Keyword research tools for website SEO. What are they and what is it?
Why does it matter? And...how can you do it?
That’s the key topic in this week’s podcast episode. We dive into keyword research in a practical way to try and give you the tools and tactics needed to help you up your game with your website SEO.
Who does this apply to? Beginners are going to get the most value and yet others even with more advanced skill can benefit from learning about the tools used and research behind it.
Ready to dive in?
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Keyword research for website SEO can be defined as researching the terms people type into search engines when looking for resources similar to your site. Once you know what these keywords are, you can incorporate them into your website content. Do this consistently, and your site will rank for the keywords and keyword phrases on search engine result pages.
But if you're using the wrong keywords, no matter how much you stuff your content you'll still not reach your intended audience. This is why it's necessary to do keyword research. All your subsequent efforts are useless if your keywords aren't targeted enough.
General terms are more popular, which makes them more competitive and expensive. Let's say you have a law firm in Newport, RI specializing in divorce, and you want its site rank better in the search engine results.
Type in zero-turn lawnmowers on Google and you'll get about 1 million results. To get on the first page for that term will take considerable time, money, and effort. And even if you have the resources to get on the first page, how much good will it do? People looking for divorce lawyers in cities other than Newport will leave your site as soon as they realize it's not what they need. And your site will have a higher bounce rate.
But type in zero-turn lawnmowers in harrisburg pa and you'll get around 85,000 search results. With fewer competitors, you can focus on that specific term and related terms, and get good ranking results in shorter time. There's less competition and you are also honing in on people specifically interested in your products in your sales area.
In SEO, these specific terms are called long tail keywords. These are targeted to people who are about to make a purchase, or who know more exactly what they want. When someone uses a very specific term, they're no longer just looking around. There's a huge chance they already know what they want and are ready to buy or are motivated to learn more.
Luckily, you don't have to guess which long tail keywords perform well. There are several tools I suggest and I want to dive into each a bit more here:
On Buzzsumo, you can enter any topic, and the tool will analyze what content performs best for that. It displays links to content containing the keyword you supplied, then lists statistics on its Facebook engagement, and also LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+ shares.
For Übersuggest, you can type in a term and choose categories (web, images, etc.) and country. It then gives you an extensive list of longtail keyword based on the term you supplied.
Ahrefs is an all-in-one software as a service (SaaS) tool that provides data and tracks your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts. While not free it is a robust tool that includes a powerful keyword research tool in addition to other capabilities I’ve mentioned in a earlier website SEO grader podcast.
One tool that will allow you to generate hundreds of long-tail keywords from a single term is KeywordTool.io. It’s free and unlike Google’s own Keyword Planner tool where you could wind up spending a lot of time pursuing results, it only requires a single click to give you a myriad of ideas.
If you're looking for articles ideas based on the keywords you gathered from the tools above, there's Blog About, a blog title generator. Input any keyword, and the tool will display some suggested titles and email you the rest. This is a valuable way to get SEO-optimized blog titles relevant to your long tail keyword phrases.
As noted in the podcast, once you have the keyword phrases and optimized titles, you write your blog post and Yoast SEO in WordPress sites helps you analyze your content, images, and overall post for how well it is optimized for the long tail keyword phrase you are targeting. You simple add in the phrase and it runs through a whole series of items to evaluate your post and help you fine-tune it to be optimized for that phrase.
Another valuable resource is Small SEO Tools and their Keyword Position Checker here: https://smallseotools.com/keyword-position/
Wincher is an inexpensive rank-tracking tool with the possibility to track your rankings as far as 5 years back. It also helps with the optimization of your website by tracking the keywords and phrases. It can also do so for your competition. While it’s a pretty small tool, it offers great value for the price, as it costs a mere €10 a month.
Keyword Position Checker is a tool used to detect the position of a website or URL in the search engine (particularly, Google) for a given keyword as per competing with other websites for the same keyword.
In the end, a key comes down to understanding your ideal customer. Put yourself in your targeted audience's shoes. If you were in their place, what keywords would you use to find what you're looking for? That's a very good place to start. Alternatively, you may also use this free keyword rank checker tool from SureOak.
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