keyword difficulty is to use a research tool that gives a score for each keyword.

Or, you can refer to Google Keyword Planner Tool and look at the CPC and level of difficulty. The higher the CPC bid, the higher the competition.

If you are starting out, first approach the lower competition keywords that are achievable and then build your way up to more competitive terms.

Read more: Why Keyword Research Is Useful For SEO & How To Rank

Connecting To Your Objectives And Goals

Unless a keyword can actually deliver a result for you – do you want to target it?

As we said above, targeting head terms is not the best strategy as they will, at best, deliver browsing or drive-by visitors. Unless you are a big brand with a big budget that is aiming for brand awareness, this is not the best application of your resources and budget.

Choosing your keyword priority should start with what can give you the best return in the shortest time frame.

Good keyword research is not just about trying to target a high-volume popular keyword. A good keyword strategy is about finding the right keywords for your needs and outcome. Always keep that front and center.

Read more: How To Calculate ROI For SEO When Targeting A Set Of Keywords

Watch John Mueller talk about ranking for head keywords in this video from the 38:55 minute mark.

Using Keyword Research Tools

Doing your research without a tool is limited; for the most in-depth keyword research, you need help to find keyword opportunities you had not thought of.

The following keyword research tools are all free versions that you can start out with.

Google Keyword Planner

The original keyword tool has evolved over the years, but it still remains one of the best free keyword tools and a good starting point to find seed keywords and keyword ideas.

The Google tool is aligned with Google Ads, so the data is skewed towards paid ads but is still valuable for research.

You need a Google Ads account to access the tool. Google will try to force you to set up an active campaign, but you can access the account by setting up an account without a campaign.

Without a campaign running, you will only get limited search volumes displayed in ranges, but the tool is still useful for its suggestions of keyword ideas. If you have an active campaign, Google will show you the monthly search volume.

You can add up to 10 seed keywords and get a list of suggested keywords, and run competitor URLs in the tool to find keywords they are targeting. Doing this is a great place to start building out raw lists of keywords to work from.

Read more: How To Use Google Keyword Planner

Read more: 9 Creative Ways To Use Google’s Keyword Planner Tool

Google Trends

Google Trends offers data based on actual search query data. It doesn’t provide search volumes, but the data in Google trends can be compared with actual search volumes from other tools so you can get a comparative feel of what the actual volumes are.

Where Trends excels is to identify trending topics and subtopics in a niche and to find geographic search trends in a local area. Trends will recommend related keywords that are currently growing in popularity.

As part of a keyword strategy, this can show you where to focus resources and when to stop investing in terms.

Read more: How To Use Google Trends For SEO

Google Autocomplete

Previously known as Suggest, Autocomplete is integrated into the Google search box to help users complete their search with what Google calls ‘predictions.’

Google takes its predictions from common searches and trending searches.

As the suggestions are all variations around the topic you are typing, the results shown give you an insight into other related terms that users could be looking for.

Checking the predictions that Google provides in Autocomplete can help you find more variations and keywords to consider.

Read more: Google Autocomplete: A Complete SEO Guide

Answer The Public

Answer The Public is a powerful tool that scrapes data from Google Autocomplete and connects a seed keyword with a variety of modifiers to produce a list of variants.

Answer The Public will quickly provide a list of suggestions, especially based on questions that you can use as a raw list to then review.

Read more: More Free Keyword Research Tools

Paid Keyword Research Tools

Free keyword tools are great to get you started and to create raw lists of keywords that you can then drill into.

However, for the best results, you might want to invest in a paid competitive analysis tool that can help you get monthly search volume and keyword difficulty data.

Some tools will also help with assigning topics and clustering for more advanced keyword strategies.

Anyone who does keyword research in-depth or to an advanced level will have their own process. They will also use a variety of tools and a combination of paid and free resources to get the best results.

Read more: Best Keyword Research Tools

Advanced Keyword Strategies

Now that you have an understanding of how to get started with keyword research, experiment with a few different websites and niches. Doing the work yourself is the best way to learn.

Once you have a better understanding in practice, move into more advanced methods and strategies to take your keyword research to the next level.

Advanced Keyword Research

• B2B Keyword Research Done Right With Practical Examples
• Keyword Clusters: How To Level Up Your SEO Content Strategy
• Building A Keyword Strategy For Comparison Content

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

Shelley Walsh is the SEO Content Strategist at SEJ & produces the Pioneers, a series about the history of SEO ...

Subscribe To Our Newsletter.

Conquer your day with daily search marketing news.

Keyword Research – An In-Depth Guide to Help You Rank Higher [+Template]

Keyword research can help you effectively reach more of your audience. By understanding exactly what they are searching for, you can create targeted content to meet their needs. But, in order to maximize your impact, you need to take a systematic approach using the most accurate keyword research tools . In this post, we’ll break down the complete step-by-step guide to how to conduct keyword research and the tools to use to achieve real results.

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of finding the words and phrases your target audience is searching for on Google. Whether they are looking to find information like, pizza delivery options in your city, or are ready to purchase a product or a service, once you identify the high-value keywords they are searching related to your business, and their intent, you can optimize your search strategy and rank higher on Google.

Why does keyword research matter to you?

Using the right keywords (also known as search terms) gives your content the power to climb higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). This is exactly why keyword research is a pillar in search engine optimization (SEO).

If you set up your keyword research properly, scaling your ongoing SEO efforts and powering your growth will be fairly easy to execute.

It is important that your primary research is comprehensive and hones in on search intent because it will be the foundation of your search engine optimization strategy. Think of it as the base of all your future subject-specific SEO efforts to bring you new leads like a passive income. During this initial phase of research, your goal is to gather as many relevant keyword phrases as you can that could reach your audience.

In this blog we will guide you through how to conduct keyword research:

• Scan your website for keywords
• Dig deeper into your keyword data with Google Search Console
• Take advantage of competitor analysis tools
• Find the most valuable phrases with the keyword generation tool
• Consolidate your keyword data
• Categorize keywords by user intent and semantic search
• Analyze long-tail vs. short-tail keywords
• Choose the right mix of keywords to focus on

You can download our keyword research template below and apply what you learn as you go.

Enjoy 360 Visibility 24/7

Get the data you need to adapt to market changes and industry trends in an instant.

How to do keyword research

1. scan your website for keywords.

To start your keyword research process, the first step is to open your website and identify the main categories. Note any very obvious keywords you will need to include. The keywords you find during this process are the first ones you should add to your initial list to gain high-level insight into your website’s main goals.

At this stage don’t focus on the specific terminology used, you can tweak the wording later, focus on understanding what your website is aiming to do and/or sell to understand how you will generate search traffic.

• Pro Tip: Pay special attention to how your content is organized. Look for where the content and product pages are located. If you have a menu, those keywords are (yes, you guessed it) key. You can also find additional crucial industry words by scanning your site as a whole, including content featured on your homepage, blogs, product pages, feature descriptions, mission statements, and FAQ. If you sell a product, both the product and its category would be included .

Below you can see an example of important keywords on Similarweb’s homepage that would need to be included during this stage of SEO research. Words like ‘digital research’ and ‘investing’  relate to how our content is organized. As you go through your own website these are the types of phrases you are searching for in this stage of your keyword research.

2. Dig deep into your keyword data in Google Search Console

Take a look at the data you already have. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel – yet. If you have access to Google Search Console, (which can also be visible through your Google Analytics account), you can navigate to the performance section and look at the search results reported there. The list you create here will give you a thorough review of your strongest keywords that are already working.  If a term is performing well, you need to ensure you continue to include it in your SEO strategy , and possibly, even double down on your content efforts to win traffic from the term.

• Pro Tip: To use the Performance section effectively, set the data range for the page at 6 months, exclude all branded queries to compile a list of general terms that your audience is searching for, and then download the list it creates as a CSV file.

3. Take advantage of competitor analysis tools

Use competitive data tools to analyze your website and gain more insight into your current performance. Keep in mind that the keywords you will find differ for macro-level SEO and local SEO. You could conduct macro-level keyword research for specific countries using Similarweb. This will help you drill down and understand the topics and keyword opportunities that are trending in countries that interest you.

To do this, you can use Similarweb’s website analysis tool , and first, insert your own URL. Next, click on the Keywords section and filter out all branded keywords. After that, navigate to the “Competitors” section of your website analysis. Note the top three competitors you have and then run an audit on their websites too. For each audit you run, go to the Keyword Analysis section, filter out the branded search queries and export the reports for internal use. Remember that competitors’ traffic data can be as valuable as ranking data for your analysis, so don’t give up on any exported dataset yet – many of them will come in handy for your SEO strategy.

• Pro Tip: It can also be useful to filter out results that fall outside of the top 50 rankings in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) to weed out many irrelevant queries.

Combine the keyword list you created for each of your competitors’ sites with the one you made for your own site. You should merge the exported Excel files into one. Now you can consolidate the ranking and traffic data for each of your competitors and then remove any duplicate keywords.

Alternatively, you can decide not to consolidate your competitors’ ranking and traffic data and use only the keyword data. At this point you have the basis of the research: You found out what your website is ranked for, what phrases your competitors’ websites are ranked for, and what real people search for. Now it’s time to inspect your entire search potential.

You can also perform micro-level research using an SEO tool like Navads . Navads, acquired by Uberall in 2018, is the leading location data provider for the databases that power the navigation and mapping industry. It has a local search tool that helps you rank higher in map search results.

4. Find the most valuable phrases with Keyword Generation Tool

Your next step is to use a keyword tool to discover more keyword ideas, synonyms, and suggestions. You can use Google Keyword Planner to discover new keyword ideas. Another and often easier option is to use a keyword research tool like Similarweb’s Keyword Generator Tool and insert keywords by the categories you found on your website during stage one. Diving into more specific categories ensures the keywords the tool suggests are relevant to your topic.

Consider your target audience: Who are they? How do they search for what they need? What words or phrasing do they use? Are they primarily on desktop or mobile? This is also the perfect time to further research “interesting” phrases you may have found through competitive keyword research .

• Pro Tip: Since branded terms are usually irrelevant to SEO, be sure to filter out brand terms when you conduct your keyword research. You should also filter out irrelevant keyword phrase suggestions such as price and jobs. 

Again, in this stage, the goal is to compile a comprehensive keyword list for each of your chosen categories, so add as many relevant keywords as possible. You will probably discover that the broad category you started off with needs to be broken down into subtopics to make your keyword list usable for technical SEO and content marketing purposes. For example, digital marketing is a huge category that includes SEO, pay-per-click (PPC), media planning , marketing strategies, and more. So, each of those subjects should become its own subcategory at this stage since they each require research into specific keyword terms.

