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Complexities and Dilemmas in the Sharing Economy : The Uber Case

2017, Dilemmas 2015 Papers from the 18th annual International Conference Dilemmas for Human Services: Organizing, Designing and Managing

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The sharing economy is here to stay, and the theory and evidence is fairly unambiguous: the existing price regulation regime governing the taxi marketplace in the City of Toronto is indefensible. This paper canvasses the existing empirical evidence, and examines the so-called ‘Taxi Cab’ problem through the lens of price theory, institutional economics, transaction cost theory, and behavioural law and economics. Integrating economic analysis with the normative juridical prescriptions of the common law, this paper produces a ‘Balancing of Factors’ model to guide policy-making and regulatory re-design. To balance the consumer interest and the imperatives of the public interest, this paper suggests that municipalities ought to be divested of economic rule-making and enforcement power in tandem with modifications to existing highway/traffic, insurance, and licensing legislation at the provincial level.

As the sharing economy has become more popular, its problems are discussed increasingly. However, these discussions are often confusing because there are multiple definitions for the sharing economy, and the discourse does not usually specify which definition it is based on. Therefore, the actors may be wrongfully accused of problems that do not concern them, only because they are perceived as belonging to the sharing economy. We aim to clarify this discussion by creating a framework that maps specific problem discourses to specific actors and stakeholder groups. We create a framework based on a review of the academic literature in which the sharing economy is delineated into smaller markets. The framework is further utilized to map empirically identified problems based on data collected from 180 web pages that discuss problems in the sharing economy. The findings indicate that the key problems in the sharing economy, such as labor rights, concern a very narrow segment of the sharin...

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It is an Uber case study. The task is a hypothetical situation where as a strategic management consultant who is hired by Uber to undertake

It is an Uber case study. The task is a hypothetical situation where as a strategic management consultant who is hired by Uber to undertake a detailed internal and external analysis for the company. In specific, your main work and task include: Undertake an external analysis of Uber. Following your analysis, identify the opportunities and threats facing Uber in their environment. Draw out the implications from analysis for Uber and advise Uber on a recommended course of action (based on analysis). ( Note: Uber in 2018 please read this case study and the answer this question. The first page of case are shown in attachment.)

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Case Study: Should We Deploy a Gen AI Salesbot?

by Jill Avery and Thomas Steenburgh

Summary .

“It’s so nice to feel excited about something again,” Jeannie Weiss said to John Bart, her chief technology officer. The pair were in an Uber on their way to the Austin airport after attending an AI conference together. Jeannie’s fingers tapped the sideboard of the car in time to the folk music on the radio. “I feel as if we’ve been on the defense for the past five years with Covid, the tight labor market, inflation. I’m ready to go on the offense again.”

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Uber And Ola Finally Win Antitrust Case In India - Supreme Court Upholds NCLAT Decision - No Hub And Spoke Cartel – (but Importantly Rejects NCLAT Decision On Lack Of Locus Standi)

Contributor.

Article by MM Sharma, Head Competition Law & Policy Practice, Vaish Associates, Advocates, New Delhi, India

The Supreme Court of India vide its judgement dated 15.12. 2020 has upheld the concurrent findings on merits of Competition Commission of India ("CCI/ Commission") dated 06.11.2018 and the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal ("NCLAT") order dated 29.05.2020, wherein allegation of use of algorithmic pricing to facilitate price fixing cartel made against taxi aggregators, Ola and Uber, was rejected.

However, what makes this judgment noteworthy is the Apex Court's rejecting the narrow interpretation on the right of any "person" to approach the Commission against an anti-competitive conduct being linked to the evidence of legal injury suffered by such person, as was held surprisingly by the NCLAT.

The serious allegation against both taxi aggregators, Ola and Ober, was made by Mr Samir Agrawal, a Delhi based independent legal practitioner (Informant) before the CCI that OLA and UBER entered into price-fixing agreements in contravention of Section 3(1) read with Section 3(3)(a) of the Act and also engaged in resale price maintenance in contravention of Section 3(1) read with Section 3(4)(e) of the Act. It was further alleged that due to algorithmic pricing, neither are riders able to negotiate fares with individual drivers for rides that are booked through the apps, nor are the drivers able to offer any discounts. Thus, the pricing algorithm takes away the freedom of riders and drivers to choose the best price based on competition, as both must accept the price set by the pricing algorithm. As per the informant, algorithmic pricing adopted by Ola & Uber takes away the liberty of individual drivers to compete and amounts to price fixing through a "hub and spoke" cartel like arrangement.

The Commission, however, dismissed the allegation and closed the case under Section 26(2) of the Competition Act, 2002 ("the Act") without calling for any response from either Uber and Ola, holding that there was neither any instance of any agreement/understanding between the cab aggregators and their respective drivers nor between the drivers inter se qua price fixing. The Commission had also noticed that Ola and Uber being Cab Aggregators operating through their respective apps were not an association of drivers and they acted as separate entities from their respective drivers. A rider books his ride at any given time which is accepted by an anonymous driver available in the area and such driver has no opportunity to co-ordinate its action with other drivers thereby ruling out such activity being termed as a cartel activity. The Commission ruled out any hub and spoke cartel like arrangement between Ola/Uber and their respective drivers.

Aggrieved by the CCI decision, the Informant filed appeal against the decision before NCLAT in the first appeal but the NCLAT vide its order dated 29.5.2020 upheld not only the CCI order but also observed that the since there was nothing on record to show that the informant suffered a legal injury at the hands of Ola and Uber as a consumer or as a member of any consumer or trade association and therefore, the informant has no locus standi to maintain an action qua the alleged contravention of Act by Ola and/or Uber.

