5-Step Beginners Guide to Keyword Research

Keyword research is a pivotal part of SEO strategy. Having high quality keyword research can be the difference between a successful SEO strategy and a failure.

In this post, we’ll walk through the steps of keyword strategy. In the end, you should have the information you need to successfully start your own keyword research.

1. List your most important and relevant topics

At this point in your keyword research, it’s important to understand your business and what topics surround you. Create a list of 10 important/relevant topics to your business and your customers. These should be organized into topic “buckets,” or categories of topics, from which you will then come up with more keywords. These buckets may be something that you talk about regularly in business meetings, or maybe it’s the topic that you are coming up with the most content about. For example, if you were a SEO business, your buckets might look like, “inbound marketing,” or “SEO.”

2. Fill your topic buckets with key words

Now that you know what your buckets are, it’s time to fill the buckets with relevant keywords. These are the search terms that you believe your target is searching when thinking about that bucket. For example, if we use the bucket “SEO,” some keywords to fill this bucket might be, “How to do SEO,” “SEO tools,” or maybe even “What is SEO, and why is it important?” This step doesn’t have to be perfect. You’re really just trying to come up with a large dump of every possible keyword you can think of, so don’t get hung up on finding the perfect keywords just yet.

3. Understand intent

User intent is probably one of the most pivotal parts of keyword research. Without a solid understanding of user intent, it’s going to be nearly impossible to rank well on Google. It’s much more important today to solve/answer the problem the user intended to have solved, rather than having the keyword the user searched with. With that in mind, you need to ask, what does this mean for my keyword research? Words can have many different meanings, it’s very important that you understand exactly what your target is going to be looking for and then answer those needs and desires. For example, someone could search “how do I start a blog?” This could ultimately mean a blog site or a blog post, etc. Thus, you must be aware of the INTENT of the user, and not just the exact words they’re using. A good way to be sure you’re understanding the intent behind a keyword is to search it on Google and see what types of results come up. If the results aren’t related to what you’re trying to get found for, try a different keyword.

4. Research related terms

This is a great way to understand the search world surrounding your buckets. If you’re struggling to think of more keywords, look at the related search terms that show up in google when you’re searching your keyword. If you’re feeling really adventurous, maybe even ask ChatGPT what related search terms it can come up with. After you find some related search terms, you can even search those terms to find keywords related to them.

5. Use keyword tools

Don’t be ashamed of using some SEO tools to boost your keyword research. This is the best way to develop a really solid list of keywords. Some good tools are SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner, Moz, and KWfinder. These tools can help you come up with more ideas based on the ones you’ve generated so far. You’ll also be able to determine search volume and how competitive the keyword is using these tools.