After you’ve broken down your main category into more easily digestible bite-sized subcategories, each subcategory should have its own keyword list that you can download. Now, it’s time to download those lists and take some time to review each. If you find that one of your categories is still quite wide, meaning it contains many search queries and very large volumes, you can break it down further into more detailed subcategories until it’s manageable.

Once you’re happy with your subcategory lists go to Google Keyword Planner. This tool allows up to 10 base phrases per ‘research,’ so group all phrases from the same subcategory together to find the best relevant keyword suggestions. ‘Research’ in SEO keyword planning refers to the maximum number of starting keywords that you can use in Google Keyword Planner to find related keyword suggestions.

5. Consolidate your keyword data

At this point, you’re probably wondering why you have so many keyword lists, but don’t worry that means you’re on the right track! These lists are your data sources for all search volumes and trends, and also for your competitors’ ranking and performance data. In fact, now it’s time to combine all of the lists that fall into the same subcategory by migrating all the data to one master Excel file. Once you’ve combined them remove any duplicate keywords. The reason you are merging the lists you’ve made is so you can effectively organize and implement your keyword research when it’s go-time.

• Pro Tip : Perform search trend and rank calculations on your data lists. Then consolidate the sources and remove duplicate phrase entries. Finally, pull all the competitive data related to your research (competitors ranking, traffic shares , etc.). Now you can calculate competitive keyword difficulty and value easily and build a data-driven SEO strategy. For example, you can identify recent changes in search volumes as well as competitor’s weak spots, and adjust your strategy accordingly.

To understand how to most effectively implement your keyword research, map out your data and insights against the current content on your website. Ask yourself:

• Which terms do you already have pages for?
• Which ones do you need to create pages for?

These questions will allow you to understand how to prioritize your efforts and successfully execute your keyword strategy.

6. Categorize keywords by user intent and semantic search

Start by dividing the phrases you’ve compiled into smaller groups based on topic similarities. From there you can break them down into large categories, like digital marketing, subcategories like SEO, and topic words like keyword research. For your topic keywords with semantic similarities, you want to keep in mind the users’ search intent for every query and effectively reach your potential customers.

People can use the same keywords to mean different things, so an important part of this process is decoding the user’s search intent.

For example, if someone searches for toilet paper what do they mean? Are they looking for places to order from, popular brands, or keeping tabs on which stores have toilet paper in stock? This is why you must understand search intent to categorize your keywords and ultimately reach your relevant target audience. Once you understand your target audience’s intent you can analyze the most relevant search phrases for them and for your business, and decide what are the right keywords for you.

In general, there are four main intent categories:

• Informational: These generally include “how-to” questions and “what” questions. For example, ‘how to disinfect plastic.’   
• Commercial investigation : Specific Attributes, versus, best, for example, ‘Walmart vs Target.’
• Transactional : This includes searches where the user has the intent to buy or download, for example, ‘buying waterproof kid’s toys.’
• Navigational : This includes branded queries, like ‘Facebook updates.’
• Pro Tip : Taking the time to thoroughly complete this step will help you to achieve very high clarity in your groups and ensure your SEO optimization efforts will have the largest impact possible.

Remove all remaining terms that are still irrelevant to your SEO goals such as queries that include times, locations, and competitor names. What you deem irrelevant will change based on your individual site and industry, so there is not a hard and fast rule to follow.

Optimization gaps are pages that are optimized for the wrong search intent, that have missing content, or are missing the right meta elements . To do this, continue re-dividing your keyword groups into smaller and smaller groups until you’re left only with keyword groups of semantically related search queries .  

7. Analyze long-tail vs. short-tail keywords

Within your keyword groups, it’s important to ensure you have a mix of short-tail and long-tail keywords . Short-tail keywords are more competitive and more to rank for because they are broader searches. On the other hand, long-tail keywords typically contain over three words and are less competitive because they are geared toward more specific searches. A good mix of the two types allows you to develop a keyword strategy that balances long-term and short-term wins.

For example, which of these keyword phrases do you think would be easier to rank for?

Toilet paper

Reusable toilet paper

[Did you pick the second one? Good!] The more competition there is for a keyword, the harder it is to rank.

As you can tell, long-tail keywords are more specific so they have a much clearer search intent than short-tail keywords. They also usually drive higher-quality traffic to your site since people are looking for something specific, which results in a more qualified lead. At many times data will show long-tail keywords can also produce larger traffic volumes when accumulated than short-tails for a specific topic, in those cases, it will be a strategic decision to focus on long-tail keywords that offer higher relevancy and match the audience’s search intent. This is another reason to make sure you don’t only pick high-volume phrases, but look at the big picture and choose the right keywords for SEO that offer maximum relevance and potential.

8. Choose the right mix of keywords to focus on

When creating your keyword plan you need to consider the following information and how they fit into your SEO strategy:

• Search volume: You should be closely evaluating the search volume of the keywords you are targeting. A keyword with a high search volume is more likely to be competitive, or harder to rank for. In order to rank higher on a high-volume, highly competitive keyword, you need to have site authority for the topic. One way you can build authority: create content on lower volume-related keywords. This shows Google that you are an expert on the topic and boosts your standing. Knowing the search volume for any given keyword helps you strategize to create the most effective approach given the characteristics of your website.
• Organic click-through rates (CTRs): This metric will give you an idea of how likely people are to click on posts that rank for a specific keyword. For example search terms like “what is the weather,” which are often answered on the Google Search Result page, may have a lower click-through rate since the user gets their answer question without needing to take another action.
• Keyword search trends: Trending keywords are constantly changing, so you need the most up-to-date data to stay on top of what’s trending in search. Similarweb has a keywords trends feature where you can quickly see what keywords are driving traffic now. Trends can change based on current events, pop culture developments (think Meghan and Harry’s Oprah interview ), or even seasonal events like Black Friday. Watch for specific times to rank for keywords because that’s when it matters.
• Your competitors’ keywords:  You can gain a lot of insight from keywords your competitors are ranking on. Using Similarweb’s Website Analysis, you can see the market share that each competitor has for specific keywords.
• Long-tail and short-tail keywords: As discussed earlier, you want to be sure you are focusing on the long-tail and short-tail keywords that make sense for your search strategy and your site’s level of authority.

Now you have sorted and expanded on your data strategically. This means you can easily estimate the difficulty as well as the value of ranking for a keyword or a topic and build an SEO strategy that takes everything into account and can be easily deployed. You can make smarter choices in creating or optimizing content, easily discover and address content gaps , and scale your activity without duplication hazards.

Put your keyword research to work

Boom. You did it. You just completed your initial keyword research. You now have small keyword groups you can use to map out and optimize pages from your site and create new pages for keywords you know will win SEO traffic. The list you have now enables you to easily manage on-page optimization and keyword use, as well as mitigate the risk of duplicate content.

This blog was written in collaboration with Sarah Mehlman , Content Manager at Similarweb.

Keyword research FAQs

Keyword research is the process of finding the terms and phrases that your target audience is searching for on search engines.

Why should I use keyword research?

You should use keyword research to discover the right terms that will help you climb higher on the SERP, and therefore increase the traffic to your website.

How do I conduct keyword research?

You can conduct keyword research with SEO tools . Similarweb’s keyword tool allows you to discover keywords your target audience is searching for, and the terms that are driving traffic to your competitors.

Related Posts

Marketing OKRs: How to Stay Focused and Hit Your Targets

Digital Marketing Strategy: A Beginner’s Guide

What is a Marketing Plan and How Do You Create One?

How to Conduct a Social Media Competitor Analysis: 5 Quick Steps

How to Do an Ecommerce Competitor Analysis in 2024

Industry Benchmark Analysis 2024: Is Your Marketing Strategy Aligned?

Wondering what similarweb can do for your business.

Give it a try or talk to our insights team — don’t worry, it’s free!

Enjoy 2 months of free hosting with an annual WordPress plan. 30-day money-back guarantee.

A Step-By-Step Guide to Keyword Research (Bonus: Best Keyword Research Tools Compared)

Imagine getting over a quarter million visitors to your site every month. We did it thanks to keyword research:

That screenshot is from one of my sites called The Wandering RV . My wife and I grew this site from a brand new site to a quarter million monthly visits in just three years with less than 30 articles.

Yes, you also have to create great content and build links to that content, but those actions come AFTER you know the best keywords to target. Every successful SEO campaign begins with keyword research ; skip this step at your peril.

Ready to get started?

How to Do Keyword Research (Quick Steps):

Good keywords make or brake a successful SEO marketing campaign. Here’s the key steps to get started with keyword research :

Step 1 : Find keyword ideas based on key terms, related search, long-tail keywords, and LSI. Step 2 : Check the TRUE keyword difficulty and search volume. Step 3 : Determine user intent.

In today’s guide, I share a step-by-step guide to keyword research that covers not just how to find hundreds of great keywords, but also how to tell which ones can move the needle for your business and which aren’t worth your time. Let’s dive in!

Keyword Research Fundamentals

Before I talk about the exact steps to find keywords for your SEO campaign, let’s briefly cover what keyword research is and why you should care.

What Is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is the act of finding and vetting keywords to target in an SEO campaign.

This is done using a number of free and/or paid tools that show you what people are searching for on Google and other search engines .

Suggested in-depth guides: Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools .

The Role of Keyword Research in Digital Marketing

As you’ll learn in the next section, the quality of your keywords is the difference between a successful marketing campaign and a waste of time. The keywords you pick will determine your SEO marketing strategy from beginning to end.

Let’s see how.

How Important is Keyword Research? (Don’t Skip This!)

SEO can be complex, but it boils down to three fundamentals:

• Keyword Research
• Link building

Of those three, keyword research is the most important.

Why? Because you can create the best content and build incredible links that score you #1 Google rankings and still get zero benefits in terms of business growth or revenue if you target the wrong keywords.

For example, let’s say you want to write some content on your site’s blog so you can show up on Google’s first page. You have an idea of a blog post and think you have a good keyword to target. You make amazing content, build links to it through guest posting and email outreach (here’s how to find anyone’s email address ), and end up on the first page of Google . You’re getting hundreds of visits every month…

But your income from that article remains a big fat $0.

That’s because you didn’t properly research your keyword ahead of time. You may have found a keyword, but finding a keyword and doing keyword research are very different things.

Properly researching a keyword means understanding it’s income potential, how competitive it is, and even the exact kind of content you need to create to be able to rank for it. You’ll see what I mean by the end of this guide.

In a nutshell: Proper keyword research can be the difference between a wildly successful SEO campaign that makes your business tons of money and an utter waste of time and money.

Search Volume and Long Tail Keywords

The first concept to understand about keywords is search volume .

