How to Do Keyword Research For SEO: A Comprehensive Beginner’s Guide

Search engines are no longer simply matching exact phrases. Check a beginners guide to keyword research for SEO with top tools & tactics

By Claudio Pires
SEO
Updated on May 6, 2024
How to Do Keyword Research For SEO: A Comprehensive Beginner’s Guide

There are several comprehensive steps for beginners to start doing keyword research for SEO. Search engines are no longer simply matching exact phrases. In this article, you’ll see a guide to keyword research for SEO with top tools and tactics.

They can “read” content, correlate terms, and determine the meaning behind the text. SEO professionals must improve their research skills and tools to find and rank for keywords successfully. Fortunately, there is a well-defined keyword research process that you can begin following by yourself. Read on to learn about how to do keyword research for SEO.

What Is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is a practice commonly used by SEO professionals to identify high-traffic, relevant search terms. Detailed research can uncover critical terms to target your audience and help you understand their ranking difficulty. You can obtain valuable insights into the search terms and audiences you target on Google using these metrics. Moreover, you can accurately define the intent behind various keywords relevant to your niche.

What Are SERPs?

SERPs, or Search Engine Results Pages, are the pages that search engines display in response to various search queries. Every SERP is unique based on various factors like browsing history, physical location, and social settings. This is why experts always say that your browsing history is like a fingerprint. The rankings of search engine results is constantly changing to deliver a more intuitive, responsive experience for searchers. In response to these growing changes, you must optimize your keyword research efforts to rank higher within SERPs.

How Does SEO Work?

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, enhances your website’s presence on high-traffic search engines like Google. Search engines use automated robots called spiders to analyze web pages for SEO. These spiders crawl your site and collect data like page speed, social metadata, backlinks, and social signals.

Using this data, search engines can accurately determine when to display pages to your site. As a marketer, it is crucial to understand major ranking factors in Google’s SEO algorithm. This way, you can continuously make improvements to make your site more search engine friendly.

Steps to Begin Keyword Research for SEO

There are several steps to begin conducting keyword research on your own. Once accomplished, a strong keyword researching methodology will help you build organic SEO for your site. Following the proper steps to establish your keyword strategy, you can better understand your audience’s needs, interests, and questions.

Generate New Keyword Ideas: Keyword Research Tools & Tactics

First, you need to begin generating new profitable keyword ideas. Think of broad topics relevant to your brand, industry, or audience. Use the most prominent topics relevant to your business. Even if they make sense, you want to avoid targeting keywords too narrow initially. By remaining broad initially, you can strategically get more specific as your keyword research strategy progresses.

With so many prospective keyword opportunities relevant to your brand, it can be difficult to know where to start. Therefore, many marketing professionals recommend using advanced keyword research tools to your advantage whenever possible.

Platforms like Ubersuggest for example, instantly generate a list of keywords for you based on what people are looking for on search engines like Google. Of course, these metrics can help you uncover hundreds of keyword suggestions. Moreover, you can access key analytics regarding volume, competition, and seasonal trends.

Keyword Research SEO Guide: Analyze the Top Traffic Pages

To establish a strong keyword research strategy for SEO, you need to analyze the top traffic pages for the phrases you are targeting. By understanding the top pages, you can discover which of your competitors rank for profitable search terms. Of course, this data can reveal information about your direct, referral, paid, and search sources of traffic.

Using these metrics, you can optimize your content to ensure it ranks higher within your targeted SERPs. By analyzing the top traffic pages, you can make money from search engine optimization.

Since it can be incredibly complicated to analyze top traffic pages manually, many SEO professionals recommend using advanced keyword research and tracking tools.

Free platforms like Ubersuggest, for example, can help you instantly examine the top SEO pages, estimated monthly visits, and total backlinks. Leveraging this information, you can more effectively understand how competitors rank for the keywords you are targeting. Moreover, you can access crucial information regarding your top pages by country and overall social shares using the keyword research tools & tactics.

Prioritize Identified Keywords

After you have identified search terms to target, you need to prioritize identified keywords. To prioritize your targeted keywords, you must outline estimated traffic potential, competition. In addition, its likelihood to convert into leads and sales. Ideally, you want to select keywords that will offer the highest return on investment for your content marketing campaign.

It is extremely challenging to prioritize identified keywords manually. Therefore, SEO experts worldwide recommend using popular keyword research programs to your advantage. Widely used solutions like Ubersuggest help you easily group keywords based on search volume, SEO difficulty, and estimated monthly visits. Of course, this information can help you identify the most profitable keyword groups to target. Using this data, you can prepare highly optimized content that will rank higher within the SERPs.

Keyword Research SEO Guide Conclusion

There are several steps to begin keyword research for search engine optimization. Before you begin, you need to familiarize yourself with crucial terms like SERPs, SEO, and keyword research. Then, you need to start looking for solutions to generate new keyword ideas.

Analyze the top traffic pages relevant to the phrases you are targeting. Furthermore, it would be best to prioritize identified keywords based on the estimated traffic potential, competition, and likelihood to convert into leads and sales. Follow the key steps outlined above to learn how to conduct adequate keyword research for SEO.

Claudio Pires

Claudio Pires is the co-founder of Visualmodo, a renowned company in web development and design. With over 15 years of experience, Claudio has honed his skills in content creation, web development support, and senior web designer. A trilingual expert fluent in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, he brings a global perspective to his work. Beyond his professional endeavors, Claudio is an active YouTuber, sharing his insights and expertise with a broader audience. Based in Brazil, Claudio continues to push the boundaries of web design and digital content, making him a pivotal figure in the industry.