Arguments before Supreme Court

Before the Apex Court, the Informant, who appeared in person, reiterated the submissions made before the CCI and the NCLAT. In particular, he attacked the finding of the NCLAT on lack to locus standi due to absence of evidence of suffering any legal injury. The Informant, referring to Sections 19 and 35 of the Act, argued that the amendments made in the sections would show that any person can be an informant who can approach the CCI, as one does not have to be a "consumer" or a "complainant". Interestingly, whereas the Ld. Counsel for OLA vehemently supported the NCLAT decision on grounds of lack of locus standi by the Informant /Appellant and even pressed for imposition of heavy costs for indulging in , what he described as frivolous litigation , the Ld. Additional Solicitor General (ASG), representing the Commission before the Apex Court , supported the appellant/Informant on the issue of locus .

The Apex Court after going through the various provisions of the Act and Competition Commission of India (General) Regulations, 2009 held that " it is difficult to agree with the impugned judgment of the NCLAT in its narrow construction of section 19 of the Act, which therefore stands set aside ." The Supreme Court held, A reading of the provisions of the Act and the 2009 Regulations would show that " any person" may provide information to the CCI, which may then act upon it in accordance with the provisions of the Act. In this regard, the definition of " person " in section 2(l) of the Act, set out hereinabove, is an inclusive one and is extremely wide, including individuals of all kinds and every artificial juridical person. This may be contrasted with the definition of " consumer " in section 2(f) of the Act, which makes it clear that only persons who buy goods for consideration, or hire or avail of services for a consideration, are recognised as consumers. 1

The Apex Court further held that the substitution of the word "receipt of any information in such manner and" by the 2007 Amendment is significant. Substantiating it the Supreme Court held that Whereas, a complaint could be filed only from a person who was aggrieved by a particular action, information may be received from any person , obviously whether such person is or is not personally affected. This is for the reason that the proceedings under the Act are proceedings in rem which affect the public interest. That the CCI may inquire into any alleged contravention of the provisions of the Act on its own motion, is also laid down in section 19(1) of the Act. Further, even while exercising suo motu powers, the CCI may receive information from any person and not merely from a person who is aggrieved by the conduct that is alleged to have occurred. This also follows from a reading of section 35 of the Act, in which the earlier expression " complainant or defendant" has been substituted by the expression, " person or an enterprise," setting out that the informant may appear either in person, or through one or more agents, before the CCI to present the information that he has gathered.

Apex Court further stated that CCI and NCLAT deals with practice which have the adverse effect on the competition and protect the interest of the consumers and the Act vests powers in the CCI which enables it to act in rem , in public interest, therefore "person aggrieved" must, in the context of the Act, be understood widely and not be constructed narrowly. The Court further stated it is not without significance that the expressions used in sections 53B and 53T of the Act are " any person", thereby signifying that all persons who bring to the CCI information of practices that are contrary to the provisions of the Act, could be said to be aggrieved by an adverse order of the CCI in case it refuses to act upon the information supplied. By way of contrast, section 53N(3) speaks of making payment to an applicant as compensation for the loss or damage caused to the applicant as a result of any contravention of the provisions of Chapter II of the Act, having been committed by an enterprise. By this sub-section, clearly, therefore, " any person" who makes an application for compensation, under sub-section (1) of section 53N of the Act, would refer only to persons who have suffered loss or damage, thereby, qualifying the expression " any person" as being a person who has suffered loss or damage. 2

The Apex Court clinching observation "Obviously , when the CCI performs inquisitorial, as opposed to adjudicatory functions, the doors of approaching the CCI and the appellate authority, i.e., the NCLAT, must be kept wide open in public interest, so as to subserve the high public purpose of the Act" are truly remarkable and finally settle the issue of locus standi in antitrust cases.

However, on the merits of the case, Apex Court decided not to interfere with the concurrent finds of the CCI and NCLAT.

Comments: The judgement of the Apex Court is remarkable in so far as it clears the web around the issue of locus standi for filing information against market behaviors perceived to be anti-competitive by any person irrespective of having suffered any legal injury or otherwise is concerned. The judgment is in sync with the legislative intent behind the 2007 amendments in the Competition Act, 2002.

Key Words - #Uber #OLA #Antitrust #Competition

Note: This article first appeared on the Antitrust and Competition Law Blog on 17 December 2020.

.........................................................................

1 Para 13, https://main.sci.gov.in/supremecourt/2020/16963/16963_2020_33_1502_25089_Judgement_15-Dec-2020.pdf

2 Para 20, https://main.sci.gov.in/supremecourt/2020/16963/16963_2020_33_1502_25089_Judgement_15-Dec-2020.pdf

Specific Questions relating to this article should be addressed directly to the author.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist professional advice should be sought about your specific circumstances. The views expressed in this article are solely of the authors of this article.

Antitrust/Competition Law

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If a geology professor quits her job to become an Uber driver, she is experiencing... Upward social mobility Downward social mobility Horizontal social mobility

Gauth ai solution, super gauth ai.

This question involves understanding the concept of social mobility, which refers to the movement of individuals or groups within a social hierarchy. In this case, the professor is leaving a professional job for a position that is generally considered less prestigious and lower in status

Here are further explanations

Option A : This option would imply that the professor is moving to a higher status or more prestigious position, which is not the case here
Option B : This is the correct answer, as it reflects the transition from a higher to a lower social status
Option C : This option suggests a change in position without a change in social status, which does not apply in this scenario

Downward social mobility

Answer: Downward social mobility because the professor is moving from a higher-status occupation (geology professor) to a lower-status one (Uber driver)

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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:

Hub and Spoke Method of Content Marketing

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.

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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 :)