This is what most people look at when they first start researching keywords, and also one of the worst metrics to look at.

A high search volume is very deceiving for two reasons:

• The raw number of people searching for something has very little to do with how much you can actually earn from that traffic. For example, if you rank for a keyword that gets 10,000 searches per month, but if people are just looking for information and aren’t ready to buy (hint: you’d need to define the search intent. More below.), that does nothing for your bottom line.
• Just because 10,000 people search for a keyword doesn’t mean all 10,000 people actually click on a result. Take a look at the keyword “How old is Biden”, for example—it gets 51,000 searches per month, but only 17% of those people actually click on anything. That’s because people get the answer right on Google and don’t need to click through to find it.

On the other hand, a low search volume doesn’t mean a keyword is bad or that the number you see is the number of visitors you’ll get. Virtually all pages that rank on Google for one keyword also rank for dozens, hundreds, and sometimes thousands of other keywords.

These other keywords are usually synonyms and long-tail variants. There are also Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords, which I get to in a section below.

For example, take a look at this post that my wife, Kayla, wrote for The Wandering RV. She was targeting the keyword “best camping gear”, which gets around 2,700 searches per month according to Ahrefs. But as you can see in the screenshot below, it also ranks for 1,912 other keywords and even ranks on page one for “camping gear” at 32,000 searches per month!

The point of the story? While search volume is an important metric, you shouldn’t base your target keywords solely on how many people are searching for it every month (unless you’re only focused on brand awareness and/or advertising revenue on a per-impression basis).

Search Intent

Search intent is exactly what it sounds like—the intent of the person searching for a given keyword. It’s similar to the marketing concept “buyer intent”.

In other words: What is the user looking for?

Are they searching for an item they are ready to buy right now? Are they doing research before they make a purchase decision? Or are they just looking for information that has nothing to do with buying anything, but rather with a problem they may need a solution to?

Let’s look at an example of each.

High Buying Intent : A high buying intent keyword may be a product name, such as “RV rental las vegas”. If you type that into Google and look at the results, you see a bunch of ads for RV rentals and a map showing Las Vegas RV rental companies. Someone searching this is likely ready to buy, or very close.

Research Intent : These are keywords where people are still doing research on solutions, but will likely buy soon. “Best” and “Review” keywords often fall into this category, such as “best RV rental companies”.

Informational Intent : These keywords are for people strictly looking for information and aren’t ready or even thinking about buying anything. The “how old is Biden” example falls under this category. Another example that fits with RV rentals might be something like “how to travel the country with a pet”.

However, don’t think that you should only go after buying intent keywords. Informational keywords can help you build your email list and get people into your marketing funnel to eventually buy from you.

Search intent is also important to know because it affects what content ranks on Google. If you try to create a landing page to rank for an informational keyword when Google is ranking long-form blog content, you probably won’t rank even with perfect on-page SEO and plenty of backlinks because it’s simply not what the user is searching for.

For example, let’s say you want to rank for “small campers”. So you create a guide to owning small campers. However, when we look at Google, we can see that people aren’t looking for a guide, but rather, they’re looking for a list of small campers to buy.

That’s why even after you find good keyword ideas , you should always manually type them into Google and see what’s currently ranking to get an idea of what you need to create. Don’t write a massive guide when people just want a quick answer and don’t try to rank a blog post when people are looking to buy a product.

The Role of LSI and Synonyms

Earlier, I mentioned LSI keywords. This stands for Latent Semantic Indexing, and it’s a fancy way for Google to say “synonyms and related keywords”. They’re words that are commonly found together within a single topic and are semantically related to each other.

They’re important to tell the search engines what your content is about since there can be multiple meanings to the same keywords.

For example, let’s say you’re writing an article about cars. There are five different potential “cars” you could be talking about:

• Cars, the vehicles
• Cars, the animated Disney movie
• CARS, the Canadian Association for Rally Sports
• CARs, the Canadian Aviation Regulations
• (The) Cars, the American 1970s music band

How does Google know which version of “cars” you’re talking about? By LSI keywords! Take a look:

• Using the words “vehicle”, “used”, “new”, “buy”, “sell”, etc.
• Using the words “film”, “movie”, “Disney”, etc.
• Using the words “association”, “rally”, “sports”, etc.
• Using the words “aviation”, “regulation”, “administration”, etc.

While LSI keywords don’t necessarily matter during your keyword research, they are important when developing your actual content. You should include various LSI keywords naturally in your content without stuffing them, including in headings and image alt text.

You can find LSI keywords (and learn more about them) with a tool like LSI Graph .

How Do You Do Keyword Research? (Step-by-Step Guide)

Alright, now that you have a firm understanding of the important metrics behind keyword research, it’s time to actually find your very own keywords! There are three steps I follow when I’m doing keyword research for a new site, with an optional, more advanced fourth step:

• Find keyword ideas
• Check the TRUE keyword difficulty and search volume
• Determine their search intent
• (Optional) Find & utilize keyword silos

Let’s dive in!

Step 1: Find Keyword Ideas

Finding keyword ideas is the easy part. There are loads of tools that will spit out hundreds of ideas at the click of a button. It’s vetting them that takes effort, but we’ll get to that.

For now, go take a look at the “Best Keyword Research Tool” section below and pick your poison. I’ll be using Ahrefs in the examples because it’s my favorite tool and has all the bells and whistles, but the other tools can work as well.

My favorite way to find great keyword opportunities is spying on my competition. You can do this by plugging their site into any keyword tool and look at their keywords. Ahrefs has a nifty tool called the Content Gap Analysis.

Here’s how it works:

1. Plug your site into Ahrefs, then click the Content Gap link in the left-hand menu.

2. Plug in 1-10 competitors who are ranking on Google for keywords you want to rank for. You can find them by Googling those keywords and grabbing the URLs off of Google or by using Ahrefs’ Competing domains tool right above the Content gap link. Run the tool.

3. From here, you can export the list to an excel spreadsheet if you want. I like to comb through the list right in Ahrefs. If I see a keyword I might want to target, I open it in a new tab and add it to a keyword list using the + Add to button in the top right.

If you don’t have access to Ahrefs or another keyword tool that allows you to see competitor’s keywords, you can also use a tool like Keyword Shitter to give you a ton of ideas, then vet them using other free tools such as Uber Suggest.

Step 2: Check The TRUE Keyword Difficulty and Search Volume

Once you have a list of keyword ideas you’re comfortable working with (I aim for 50-100 at a time but you can do far more), it’s time to see which are even worth pursuing based on keyword difficulty (KD) and search volume.

There’s just one caveat… the search volume and KD you see in most keyword research tools are usually way off. KD in Ahrefs is solely based off the number of linking domains to the top results, which isn’t a 100% accurate depiction of the true difficulty to rank for a keyword.

This is because SEO is a complex beast, and things like domain rating (which I’ll cover shortly) and internal linking can have a massive impact on rankings. Backlinks are only part of the picture.

And the search volume? That’s not including LSI and long-tail keywords!

Remember that camping gear example I showed you at the beginning of this article that ranks for over 1,900 keywords? The main keyword only had 2,700 searches per month, yet the article gets over 5,000 visits per month. That’s because it’s ranking for other keywords besides the main keyword.

So if you see a keyword with 200 searches per month, chances are it’s really more like 500 or 1,000 if you include the related keywords that you’ll rank for.

To determine true search volume, grab the #1 result on Google for the keyword and plug it into Ahrefs or Uber Suggest to see how much traffic that page actually gets. That should give you a more accurate picture of the search volume for a given keyword.

Here’s the traffic for the #1 ranking page for “tiny campers”, a keyword that gets ~3,400 searches per month:

See how the page gets over 10k traffic, despite the main keyword getting a third of that? That’s true search volume potential.

The other metric, keyword difficulty, is also not 100% accurate. But figuring out true difficulty is usually as easy as looking at the top pages domain authority (DA), or domain rating (DR) if you’re using Ahrefs. Let me explain.

If a keyword has a difficulty score of 8, but the top ranking pages are all DR 80+, ranking your site for those keywords may be difficult if you have a low DR, despite the low difficulty score.

My advice is to aim for keywords with a 30 KD or lower if you’re under a 40 DR, then branch up as you build more links and gain a higher authority. As your DR climbs, your internal links are worth more “link juice” (or pass more “page authority” depending on what source you listen to).

But this isn’t an article on technical SEO, so I’ll leave it at that for now!

Step 3: Determine Search Intent

At this point, you should have a pretty decent list of keywords with a difficulty you’re comfortable tackling and a search volume potential you’d be happy to capture. Now it’s time to figure out what people actually want when they search for these terms and whether or not it fits in with your marketing and revenue goals.

This part is as simple as Googling each keyword on your list and looking at the top 3-5 results. Review their meta title and description, click on them to view the page, and check out the angle they took on the page.

• Are they mainly listicle posts? How-tos? Ultimate guides ? A landing page? Something else?
• How do they seem to be monetizing the page ? Are they using display ads ? Selling products as a solution to the problem? Affiliate marketing ? Just capturing emails and not actually selling anything?
• Take a look at the comments. Are people asking questions that weren’t answered in the article? Do they seem happy, angry, or neutral?

All of these questions will help you dial in on the type of post/page you need to create, how you can monetize it (or use it to capture emails/push notification subscribers/social followers), and what you can do to improve it.

As you’re going through each keyword, keep your answers to these questions in a spreadsheet or word document to keep track of which ones you’re interested in pursuing. Your final list is the list you can start pursuing!

To give you a better idea of how to determine search intent, here are a few examples courtesy of this Moz post :

Informational Intent:

• [product name]
• what is [product name]
• how does [product name] work
• how do I use [product name]

Commercial Intent (AKA Research Intent):

• best [product name]
• [product name] reviews
• compare [product name]
• what is the top [product name]
• [colour/style/size] [product name]

Transactional Intent (AKA Buying Intent):

• how much does [product name] cost
• [product name] in [location]
• order [product name] online
• [product name] near me
• affordable [brand name] [product name]

This graph from Ahrefs may also help:

Now take your list and go crank out some content! Or, you can follow one last step.

Step 4: (Advanced) Find & Utilize Keyword Silos

If you really want to do well, you can optionally take it one step further and look for keyword silos to create corresponding content silos on your site.

A keyword silo is a list of highly related keywords that you can create content around to interlink between on your site (also called the “hub and spoke” method). Here’s a visual I created to help you understand:

Essentially, you create a hub page targeting the primary head term you want to rank for, then create “spoke” pages based on related and long-tail keywords.

