Finding suitable keywords for your content is the foremost important part of your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. If the chosen keywords don’t have any searches, your website won’t gain traffic from the search engine, no matter how hard you try. Forget the erroneous belief that keywords take your content’s creativity because you never compromise on your writing quality to optimize your content for Google.
However, you can always take a round of proofreading and copy editing to improve the readability and check your content’s relevancy. Finding keywords is nothing technical; just a look around to see what your target audience is looking for and what it will take to rank those keywords.
A step-by-step guide to finding relevant keywords for content writing
Before you start writing content for a website, go navigating and find the relevant keywords for your content. Identifying the right keywords will inform you of your writing trajectory and guarantees that the content you’re going to produce will be relevant and searchable.
It may take some time to find the right keywords, but it’s essential to do it correctly. Make sure you pour in the correct details and not forget the comparison within the list to find the right ones because that will form the groundwork for your content development and SEO strategy. It can be short or long-tail keywords but must be relevant to the services you are providing.
1. List specific keywords from your content topic
After you’ve narrowed down your content topic, go jotting down a list of seed keywords. The keywords you move further in adding to your list must be relevant to your chosen subject. They delineate your niche and identify your contenders.
While creating the list, don’t forget that these terms must be the ones that your potential audience is looking for on the search engine. You don’t have to be systematic with making a list, just write down your content topic and brainstorm it the same way you search for anything else on Google. For example, you provide consultancy services; then your list can go this way:
- Consultancy services types
- Business Consultancy services
- Consultancy company
This step aims not to develop the final keywords list but to use them as seeds to further your process. So, don’t obsess on them much and give this step only a few minutes. As soon as you get a handful of these specific phrases, move on to the next stage.
2. Research keywords on Google Keyword Planner
Unlike other keyword research tools, Google Keyword Planner provides you with data that comes straight from Google. It offers you insight into how frequently specific terms are searched and how those pursuits have changed over time.
After discovering new keyword ideas from the keyword planner, you can create a list of keywords that you really want and refine those most relevant to your content’s subject.
To generate the list of most relevant keywords:
- First, filter and refine by category.
- Second, narrow by location.
- Then, customize the page by date range.
- Next, match seasonal trends.
- And later, break the results down into segments.
3. Select a focus keyword based on searches
You don’t have to necessarily get onto different tools and pages to look for each keyword. You can choose your focus and supporting keywords from the same page. How? When you search for the relevant keywords, you can select the focus topic from there only. Go for the one that matches your content the most and sends the highest traffic to your page.
Your senses work the most here because, of course, you can not choose a focus keyword that doesn’t seem like a particular topic. When you get the results for your searched idea, look for the ones that can be employed in sub-topics and the ones that can individually become a topic. For that reason, you’ll have a broader idea of how and where to employ your focus and relevant keywords.
4. Go for latent semantic index (LSI) keywords
LSI keywords are usually found together within a particular topic and are semantically linked. For instance, if your content topic is “marketing strategy.” Then usually, you would find related keywords like “marketing strategy for business”, “effective marketing strategies”, “social media marketing strategies”, etc.
LSI keywords help a search engine identify your content’s main topic as it finds the hidden relationship among these different words in your article to determine its correct perspective, the same as humans would. Therefore, it’s essential to have relevant LSI keywords in your content so the search engine algorithm can catch the right signals about your topic. However, these keywords can have a different literal meaning but should share the same context. You can also scroll to your Google search engine result page (SERP) bottom and find LSI keywords related to your recent search.
5. Look for higher search volume and low competition
While targeting your keywords, go for the ones with passive traffic and low competition, so you have higher chances to get ranked on search engine. Low competition keywords rank with petite to no link building and domain authority and provide passage traffic with long-tail rankings. Similarly, using high-volume search terms generates more traffic to your website.
Since the competition for famous words is high, you must assess a keyword’s search volume and clash level. Rather than going for keywords with high search volume, opt for the ones that can actually rank you high on search engines.
6. Target long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords are three or more than three words phrases that are precise yet complete terms. Compared to the seed keyword, a long-tail keyword is much easier to tally your target audience’s search objective. For example, if your website published content on marketing strategy for startups, using long-tail keywords like “social media marketing tactics for upcoming businesses” will attract more potential audience than the seed word like “marketing strategies”.
However, long-tail key terms relatively get fewer clicks and low search volume (usually 10 to 200 searches per month). Still, they are focused on a particular topic, therefore, make the more significant part of searches online. They aren’t very competitive yet have maximum chances of conversion.
7. Search for questions to cover vocal queries
Voice searches have significantly gained value over the past few years, and people cannot get over it. Since people ask “Wh” questions from the search engine, voice queries have a conversational tone compared to the normal text ones. Therefore, to provide the answer covered content, it’s essential to embed the right keywords within your content. For example, adding “what”, “why”, “who” focused keywords. You can also use keyword research tools with a question filter to search for the queries people ask and narrow down your keywords according to it.
More tools for keyword research
Employing quality keywords in your content is vital to make an active presence on the Google search engine result page. To find those quality keywords to generate passive traffic to your website, you can use these best keywords research tools.
Moz. The Moz keyword research tool consists of more than 450 million traffic-driving key terms. All you want to do is type in your topic to target the best relevant keywords, create a Moz account, verify your email, and ta-da! You’re all set to get a thorough keyword analysis.
SEMRush. SEMRush has different working than usual keyword tools because instead of providing a list for your seed keyword, it gives you the terms that your battle already ranks for.
Ahref Keyword Explorer. Ahref has the maximum number of keyword suggestions and has left all other keywords research tools behind. Its keyword explorer is maneuvered by click-stream data that updates its database every month with new keywords.
Ahref lets you filter the entire list of keywords by search density and keyword difficulty. It has some unique filters and matrices such as return rate, clicks per search, etc., that makes it distinctive of tools.
Why keywords are essential for content writing
You need to have quality keywords within your content to rank high on Google, the ones that your target audience is searching for. If the search engine algorithm doesn’t recognize what your content is about, it will never rank your website, and you can never drive your potential audience to your page. To help people find your website, keep frequent check your keywords and a strict eye on ranking competed to your competitors. Your article can stand out from the competition only when you have quality keywords relevant to your content.
This guest blog post was written by Melissa Calvert. She is a content writer at Assignment Assistance. You can connect with her on LinkedIn and Twitter.