Keywords are the essence of search engine optimization (SEO). Most SEO strategies revolve around the best use of highly optimized keywords. Since organic traffic is highly preferred over paid traffic, the importance of finding and using the right SEO keywords increases even more. To get the gist of their significance, just remember that they act as the medium that connects your website (i.e. your business) to your target audience. Besides, whether your content is reaching the target audience or not mainly depends on your choice and usage of keywords.
So, today, in this guide, we will discuss the three main keyword-related topics:
- How to Find SEO Keywords?
- How to Analyze Keywords for SEO?
- How to Optimize Keywords for SEO?
How to Find SEO Keywords?
Though you can list some basic keywords yourself, SEO tools help you easily find unique, relevant, and quality keywords with high-search volumes and without wasting your valuable time. SEO tools allow you to figure out what part of your SEO strategy can be improved by performing some tweaks. When you use SEO tools, you can also get regular reports that help you see where great opportunities lie. Besides, you will also be able to evaluate search performance across different regions, countries, and even languages.
If you are a business or simply a blogger with multiple sites, SEO tools are a must to save you from racking your brain for hours and days trying to improve the performance of every site’s content.
Best SEO Tools To Find, Analyze & Optimize Keywords
Here, we are sharing some of the best SEO tools that are popular among SEO professionals to find, analyze, and optimize keywords.
- Google Adwords Keyword Planner
- SEMRush
- Ubersuggest
- Google Search Console (GSC)
- BuzzStream
- Google AdWords Keyword Planner
Though the Keyword Planner tool is mainly developed for those people who buy Google Ads, it will help you research a wide variety of keywords and get traffic data about them. To avoid being overwhelmed with lots of information, you can simply filter your keywords based on cost-per-click (CPC) or search volume. Besides, this Google SEO tool guides you on monthly volume in searches. It helps you look at not only desktop searches but also searches on mobile devices.
Highlights:
- Find out search volumes for any keyword
- Figure out the competitiveness of any keyword by filtering keywords with CPC
- Get detailed reports for free
- SEMrush
SEMRush is another popular SEO tool widely used for keyword research and analysis. It helps you learn how many people are looking for specific terms (i.e. search volume) and get additional information on similar keywords, product listings, related ads, and so on. What’s more, with SEMRush, you can even check which keywords your competitors are ranking for and get a peek into their text and media ads.
Highlights:
- Provides a snapshot of the value of specific keywords
- Analyze keywords through metrics like keyword difficulty, volume, CPC, competition in paid search, etc.
- Get a list of alternative and related search queries
- Ubersuggest
Launched by Neil Patel, Ubersuggest is a free keyword finder tool that helps you identify keywords and learn the search intent behind them by displaying the top ranking search engine result pages (SERPs). It provides hundreds of suggestions ranging from short keywords to long-tail phrases along with important metrics.
Highlights:
- Shows where the majority of searches are done for specific keywords – desktop or mobile
- Reveals what percentage of people click on the SEO or paid results
- Displays the number of searches that takes place between each age range
- Google Search Console (GSC)
GSC is a free SEO tool that enables you to look at keyword phrases that people use to find your website, the backlinks you received, and your site’s ranking. Plus, it also helps you learn how Google and its users view your site. By gathering all such information, you can better optimize your website for better performance.
Highlights:
- Track what keywords people are using to reach your site
- Find out what your website already ranks for
- Get data sorted based on phrases that received the most clicks and impressions
- BuzzStream
BuzzStream is an all-in-one platform that you can use for keyword research along with domain research, email marketing, and more. It allows you to create lists of results for the keywords you are interested in and examine comprehensive data about them.
Highlights:
- Get lists of authors who write for competing websites
- Find what keywords your competitors are ranking for
- Check the ranking of your competitors in the SERPs
Now, when you know what SEO tools you can use to find quality keywords, let’s get to another topic.
How to Analyze Keywords for SEO?
Having lists of keywords is not enough. To get the most out of your keywords and determine the success of your whole SEO marketing campaigns, you need to analyze keywords to see if they serve your SEO strategy and business goals the best way.
Here are the steps to be taken to analyze keywords for SEO:
Step 1: Select the top keywords (at least 20) and measure them by two parameters: search volume and level of competition. While the search volume will tell you how often people use particular keywords as search queries online, the competition level defines how many sites are ranking in search results for certain keywords. The easiest way to find and analyze keywords is to enter your website link into the SEO tool search box.
Step 2: You can further analyze your keywords depending on different key metrics, including the number of search results, cost-per-click, traffic%, keyword frequency trend, etc.
Step 3: When analyzing keywords, your aim should be to select those keywords that generate essential and potential traffic and also the ones that have low competition. Remember that high competition keywords are costly and difficult to rank for, regardless of how stellar your content is. Low competition keywords are easy to target and takes less time to target. Thus, focusing on them will help you get relatively quick traffic.
Step 4: Expand and refine your keyword list by analyzing your competitors’ sites. When it comes to choosing your SEO competitors, pick successful competitors in your niche to get a competitive edge. Analyze your competitors’ sites by the number of keywords that you have in common and different from that of your competitors and the estimated monthly traffic they get through particular keywords.
After analysis of keywords and finding which keywords are more suitable for your business and SEO campaign, you need to focus on optimizing your keywords for SEO.
How to Optimize Keywords for SEO?
The ultimate goal of finding and analyzing keywords is that you have the best keywords that suit your ultimate SEO goal – increase organic traffic. While you can use a wide range of methods to optimize keywords for SEO, you can follow these steps to make a head start.
Step 1: Choose organic keyword phrases first as they are more aligned to your business goals and SEO strategies. Map those keywords with existing pages on your site to see if they are already in use. If yes, see whether they are properly incorporated in the website content. If not, see which pages are best suitable to use those keywords on your site. If appropriate and necessary, you can create a new webpage. For instance, you can create separate web pages for the same service but with different locations. To make sure that they have unique content, write localized service content for each web page.
Step 2: The next thing you should do is to prioritize your keywords by assessing how difficult it would be to reach the top organic results and how important they can be to cover a buyer’s journey.
Step 3: Now, select particular web pages for which you want to drive more traffic. Read and evaluate the content of those web pages and assess the usage and placement of important keywords. Make sure that important content on such pages is getting indexed properly. You can do it by using Google’s (or any other search engine you use) text-only version of the pages’ cache.
Step 4: Remove any duplicate or very similar content. The indexed content must be unique, and if it is not, then create fresh content yourself or get professional help. However, if your page is already converting well, try not to make major changes. Changing a page content that is generating good business can have a negative or positive effect on conversion rate. In that case, make only subtle changes that shouldn’t have a significant impact on the page conversion.
Step 5: When creating and optimizing content for your site and blogs, try to include long-tail keywords preferably in question form.
Step 6: Track keywords or phrases that are trending currently and can be relevant to your business or ideology somehow. These keywords might be entirely different from what product/service you offer but can be used to show that you stay abreast of what’s going in your region or around the world. You may have noticed how successful #choosetochallenge phrase was in the past month. Countless women started to share how they have challenged themselves and came back stronger even several weeks before this year’s International Women’s Day.
This is just an example. You can simply track down important days on the calendar and cover keywords related to them as well to appear in trending search query results. It is a great way to get a big boost in traffic if you know how to use such keywords well.
Conclusion
Keyword Research, Analysis, and Optimization are the three key aspects of SEO strategies that determine the success of your SEO campaign and bring the best results that serve your business goals. Following the above guide closely can yield amazing results. So, the next time you work on your SEO keywords, refer to this guide to get the most out of your SEO campaigns.