For example, while doing keyword research for my wife Kayla’s vegan food blog, I found a series of related keywords asking “Is ___ vegan”. People wanted to know if common foods, such as bagels, donuts, or Oreos are vegan.

To rank for these keywords, we created this hub page which links to all of her “Is ___ vegan” articles. These articles all link to one another, as well as back to the main hub page.

This inter-linking is called content siloing, and it works so well for two reasons:

• Because all the pages interlink to one another, if you build links to any of the pages, it improves page authority across all of the other pages.
• Google uses relevancy in its algorithm, and since these topics are all highly relevant to one another, it can improve your rankings further.

So how do you find keyword silos? There is no silver bullet solution — you have to be good at picking up on patterns and noticing relevancy. However, there is one trick you can use to try and find them: books.

Look for books on your topic on Amazon and browse the table of contents. Oftentimes, books are full of keyword silos: that’s what makes them a book! Think of the binding as the hub page and the chapters as the spoke pages.

Of course, as you can see in the example above, these keywords aren’t exactly what people are searching for on Google. People aren’t typing “vegan out in the world”, but rather “how to eat vegan at restaurants” or “how to eat vegan at family gatherings”. So you may have to do some sleuthing to figure out the keyword that corresponds with the chapter title in the books you find.

Once you find a potential silo, be sure to run the keywords through steps 2 and 3 before you commit to it! Just because you found a silo, doesn’t mean you should pursue it. Think logically about how all that content will fit into your business and how you can expand on it in the future.

What Is The Best Keyword Research Tool?

There are dozens, if not hundreds of keyword research tools on the market today. Some are extremely unique, but most are just slightly different takes on the same idea. So what’s the best one? Let’s break it down by free and paid tools.

Free Keyword Research Tools

There are two free keyword research tools I’ve used and recommend:

Ubersuggest

Keyword shitter.

Let’s put on hold all the conversions about Neil Patel for a second. This tool does its job and, if you’re on a budget, it can work to get you started with SEO.

Ubersuggest is basically a free, scaled-down version of Ahrefs or Moz. It lets you spy on competitor’s backlinks, see what keywords they’re ranking for, and do some decent keyword research. If you’re doing SEO on a budget, it can get the job done.

Keyword Shitter is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. You type in a keyword and get hundreds of keyword suggestions. It’s great if you just need tons of ideas, but it mostly only spits out related keywords to the one you typed in, not unique, separate ideas.

Paid Keyword Research Tools

Now we’re getting into the big-boy (or girl) tools! If you’re serious about SEO and you have the budget, these are the tools you want to use.

Keyword Insights

Keywords everywhere.

Ahrefs is hands-down my favorite SEO tool; not just for keyword research, but also for link-building, rank tracking, coming up with content ideas, and more. It has all the bells and whistles and is easily the best all-around SEO tool on the market. However, it comes at a steep price, with just the basic tool being $99 per month.

SEMrush is another great keyword research tool. It’s more affordable than Ahrefs, but it doesn’t have quite as many features. It’s more geared towards search engine marketing and PPC (thus the SEM in SEMrush). However, if you want a great paid tool but don’t want to pay the premium on Ahrefs, it’s a valid option. It even lets you try out the product for free!

Keyword Insights claims to be “the smartest way to group keywords and classify search intent at scale”… and with good reason. The tool utilizes geo-specific, live search engine result page data to cluster keywords into similar groups whilst also working out the search intent behind them.

A user simply uploads a list of keywords (as many as you’d like) and the tool will spit out a preformatted Google sheets document with the clustered keywords and the intent pulled through. Its most recent update also sorts the grouped keywords into “top-level themes” so you can see what their content hubs should be and what their spoke content might look like. The insights will also tell you which keywords you can target a single page with, or which need to be broken into multiple pages.

Keywords Everywhere is an awesome tool that used to be free and now is credit-based. The tool shows you search volume, competition, and average CPC right on Google whenever you type something in. It also shows you stats on related keywords and the “people also search” keywords. Regardless of which other tools you use, I highly recommend grabbing this one.

Want more SEO tools? Check out Kinsta’s list of must-have SEO plugins for WordPress .

Suggested Stack

So what keyword research tools should you get? My suggested stack is Ahrefs and Keywords Everywhere. Ahrefs is a complete SEO software that will help you rank your site, not just find keywords. And Keywords Everywhere lets you see search volume and keyword ideas any time you’re searching something on Google. Plus it’s free, so what’s not to like?

Here’s a quick recap of everything we’ve covered:

• Keyword research is extremely important to any SEO campaign and should not be skipped or taken lightly.
• Search volume and keyword difficulty can be deceiving. Do some deeper research by typing the keyword into Google and reviewing the results before you make a decision.
• Don’t be fooled by low search volume. Check the true search volume by reviewing the top pages search traffic using Ubersuggest or Ahrefs.
• Search intent is king. Make sure the content you’re creating matches the content people want to see (and what Google is already showing).
• Look for keyword silos. They’re can be a shortcut to ranking your pages faster.

And that’s all there is to it! If you have any questions, feel free to drop a comment below or shoot me an email. For more help with SEO, click here to read my step-by-step guide and this awesome in-depth guide on how to drive more traffic to your website.

Bill is a content marketing and SEO expert with over 6 years' experience. When he's not nerding out over Google, he loves traveling, playing video games, and spending time with his wife.

Related Articles and Topics

Powerful Managed WordPress Hosting

What Does SEO Stand For? (+ 7 Beginner’s Tips for Ranking a Site)

• Content Management Systems
• Website Security

Keyword Research is predominantly a statistical analysis of trending interests that are expressed by internet searches.

Although I realize the importance of said statistics, I am “right brained” and have struggled with being interested in numbers, all of my life. When I look at a keyword research result, the numbers tell me nothing in terms that I can understand. In fact, I’m totally bored by the concept.

I have read many posts, papers, and websites about the subject, and although not many agree with the same approach, they basically are saying the same things. b-o-r-i-n-g!

What is stopping a keyword research tool (once the stats have been gathered) from asking what it is that you sell, and then saying… well, to sell that, try concentrating on this…, and spare me the statistical analysis.

Really helpful article. Especially for the newcomers who want to be an SEO expert.

Thanks, Eva! Glad you enjoyed it. :)

What if I’m a business owner with a brand new site with no blog posts yet? How would I start this if I’m new to KW research? Are there services (real people services) that help with this or do it with me?

Hey, Johnny!

No problem! The steps with the content gap analysis are the same – you just have to manually find your competitors rather than using a tool. To do that, Google some keywords you think you want to rank for and grab the URLs of the top-ranking sites that monetize their sites similarly to you (whether that’s through ads, affiliate marketing, or selling similar products).

Paste those URLs into the content gap tool and follow along from there! Hope this helps! :)

Awesome! i am using this article to share with my students while i m teaching keyword research.

Lots of great information here ! Just wanting to introduce to a free alternative to Keywords everywhere, a chrome extension – WhatsmySERP.com/everywhere it gives you unlimited searches for volume and CPC.

Our team has launched this tool and it already has 5 star reviews and 20k+ users. I’d love for you to try it and see what your thoughts are.

I’d love to know your thoughts :)

This article is really really helpful for the newcomers. specially the one who recently started a blog or a website and Also, wants to Learn SEO.

The thing with the search intent is really important!

This was really what i was searching. perfect timing, thanks Bill such an valuable post.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

By submitting this form: You agree to the processing of the submitted personal data in accordance with Kinsta's Privacy Policy , including the transfer of data to the United States.

You also agree to receive information from Kinsta related to our services, events, and promotions. You may unsubscribe at any time by following the instructions in the communications received.

How To Do Keyword Research for SEO That Increases Website Traffic

Fundamental to every successful SEO plan is keyword research. It finds the terms and phrases that search engines use to find your target audience, so you can produce material that draws visitors. Here’s how to conduct research on keywords that boosts website traffic.

Keyword research: definition and examples.

Search phrase research is the process of determining and evaluating search terms that people use in search engines. Because it enables you to produce material that satisfies your audience’s needs and raises your search engine rankings, it is an essential component of SEO. Finding out which particular words and queries your potential customers use can help you customize the information on your website to correspond with their search intent.

Locating high-volume, low-competition keywords that can increase targeted traffic to your website is the main objective of keyword study. Tools for this include often Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Google Keyword Planner. Through their insights into search volumes, keyword difficulty, and rival performance, these tools enable you to choose keywords with knowledge.

Creating seed keywords, expanding these ideas using keyword tools, examining search volume and competition, and finally including the chosen keywords into your content are all part of effective keyword research. When done well, keyword study can greatly improve your SEO plan and result in more website traffic and higher user interaction. See reputable sites like Ahrefs and Moz for more thorough instructions on keyword research.

Just why is keyword research important?

Search engine results visibility and success of your website are directly influenced by keyword research, hence it is essential. Knowing the particular words and phrases that your target audience uses helps you to provide material that answers their questions and wants. Specializing on these terms will help you draw in more relevant and focused visitors to your website.

Finding high-traffic, low-competition keywords is made easier with effective keyword research on search engine results pages (SERPs). More potential conversions, more website traffic, and more visibility follow from higher rankings. Insights into market trends are another benefit it offers, which keeps you ahead of rivals by pointing up chances they might have missed.

Researching keywords is also essential to maximizing your whole SEO approach. It directs content production so that your articles, blog entries, and other materials are in line with what your readers are looking for. Along with raising user engagement, this alignment raises the authority and relevance of your website in your field.

1. Understanding Keyword Research

Finding and deciphering search phrases that individuals type into search engines is known as keyword research. Knowing what your audience is looking for and how to appear higher in search engine results are made easier with it. Moz states that keyword research affects all other SEO tasks, including on-page SEO, content themes, and promotional effort.

Guidelines for Understanding Keyword Research

• Describe Your Specialty: Understand the industry you work in.
• Find Your Readership: Know the people that might visit your website.
• Analyze Rivals: Find out what terms your rivals are ranking for.

2. Keyword Research Tools

It takes the correct instruments to do keyword research well. Here are some of the greatest instruments.

The Best Keyword Research Tools

• For finding keywords straight from Google’s data, use the Google Keyword Planner.
• Great for keyword difficulty and competitive analysis is SEMrush.
• Ahrefs: Offers thorough analysis of keyword performance and that of competitors.
• Useful for SERP analysis and keyword recommendations is Moz Keyword Explorer.
• Ubersuggest is a fantastic tool for finding fresh terms and ideas for articles.

Tools Comparison Table

3. finding the right keywords.

Choosing keywords is deciding on terms that are pertinent to your writing and have a lot of searches but little competition.

The Right Keywords: A Guide

• Organize Seed Keywords Start with simple terms connected to your specialty.
• Make Use of Keyword Tools To receive suggestions, enter seed keywords into SEMrush or Ahrefs.
• Analyse Competition and Search Volume: Select terms with little rivalry and a lot of searches.
• Verify Relevance : Make sure the keywords apply to your audience and material.

For a blog on “healthy eating,” for instance, “nutrition,” “diet,” and “healthy recipes” might be seed terms. Find relevant terms like “best healthy diets 2024” or “easy healthy recipes” with a tool like Ahrefs.

4. Long-Tail Keywords

Longer and more precise keyword phrases are what visitors are more likely to utilize when they get closer to making a purchase or locating the information they require.

Long-Tail Keyword Benefits

• Less Competition: Ranks easier than big keywords.
• More precise to what consumers are looking for, higher conversion rates.
• Greater Targeted Traffic: Draws in visitors who are obviously intent.

Finding Keywords with Long Tails

• Check out Google Suggestions: Google a keyword, then see what autocomplete offers come up.
• Examine Rival Content: Find out what long-tail keywords rivals are employing.
• Use Tools: Long-tail keyword suggestions can be found using services like SEMrush and AnswerThePublic.

A broad term for a fitness website may be “workouts.” Best home workouts for beginners might be a long-tail keyword.

5. Analyzing Keyword Competition

Complementing your understanding of the difficulty of ranking for a certain keyword is an analysis of keyword competition.

Components of Keyword Competition Analysis

• Use SEO Tools: The keyword difficulty score can be displayed by Ahrefs or Moz.
• Analyse Features of SERP Examine the content of the top-ranking pages right now.
• View Domain Authority: Competing with websites with higher domain authority is more difficult.
• Analyze Reference Links Check out the number of backlinks the pages with the highest rankings have.

For instance, Ahrefs and other tools can display a keyword difficulty score of 50 (on a 0 to 100) for the term “digital marketing tips.” This suggests fairly competitiveness.

6. Grouping Keywords

Putting keywords into clusters will enable you to produce better and more logical material.

Methods of Keyword Grouping

• Decide on Primary Topics Choose the major subjects you wish to address.
• Cluster Keywords: Sort terms and search queries by comparable intent.
• Scoop Up Content: Build material around these clusters to raise your SEO.

Main subjects for a travel blog, for instance, might be “packing lists,” “destination guides,” and “travel advice.” Related terms for “destination guides” might be “top travel destinations 2024” and “best places to visit in Europe.”

7. Creating Content Around Keywords

Writing around your keywords is writing with them organically.

Conventional Wisdom

• In titles, use keywords: Put your main term right in the title.
• Naturally Include Keywords Stuff keywords; use them naturally.
• Utilise Related Term Synonyms: It also makes reading easier and helps prevent repetition.
• Optimise Meta Descriptions Give your meta descriptions keywords.

With the phrase “healthy breakfast ideas,” a blog article title can be “10 Healthy Breakfast Ideas to Start Your Day Right.” Make sure the term naturally appears throughout the material, including in the introduction and subheadings.

8. Monitoring and Adjusting Your Strategy

It takes work to do SEO once. Keep ahead by constant observation and modification.

Procedures for Keeping an Eye on Things

• Track Keyword Positions: Track your rankings with SEMrush or Google Analytics.
• Examining Traffic Statistics Check the most popular keywords.
• Edit Information Analyze performance statistics to update your content.
• Keep Up to Date with SEO Trends Keep up with the newest developments in SEO practices.

Make the material more thorough and promote it to raise the ranking if a term like “best SEO tools” is generating traffic yet is on the second page.

9. Using Keywords in Content Marketing

Maximizing your SEO activities requires careful keyword integration into your content marketing plan. This is how to go about it.

Types of Content

• Blog Posts: A broad spectrum of keywords and subjects can be targeted by regularly updated blogs.
• Infographics: Visual material able to draw in social shares and backlinks.
• Videos are interesting, very shareable material that can target keywords in titles and descriptions.
• Ebooks and Guides: Comprehensive material designed to establish authority and target long-tail keywords.

How to Integrate Keywords

• Titles and Headers: Make sure titles and H1, H2 tags contain your main keywords.
• Background and Summary: Make early keyword mentions and then summarise them at the conclusion.
• Everywhere in the Content Obviously, without overloading the body language, use keywords. Meta Tags: Use pertinent keywords to optimize meta titles and descriptions.
• For photos, include keywords in the alt text.

Keywords in the title, description, and tags might help a video series titled “Top Digital Marketing Strategies for 2024” be optimized for a blog about “digital marketing strategies.”

10. Keyword Research and Voice Search

Growing in popularity, voice search calls for a little different strategy for keyword research.

Voice Search and Keyword Research

• Conversational Tone: People usually use lengthier sentences and natural language.
• Many voice searches take the form of questions.
• Local searches are frequently made for urgent needs and local information.

Making Voice Search Optimal

• Give Long-Tail Keywords Your Attention: Use words that people actually say.
• Respond to Questions Make stuff that responds to often asked queries about your area of expertise.
• Make Use of Structured Data Apply schema markup to make your content more comprehensible to search engines.

For a home services company, focusing on queries like “best plumber near me” or “how to fix a leaky faucet” can draw in voice search traffic.

11. Measuring the Success of Your Keyword Strategy

You must routinely track and evaluate the success of your keyword approach to be sure it works.

Key Metrics to Monitor

• Important Indices for Tracking Organic Traffic Count how many people arrived via organic search.
• Monitor your position for target keywords by checking keyword rankings.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): Calculate the proportion of people that click on your website from search results.
• Track the number of visitors that become leads or customers using the conversion rate tool.
• Examine the proportion of visitors that go after seeing one page, or bounce rate.

Measurement Tools

• Google Analytics offers in-depth information on user behavior and traffic.
• Monitors site health and keyword performance is Google Search Console.
• SEO tools for in-depth keyword monitoring and analysis include Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMrush.

If organic traffic for your keyword “best vegan recipes” is growing but the bounce rate is high, think about updating the material to better satisfy users.

12 Typical Errors to Steer Clear of in Keyword Research

It will save you time and increase your SEO results to stay away from typical keyword research mistakes.

Common Mistakes

• Ignoring Search Intent: concentrating just on terms without taking user intent into account.
• Stuffing keywords is a bad user experience and can result in fines.
• Not Updating Keywords: Ignoring to update and refresh keywords in response to fresh information and trends.
• Ignoring Long-Tail Keywords: Ignoring highly conversion, easier-to-rank keywords.
• Not researching the keywords and tactics of competitors.

How To Stay Away From Them

• Recognise the Goal of the User Check and match keywords to what people are searching for.
• Retain Keyword Density Naturally and contextually use keywords.
• Updates Frequently Your keyword list should be constantly improved according to performance.
• Emphasis on the Long Tail Include in your plan long-tail keywords.
• Analysis of the Competitors Check competing keywords often and modify your approach.

If a rival is doing well for “easy gluten-free recipes,” look at their material and modify your approach to include related or comparable terms.

A constant process, effective keyword research includes knowing your audience, using the appropriate tools, and continuously improving your content. The procedures in this article will help you raise search engine ranks, draw in targeted traffic, and increase the visibility of your website. Recall to keep up of SEO developments and modify your tactics as needed to keep a competitive advantage.

Please contact me with any queries or if you require additional assistance with keyword research. Enjoy your optimization!

CEO Plerdy — expert in SEO&CRO with over 14 years of experience.

• Post date May 30, 2024
• No Comments on How To Do Keyword Research for SEO That Increases Website Traffic

Leave a reply for "How To Do Keyword Research for SEO That Increases Website Traffic"

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Plerdy is an All-in-one website analysis tool

Boost conversions and buff your SEO by keeping tabs on user behavior.

Get a free 14-day trial

Research Process :: Step by Step

• Introduction
• Select Topic
• Identify Keywords
• Background Information
• Develop Research Questions
• Refine Topic
• Search Strategy
• Popular Databases
• Evaluate Sources
• Types of Periodicals
• Reading Scholarly Articles
• Primary & Secondary Sources
• Organize / Take Notes
• Writing & Grammar Resources
• Annotated Bibliography
• Literature Review
• Citation Styles
• Paraphrasing
• Privacy / Confidentiality
• Research Process
• Selecting Your Topic

Identifying Keywords

• Gathering Background Info
• Evaluating Sources

Mind Mapping

Created by Joshua Vossler

Make a list of keywords relevant to your topic.  Be sure to list similar, broader, narrower, and related terms . Keep the list by your side when you start your research and continue to add to it as you come across useful terms.

Before searching for information, you need to identify keywords related to your topic. The keywords you use have an impact on the results of your research. 

If the keywords you choose do not give you the results you need, try the others on your list or use the  search strategies  listed under Step 2.

Keywords and phrases can easily be found by scanning . . .

• your initial research questions
• encyclopedia and other articles used when conducting background research
• bibliographies found at the end of books and articles

If you are still struggling, try these suggestions:

• Use a thesaurus to identify synonyms
• Find pictures related to your topic, then describe the picture
• Brainstorm keywords with a librarian, your instructor, or a friend

Combining Keywords

When researching, we are like detectives trying to combine the right terms in the right place to find the information we need. This information will help you combine search terms to find relevant sources.

Broad Search

Search for information using the single most important term related to your topic. Use this type of search when looking for basic background information.

Specific Search

Search for information by combining key concepts using the words you have brainstormed. Each concept/word should be separated by the word "AND" . Use this kind of search when looking for specific evidence related to your claim or thesis.

Getting Too Many Irrelevant Results?

Add more search terms.

Getting Too Few Relevant Results?

Change or remove some search terms.

Using a Concept Map

A concept map is a graphical tool used to organize and structure knowledge. 

https://bubbl.us/

http://popplet.com/

• Concept Map Worksheet
• Concept Map Example
• << Previous: Select Topic
• Next: Background Information >>
• Last Updated: Jun 6, 2024 12:57 PM
• URL: https://libguides.uta.edu/researchprocess

University of Texas Arlington Libraries 702 Planetarium Place · Arlington, TX 76019 · 817-272-3000

• Internet Privacy
• Accessibility
• Problems with a guide? Contact Us.

• Starting a Business
• Growing a Business
• Small Business Guide
• Business News
• Science & Technology
• Money & Finance
• For Subscribers
• Write for Entrepreneur
• Entrepreneur Store
• United States
• Asia Pacific
• Middle East
• South Africa

Copyright © 2024 Entrepreneur Media, LLC All rights reserved. Entrepreneur® and its related marks are registered trademarks of Entrepreneur Media LLC

6 SEO Tips to Help You Rank in the New Era of Quality Content What is the best SEO strategy after Google's March 2024 core update? Here's what you need to know.

By Nick Zviadadze Edited by Chelsea Brown Jun 4, 2024

Key Takeaways

• As a result of Google's recent core update, many small business owners are dealing with drops in their search rankings and traffic.
• This article provides six practical SEO tips to help businesses recover and thrive in the changing digital landscape.
• By focusing on these tactics, you can improve your search rankings, attract more traffic and maintain a strong online presence in 2024.

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Many small business owners are feeling the impact of Google's March 2024 core update . Your rankings may have taken a hit, your traffic is down, and you're left wondering how to recover. The frustration of seeing your hard-earned rankings slip away can be overwhelming, especially when you're not sure what the next step should be.

According to Google, the key to regaining your footing is all about creating higher-quality content . But what does that mean in practice?

In this article, I share six practical SEO tips to help you navigate the changes and ensure your business continues to thrive in 2024.

Related: The Rules of SEO Are Changing — Here Are 5 Powerful Strategies to Help You Rank in 2024

1. Create value-packed, long-form content

Everybody knows that if you want to rank well, you need to create valuable, long-form content. However, after Google's March update, quality is more important than ever, which means it's no longer enough to write a 2,000-word generic article and call it a day.

Instead, you should:

Use data, statistics and case studies to support your points and provide evidence for your claims

Use a conversational tone that keeps readers engaged

Break up the text with headings, subheadings, bullet points and images to make it more digestible and visually pleasing

Anticipate and answer common questions your readers might have

Address all aspects of the topic thoroughly to create the most complete resource on the subject

Regularly update your articles to reflect the latest trends, research and information in your niche

For example, if you're an ecommerce business owner writing about "best project management software for small businesses," go beyond a basic list. Include detailed reviews, comparisons, screenshots, user testimonials and tips on how to choose the right software based on specific business needs.

2. Do comprehensive keyword research

One of the common SEO mistakes I see people make is identifying only a few keywords to target each week and then moving on to a new set of keywords the following week.

Instead, you want to be more strategic with your approach. Start by finding 200-300 relevant keywords before you even begin creating content. This comprehensive list gives you a clear picture of your niche and helps you identify which keywords are easier to target.

You want to target the lower-difficulty keywords first and work your way up. This SEO strategy allows you to rank for easier keywords and drive traffic to your site more quickly.

As you consistently produce content, you establish your website as an authority in your niche, which makes it easier to rank for more competitive keywords down the line.

This SEO tip for small businesses helps you start ranking months earlier than you would with a week-by-week method.

3. Use keywords in the right places

While keyword density is no longer a ranking factor, placing keywords strategically throughout your content is still important for SEO. The trick is to use them naturally in the right places to signal to search engines that your content is relevant.

You should use your keywords in the:

Introduction to set the context for readers and search engines

URL to help search engines understand the topic

Title to improve your click-through rates and rankings

Body copy to support topical relevance

Headers to structure your content and signal importance to search engines

Meta description to improve click-through rates

Additionally, you want to include related keywords to give your content more context and depth. For example, if your primary keyword is "best project management software for small businesses," you should also include related keywords like "project tracking tools for small companies" and "small business task management software."

Related: Here's the SEO Combination You Need to Win Google's Algorithm

4. Interlink your pages and blogs

Internal linking is a powerful SEO tactic that helps search engines understand the structure and hierarchy of your website. It enhances navigation and user experience, distributes page authority and improves contextual understanding of your website.

Here's how to interlink your blogs and pages:

Type "site:yourdomain.com [keyword]" into Google to find all relevant pages on your website.

Use a descriptive anchor text. For example, "project tracking tools for small companies" instead of "click here."

Use links naturally within the content.

Focus on high-value pages and articles that you want to boost in search rankings.

5. Proactively build backlinks

Building backlinks is important for SEO because it signals to search engines that your content is trustworthy and valuable. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the better your chances are of ranking higher in search results.

While backlinks remain crucial for SEO, recent algorithm updates have shifted towards needing fewer but more qualitative backlinks.

You can acquire backlinks through these common link-building strategies :

Guest posting

Link insertions

Unlinked brand mentions

Creating link-worthy content

Building relationships with bloggers and website owners

Using social media

6. Add a FAQ section to your blogs

Adding an FAQ section to your articles is a great way to rank for long-tail keywords your target audience is interested in. You can use Google's "People Also Ask" feature or explore platforms like Reddit and Quora to find the questions people are asking related to your topic.

If your article doesn't already answer these questions, add an FAQ section at the end of your post. Include the long-tail keyword and offer a comprehensive answer.

For example, if you're writing a blog post about "best project management software for small businesses," you could add these questions to the FAQ section:

What are the benefits of project management software for small businesses?

How much does project management software cost for small businesses?

What features should small businesses look for in project management software?

Related: 3 SEO Techniques to Help You Rank High on Search Engines

Entrepreneur Leadership Network® Contributor

Founder at MintSEO

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

Editor's Pick Red Arrow

• This Former Tesla Employee Started a Side Hustle to Save Gen Z Time — Now It's Raised Over $40 Million From the CEOs of Salesforce, Uber and More
• Lock 20 Things Emotionally Intelligent People Don't Say
• Lock A CEO Who Runs a Fully Remote Company Has an Unusual Take on Employees Starting Side Hustles: 'We Have to Be Honest With Ourselves'
• How an Idea and a Facebook Post Led to a $49 Million Tiny Home Business
• Lock I Thought I Was Resilient , Until a Devastating Loss Showed Me Resilience Is Not Something You Just 'Have'
• Bill Gates Recommends These Books for Your Summer Reading List

Most Popular Red Arrow

Is one company to blame for soaring rental prices in the u.s..

The FBI recently raided a major corporate landlord while investigating a rent price-fixing scheme. Here's what we know.

This Former Starbucks Employee Started a Side Hustle That's Making More Than $70,000 a Month — and He's Not Done Yet

When Tom Saar moved to New York City, he spotted a lucrative business opportunity.

His Side Hustle Made $20,000 in 2 Weeks After Catching Beyoncé's Attention — Now This 26-Year-Old Is Aiming for $1 Million Revenue

Zac Coughlin, 26, had an early passion that followed him to college and beyond.

Expand Your Communications with This $20 French Class Subscription

Gain access to hundreds of video lessons and assignments with this deal.

Break Free From Client Burnout With These 6 Strategies

How much stress is too much stress? Here are some effective strategies for managing burnout when working with clients.

'Unpredictability in Various Forms' — How Franchisees Can Adapt and Protect Themselves From Election Year Uncertainty

Franchising can be both exciting and challenging, especially during times of unpredictability — like a U.S. presidential election year.

Successfully copied link

The state of AI in early 2024: Gen AI adoption spikes and starts to generate value

If 2023 was the year the world discovered generative AI (gen AI) , 2024 is the year organizations truly began using—and deriving business value from—this new technology. In the latest McKinsey Global Survey  on AI, 65 percent of respondents report that their organizations are regularly using gen AI, nearly double the percentage from our previous survey just ten months ago. Respondents’ expectations for gen AI’s impact remain as high as they were last year , with three-quarters predicting that gen AI will lead to significant or disruptive change in their industries in the years ahead.

About the authors

This article is a collaborative effort by Alex Singla , Alexander Sukharevsky , Lareina Yee , and Michael Chui , with Bryce Hall , representing views from QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and McKinsey Digital.

Organizations are already seeing material benefits from gen AI use, reporting both cost decreases and revenue jumps in the business units deploying the technology. The survey also provides insights into the kinds of risks presented by gen AI—most notably, inaccuracy—as well as the emerging practices of top performers to mitigate those challenges and capture value.

AI adoption surges

Interest in generative AI has also brightened the spotlight on a broader set of AI capabilities. For the past six years, AI adoption by respondents’ organizations has hovered at about 50 percent. This year, the survey finds that adoption has jumped to 72 percent (Exhibit 1). And the interest is truly global in scope. Our 2023 survey found that AI adoption did not reach 66 percent in any region; however, this year more than two-thirds of respondents in nearly every region say their organizations are using AI. 1 Organizations based in Central and South America are the exception, with 58 percent of respondents working for organizations based in Central and South America reporting AI adoption. Looking by industry, the biggest increase in adoption can be found in professional services. 2 Includes respondents working for organizations focused on human resources, legal services, management consulting, market research, R&D, tax preparation, and training.

Also, responses suggest that companies are now using AI in more parts of the business. Half of respondents say their organizations have adopted AI in two or more business functions, up from less than a third of respondents in 2023 (Exhibit 2).

Gen AI adoption is most common in the functions where it can create the most value

Most respondents now report that their organizations—and they as individuals—are using gen AI. Sixty-five percent of respondents say their organizations are regularly using gen AI in at least one business function, up from one-third last year. The average organization using gen AI is doing so in two functions, most often in marketing and sales and in product and service development—two functions in which previous research  determined that gen AI adoption could generate the most value 3 “ The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier ,” McKinsey, June 14, 2023. —as well as in IT (Exhibit 3). The biggest increase from 2023 is found in marketing and sales, where reported adoption has more than doubled. Yet across functions, only two use cases, both within marketing and sales, are reported by 15 percent or more of respondents.

Gen AI also is weaving its way into respondents’ personal lives. Compared with 2023, respondents are much more likely to be using gen AI at work and even more likely to be using gen AI both at work and in their personal lives (Exhibit 4). The survey finds upticks in gen AI use across all regions, with the largest increases in Asia–Pacific and Greater China. Respondents at the highest seniority levels, meanwhile, show larger jumps in the use of gen Al tools for work and outside of work compared with their midlevel-management peers. Looking at specific industries, respondents working in energy and materials and in professional services report the largest increase in gen AI use.

Investments in gen AI and analytical AI are beginning to create value

The latest survey also shows how different industries are budgeting for gen AI. Responses suggest that, in many industries, organizations are about equally as likely to be investing more than 5 percent of their digital budgets in gen AI as they are in nongenerative, analytical-AI solutions (Exhibit 5). Yet in most industries, larger shares of respondents report that their organizations spend more than 20 percent on analytical AI than on gen AI. Looking ahead, most respondents—67 percent—expect their organizations to invest more in AI over the next three years.

Where are those investments paying off? For the first time, our latest survey explored the value created by gen AI use by business function. The function in which the largest share of respondents report seeing cost decreases is human resources. Respondents most commonly report meaningful revenue increases (of more than 5 percent) in supply chain and inventory management (Exhibit 6). For analytical AI, respondents most often report seeing cost benefits in service operations—in line with what we found last year —as well as meaningful revenue increases from AI use in marketing and sales.

Inaccuracy: The most recognized and experienced risk of gen AI use

As businesses begin to see the benefits of gen AI, they’re also recognizing the diverse risks associated with the technology. These can range from data management risks such as data privacy, bias, or intellectual property (IP) infringement to model management risks, which tend to focus on inaccurate output or lack of explainability. A third big risk category is security and incorrect use.

Respondents to the latest survey are more likely than they were last year to say their organizations consider inaccuracy and IP infringement to be relevant to their use of gen AI, and about half continue to view cybersecurity as a risk (Exhibit 7).

Conversely, respondents are less likely than they were last year to say their organizations consider workforce and labor displacement to be relevant risks and are not increasing efforts to mitigate them.

In fact, inaccuracy— which can affect use cases across the gen AI value chain , ranging from customer journeys and summarization to coding and creative content—is the only risk that respondents are significantly more likely than last year to say their organizations are actively working to mitigate.

Some organizations have already experienced negative consequences from the use of gen AI, with 44 percent of respondents saying their organizations have experienced at least one consequence (Exhibit 8). Respondents most often report inaccuracy as a risk that has affected their organizations, followed by cybersecurity and explainability.

Our previous research has found that there are several elements of governance that can help in scaling gen AI use responsibly, yet few respondents report having these risk-related practices in place. 4 “ Implementing generative AI with speed and safety ,” McKinsey Quarterly , March 13, 2024. For example, just 18 percent say their organizations have an enterprise-wide council or board with the authority to make decisions involving responsible AI governance, and only one-third say gen AI risk awareness and risk mitigation controls are required skill sets for technical talent.

Bringing gen AI capabilities to bear

The latest survey also sought to understand how, and how quickly, organizations are deploying these new gen AI tools. We have found three archetypes for implementing gen AI solutions : takers use off-the-shelf, publicly available solutions; shapers customize those tools with proprietary data and systems; and makers develop their own foundation models from scratch. 5 “ Technology’s generational moment with generative AI: A CIO and CTO guide ,” McKinsey, July 11, 2023. Across most industries, the survey results suggest that organizations are finding off-the-shelf offerings applicable to their business needs—though many are pursuing opportunities to customize models or even develop their own (Exhibit 9). About half of reported gen AI uses within respondents’ business functions are utilizing off-the-shelf, publicly available models or tools, with little or no customization. Respondents in energy and materials, technology, and media and telecommunications are more likely to report significant customization or tuning of publicly available models or developing their own proprietary models to address specific business needs.

Respondents most often report that their organizations required one to four months from the start of a project to put gen AI into production, though the time it takes varies by business function (Exhibit 10). It also depends upon the approach for acquiring those capabilities. Not surprisingly, reported uses of highly customized or proprietary models are 1.5 times more likely than off-the-shelf, publicly available models to take five months or more to implement.

Gen AI high performers are excelling despite facing challenges

Gen AI is a new technology, and organizations are still early in the journey of pursuing its opportunities and scaling it across functions. So it’s little surprise that only a small subset of respondents (46 out of 876) report that a meaningful share of their organizations’ EBIT can be attributed to their deployment of gen AI. Still, these gen AI leaders are worth examining closely. These, after all, are the early movers, who already attribute more than 10 percent of their organizations’ EBIT to their use of gen AI. Forty-two percent of these high performers say more than 20 percent of their EBIT is attributable to their use of nongenerative, analytical AI, and they span industries and regions—though most are at organizations with less than $1 billion in annual revenue. The AI-related practices at these organizations can offer guidance to those looking to create value from gen AI adoption at their own organizations.

To start, gen AI high performers are using gen AI in more business functions—an average of three functions, while others average two. They, like other organizations, are most likely to use gen AI in marketing and sales and product or service development, but they’re much more likely than others to use gen AI solutions in risk, legal, and compliance; in strategy and corporate finance; and in supply chain and inventory management. They’re more than three times as likely as others to be using gen AI in activities ranging from processing of accounting documents and risk assessment to R&D testing and pricing and promotions. While, overall, about half of reported gen AI applications within business functions are utilizing publicly available models or tools, gen AI high performers are less likely to use those off-the-shelf options than to either implement significantly customized versions of those tools or to develop their own proprietary foundation models.

What else are these high performers doing differently? For one thing, they are paying more attention to gen-AI-related risks. Perhaps because they are further along on their journeys, they are more likely than others to say their organizations have experienced every negative consequence from gen AI we asked about, from cybersecurity and personal privacy to explainability and IP infringement. Given that, they are more likely than others to report that their organizations consider those risks, as well as regulatory compliance, environmental impacts, and political stability, to be relevant to their gen AI use, and they say they take steps to mitigate more risks than others do.

Gen AI high performers are also much more likely to say their organizations follow a set of risk-related best practices (Exhibit 11). For example, they are nearly twice as likely as others to involve the legal function and embed risk reviews early on in the development of gen AI solutions—that is, to “ shift left .” They’re also much more likely than others to employ a wide range of other best practices, from strategy-related practices to those related to scaling.

In addition to experiencing the risks of gen AI adoption, high performers have encountered other challenges that can serve as warnings to others (Exhibit 12). Seventy percent say they have experienced difficulties with data, including defining processes for data governance, developing the ability to quickly integrate data into AI models, and an insufficient amount of training data, highlighting the essential role that data play in capturing value. High performers are also more likely than others to report experiencing challenges with their operating models, such as implementing agile ways of working and effective sprint performance management.

About the research

The online survey was in the field from February 22 to March 5, 2024, and garnered responses from 1,363 participants representing the full range of regions, industries, company sizes, functional specialties, and tenures. Of those respondents, 981 said their organizations had adopted AI in at least one business function, and 878 said their organizations were regularly using gen AI in at least one function. To adjust for differences in response rates, the data are weighted by the contribution of each respondent’s nation to global GDP.

Alex Singla and Alexander Sukharevsky  are global coleaders of QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and senior partners in McKinsey’s Chicago and London offices, respectively; Lareina Yee  is a senior partner in the Bay Area office, where Michael Chui , a McKinsey Global Institute partner, is a partner; and Bryce Hall  is an associate partner in the Washington, DC, office.

They wish to thank Kaitlin Noe, Larry Kanter, Mallika Jhamb, and Shinjini Srivastava for their contributions to this work.

This article was edited by Heather Hanselman, a senior editor in McKinsey’s Atlanta office.

Explore a career with us

Related articles.

Moving past gen AI’s honeymoon phase: Seven hard truths for CIOs to get from pilot to scale

A generative AI reset: Rewiring to turn potential into value in 2024

Implementing generative AI with speed and safety

University of Washington Information School

Msim students create dashboard to visualize health data.

As the largest state in New England and the most sparsely populated state on the East Coast, Maine has a population that is unique, hardy, and accustomed to the long winters and so-called “Northern Attitude” for which the region is known. Mainers also face many of the same health issues as the rest of the U.S. – some of which are pervasive and even lethal. 

To explore health discrepancies in Maine, a group of four  Master of Science in Information Management students at the University of Washington Information School set a goal for their 2023-2024 academic year: a  Capstone project that, when completed, would showcase an interactive visualization of Maine’s health data to better understand the gaps.

Online MSIM students Michael Ly, Vincent Kao, Nikhil Navkal and Divya Rajasekhar worked closely with project sponsor Sudhakar Kaushik of Jeeva Health to accomplish their shared goals.

Jeff Barland instructed the students as they worked on their Capstone project over three academic quarters. The online students navigated a change in project scope as well as life changes, including welcoming new members of their families. They collaborated with their team members and project sponsor in different time zones.

“The way that they worked as a team to meet these challenges, and these changes, was impressive,” Barland said. 

“They all put in significant effort. They really managed well together. They functioned as a cohort. And what they delivered was very professional. I was really impressed with their final product,” he said.

The MSIM students studied Maine’s health data to better understand how the state’s resources might be used to address health issues such as substance use disorder and mental health crises, and to learn how these findings could begin to be applied to the rest of the country.

“The primary data sources were from government organizations,” said Kao, a second-year MSIM student. “Official reports, United States-wide statistics that are shared commonly across most of the organizations. The secondary sources were definitely a little bit of a challenge for the team, where we started to drill down into some county-specific data.” 

Acknowledging that privacy is an important aspect of health data, Kao said, the team was still able to find data they could use to highlight local disparities and key issues. 

“We drilled into some of the specific issues, for example, the opioid crisis. We were able to find specific data sources that address that community problem,” Kao said.

“We also looked at changes in the number of mental health providers in Maine,” said Ly. The team had to organize data from different types of reports with different formats and metrics, and make the data directly comparable. 

The Power BI visualization tool the graduate student team created allows for the ability to filter by county, to see the data mapped onto the state to note geographic patterns, and to compare for each metric between state and national data for the same time period. The dashboard’s three sections allow users to compare other socioeconomic factors as well.

The data from Maine was also useful for honing in on urban-rural comparisons, said Navkal, who was a professional opera singer before launching his technical career.

The team learned more about the practices and privacy rules particular to health data as part of the project.

Rajasekhar, a second-year student, said she was surprised by some of the findings, such as the fact that in 2021 Maine had a higher rate of hospitalizations due to substance use (per 100,000 people) than in the United States on average. The statistic is in contrast, she said, to the maple trees and relative safety people might picture when they think of Maine.

“It was interesting to dive deep into a place that I hadn’t been familiar with, and realize that every place has its own trends, its own statistics that need to be investigated, so that we can reach for resolution,” Rajasekhar said. The team hopes the dashboard will be a launchpad for research into other regions’ health data and that it will make a positive impact.

“It’s nice that we were able to work with a company like Jeeva Health that actually wants to make a difference in communities like this going forward,” she said. 

Full Results

Customize your experience.

Suggestions or feedback?

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Machine learning
• Social justice
• Black holes
• Classes and programs

Departments

• Aeronautics and Astronautics
• Brain and Cognitive Sciences
• Architecture
• Political Science
• Mechanical Engineering

Centers, Labs, & Programs

• Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)
• Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
• Lincoln Laboratory
• School of Architecture + Planning
• School of Engineering
• School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
• Sloan School of Management
• School of Science
• MIT Schwarzman College of Computing

Physicists create five-lane superhighway for electrons

Press contact :.

Previous image Next image

MIT physicists and colleagues have created a five-lane superhighway for electrons that could allow ultra-efficient electronics and more. 

The work, reported in the May 10 issue of Science , is one of several important discoveries by the same team over the past year involving a material that is a unique form of graphene .

“This discovery has direct implications for low-power electronic devices because no energy is lost during the propagation of electrons, which is not the case in regular materials where the electrons are scattered,” says Long Ju, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and corresponding author of the Science paper.

The phenomenon is akin to cars traveling down an open turnpike as opposed to those moving through neighborhoods. The neighborhood cars can be stopped or slowed by other drivers making abrupt stops or U-turns that disrupt an otherwise smooth commute.

A new material

The material behind this work, known as rhombohedral pentalayer graphene, was discovered two years ago by physicists led by Ju. “We found a goldmine, and every scoop is revealing something new,” says Ju, who is also affiliated with MIT’s Materials Research Laboratory.

In a Nature Nanotechnology paper last October, Ju and colleagues reported the discovery of three important properties arising from rhombohedral graphene. For example, they showed that it could be topological, or allow the unimpeded movement of electrons around the edge of the material but not through the middle. That resulted in a superhighway, but required the application of a large magnetic field some tens of thousands times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field.

In the current work, the team reports creating the superhighway without any magnetic field.

Tonghang Han, an MIT graduate student in physics, is a co-first author of the paper. “We are not the first to discover this general phenomenon, but we did so in a very different system. And compared to previous systems, ours is simpler and also supports more electron channels.” Explains Ju, “other materials can only support one lane of traffic on the edge of the material. We suddenly bumped it up to five.”

Additional co-first authors of the paper who contributed equally to the work are Zhengguang Lu and Yuxuan Yao. Lu is a postdoc in the Materials Research Laboratory. Yao conducted the work as a visiting undergraduate student from Tsinghua University. Other authors are MIT professor of physics Liang Fu; Jixiang Yang and Junseok Seo, both MIT graduate students in physics; Chiho Yoon and Fan Zhang of the University of Texas at Dallas; and Kenji Watanabe and Takashi Taniguchi of the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan.

How it works

Graphite, the primary component of pencil lead, is composed of many layers of graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in hexagons resembling a honeycomb structure. Rhombohedral graphene is composed of five layers of graphene stacked in a specific overlapping order.

Ju and colleagues isolated rhombohedral graphene thanks to a novel microscope Ju built at MIT in 2021 that can quickly and relatively inexpensively determine a variety of important characteristics of a material at the nanoscale. Pentalayer rhombohedral stacked graphene is only a few billionths of a meter thick.

In the current work, the team tinkered with the original system, adding a layer of tungsten disulfide (WS 2 ). “The interaction between the WS 2  and the pentalayer rhombohedral graphene resulted in this five-lane superhighway that operates at zero magnetic field,” says Ju.

Comparison to superconductivity

The phenomenon that the Ju group discovered in rhombohedral graphene that allows electrons to travel with no resistance at zero magnetic field is known as the quantum anomalous Hall effect. Most people are more familiar with superconductivity, a completely different phenomenon that does the same thing but happens in very different materials.

Ju notes that although superconductors were discovered in the 1910s, it took some 100 years of research to coax the system to work at the higher temperatures necessary for applications. “And the world record is still well below room temperature,” he notes.

Similarly, the rhombohedral graphene superhighway currently operates at about 2 kelvins, or -456 degrees Fahrenheit. “It will take a lot of effort to elevate the temperature, but as physicists, our job is to provide the insight; a different way for realizing this [phenomenon],” Ju says.

Very exciting

The discoveries involving rhombohedral graphene came as a result of painstaking research that wasn’t guaranteed to work. “We tried many recipes over many months,” says Han, “so it was very exciting when we cooled the system to a very low temperature and [a five-lane superhighway operating at zero magnetic field] just popped out.”

Says Ju, “it’s very exciting to be the first to discover a phenomenon in a new system, especially in a material that we uncovered.”

This work was supported by a Sloan Fellowship; the U.S. National Science Foundation; the U.S. Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering; the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI; and the World Premier International Research Initiative of Japan.

Share this news article on:

Press mentions, quanta magazine.

For the first time ever, researchers at MIT have observed electrons form “fractional quasiparticles without enabling the influence of a magnetic field,” reports Daniel Garisto for Quanta Magazine.  This discovery “may carry the seeds of long-sought quasiparticles with stable memories that could underpin a new and powerful approach to quantum computing.” 

Previous item Next item

Related Links

• Condensed Matter Experiment (CMX)
• Materials Research Laboratory
• Department of Physics

Related Topics

• Nanoscience and nanotechnology
• Carbon materials
• Electronics
• Superconductivity
• Materials science and engineering
• National Science Foundation (NSF)

Related Articles

MIT physicists turn pencil lead into “gold”

Physicists find direct evidence of strong electron correlation in a 2D material for the first time

Custom-made MIT tool probes materials at the nanoscale

More mit news.

A data-driven approach to making better choices

Read full story →

Paying it forward

John Fucillo: Laying foundations for MIT’s Department of Biology

Researchers demonstrate the first chip-based 3D printer

The unexpected origins of a modern finance tool

Exotic black holes could be a byproduct of dark matter

• More news on MIT News homepage →

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA

• Map (opens in new window)
• Events (opens in new window)
• People (opens in new window)
• Careers (opens in new window)
• Accessibility
• Social Media Hub
• MIT on Facebook
• MIT on YouTube
• MIT on Instagram

• Research and Innovation
• The Abstract
• Audio Abstract Podcast
• Centennial Campus
• Campus Life
• Faculty and Staff
• Awards and Honors
• HR and Finance
• Resilient Pack
• We Are the Wolfpack
• Service and Community
• Red Chair Chats
• News Releases
• In the News
• NC State Experts on 2022 Elections
• NC State Experts Available on Climate
• NC State Experts on Roe v. Wade
• NC State Supply Chain Experts
• Experts on COVID-19
• Hurricane Experts
• About NC State News
• Faculty Support
• Training Program

How to Build a Team of ‘Appropriately Skeptical’ Financial Statement Auditors

For Immediate Release

A new study identifies the characteristics that make auditing professionals more likely to reward skepticism in the people they supervise, which is associated with an increased likelihood of identifying potential fraud during the auditing process. One key takeaway is that encouraging appropriate skepticism in auditors is closely tied to the culture of the workplace, offering valuable insights to firms that want to encourage rigorous audits.

“Auditors need to be skeptical of the financial statements being provided by their clients, because skepticism is essential for detecting fraud and protecting the investing public,” says Joe Brazel, corresponding author of a paper on the study and the Jenkins Distinguished Professor of Accounting in North Carolina State University’s Poole College of Management.

“However, recent research suggests audit supervisors often punish staff for exercising skepticism that does not identify a misstatement – or fraud,” Brazel says. “This presents auditors with an ethical conflict between acting in their own self-interest and acting in a way that improves audit quality and protects the public. That research also indicates that supervisors who reward appropriate skeptical behavior, regardless of whether the behavior identifies a misstatement in the financials, appear to develop staff that are more likely to detect and convey fraud red flags to their superiors.

“The question we wanted to address with this work was: who are the supervisors who reward appropriate skeptical behavior, regardless of the outcome? What distinguishes them from supervisors who don’t reward skeptical behavior?”

For the study, researchers recruited 127 practicing auditors with 3-10 years of experience and who are tasked with evaluating the performance of junior auditors.

Study participants were asked to review a hypothetical case in which a junior auditor accurately identified a fraud red flag in the client’s financial statements, but in which the pursuant investigation found there was a reasonable explanation for the red flag – there was no fraud. The study participants were then asked to give a performance evaluation of the junior auditor who reported and appropriately investigated the red flag.

Following completion of the performance evaluation, study participants completed a detailed survey designed to capture their personality traits, training, work history and personal experiences in relation to exhibiting skepticism while conducting audits.

“We looked at 19 potential variables we thought may be related to a supervisor’s willingness to reward skepticism,” Brazel says. “We found three that are strongly associated with rewarding appropriate skeptical behavior.”

The first variable was the ability to suspend judgment.

“This is one component of the trait of skepticism,” Brazel says. “It’s associated with people who are willing to follow the evidence to see where it goes, rather than jumping to conclusions. In this context, it tells us these people are supervisors who understand that not every red flag is associated with fraud. You are likely going to have multiple false positives – red flag investigations that have innocent explanations – for every investigation that identifies fraud.”

The other two variables were both related to workplace culture.

“We observed that auditors who had been rewarded for exhibiting skepticism were more willing to pay it forward, and reward skepticism among junior auditors on their staff,” Brazel says. “We also found that auditors who had experienced a culture of consultation, meaning they had worked in an environment that encouraged questions and engagement between junior and senior auditors, were also more likely to reward appropriate skeptical behavior.

“Our findings underscore the importance of workplace culture and identify characteristics that audit firms may want to cultivate in their staff and take into consideration when recruiting,” Brazel says.

The paper, “ Who Rewards Appropriate Levels of Professional Skepticism? ,” is published in the Journal of Business Ethics . The paper was co-authored by Justin Leiby of the University of Illinois and Tammie Schaefer of the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

The work was done with support from the Institute for Fraud Prevention.

Note to Editors: The study abstract follows.

“Who Rewards Appropriate Levels of Professional Skepticism?”

Authors : Joseph F. Brazel, North Carolina State University; Justin Leiby, University of Illinois; and Tammie J. Schaefer, University of Missouri – Kansas City

Published : May 30, Journal of Business Ethics

DOI : 10.1007/s10551-024-05732-w

Abstract: The audit profession’s technical and ethical standards require the application of professional skepticism throughout the financial statement audit process, as auditor skepticism is essential for detecting financial statement fraud and protecting the investing public. However, recent research suggests that audit supervisors often punish staff for exercising skepticism, presenting auditors with an ethical conflict between acting in their own self-interest and acting in a way that improves audit quality and protects the public. This research also suggests that supervisors who reward appropriate skeptical behavior, regardless of the outcome, appear to develop staff that are more likely to detect and convey fraud red flags to their superiors. Building on this research, we use a case-based survey to identify the characteristics of audit supervisors (audit seniors and managers) who are more likely to reward appropriate skepticism, even if it ultimately does not identify a misstatement. We find that trait skepticism, especially suspending one’s judgment, positively drives the evaluations of professional skepticism in our setting. Also, we observe that when supervisors believe that their own audit partner will view the skepticism favorably, they “pay it forward” by rewarding their own staff who engage in skepticism. Our findings identify the characteristics that audit firms may want to develop and foster in auditors rising to supervisory levels.

• Creating Safe, Secure and Intelligent Systems
• Harnessing Data for Decision-Making
• poole college of management
• research news

More From NC State News

Climate Change Will Make Air Pollution Worse. Here’s How. 

Bezos Earth Fund Grant Creates Sustainable Protein Research Hub at NC State 

Researchers Create Materials With Unique Combo of Stiffness, Thermal Insulation