SEO Keyword Analysis is on of the most important that need to be considered while creating a rock-solid SEO Strategy. A lot of marketing experts fail to implement a robust SEO strategy just becuase they don’t do the SEO Keyword Analysis piously.
Hence on demand of the audience DM Den Digital brings in the Ultimate Professional guide to train you folks on the best ways to Do SEO Keyword Analysis
What is Keyword Analysis
Keyword analysis, also known as keyword research, is an essential component of digital marketing. It involves the process of identifying and evaluating the words and phrases (keywords) that potential customers use when searching for products, services, or information online.
Keyword analysis helps digital marketers understand the language and terms their target audience uses, allowing them to optimize their online content and advertising campaigns accordingly. By incorporating the right keywords into their digital marketing strategies, businesses can improve their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) and attract relevant traffic to their websites.
The process of keyword analysis typically involves the following steps:
Identifying goals and target audience: Understanding your marketing objectives and defining your target audience is crucial before beginning keyword research. This helps in aligning your keyword strategy with your overall marketing goals.
Generating initial keyword ideas: Brainstorming and creating a list of potential keywords that are relevant to your products, services, or content is the next step. Think about the terms your audience might use when searching for what you offer.
Keyword research tools: Utilizing keyword research tools can help expand your initial keyword list and provide valuable insights. These tools provide data on search volume, competition, related keywords, and trends, helping you make informed decisions.
Analyzing keyword metrics: Reviewing and analyzing the metrics associated with each keyword is crucial. Key metrics to consider include search volume (how many times a keyword is searched per month), competition level (how many other websites are targeting the same keyword), and relevance to your business.
Assessing competition: Analyzing the keywords your competitors are targeting can offer valuable insights. It helps identify keywords that are performing well for them and may provide opportunities for your own marketing strategy.
Long-tail keywords: Long-tail keywords are more specific, longer phrases that typically have lower search volume but higher conversion potential. Incorporating long-tail keywords can help target a more specific audience and increase the likelihood of attracting qualified leads.
Keyword selection: Based on the insights gained from the previous steps, you can now select the most appropriate keywords to target in your content, website optimization, and advertising campaigns. Focus on a mix of high-volume, high-relevance keywords, as well as long-tail keywords that align with your goals.
Tracking and optimization: Once you have implemented your selected keywords, it is essential to track their performance and make adjustments as needed. Monitoring keyword rankings, traffic, and conversions helps you refine your keyword strategy over time and adapt to changing trends and search behaviors.
Keyword analysis is a continuous process in digital marketing. It requires monitoring keyword performance, staying updated on industry trends, and adapting your strategy to ensure your content remains relevant and visible to your target audience.
What is SEO Keyword Analysis
SEO Keyword Analysis:
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) keyword analysis focuses on identifying and optimizing keywords for organic search visibility. The primary goal is to improve a website’s ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs) through organic, non-paid methods. SEO keyword analysis involves researching and selecting keywords that are relevant to your target audience and have a good balance of search volume and competition. The focus is on creating high-quality content and optimizing on-page elements to align with the selected keywords. The aim is to attract organic traffic to the website and increase its visibility in search engines over the long term.
- What is SEM Keyword Analysis (In Short)
SEM Keyword Analysis:
SEM (Search Engine Marketing) keyword analysis, on the other hand, is geared towards paid advertising campaigns, commonly known as pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. SEM involves running targeted ads on search engines like Google, Bing, or social media platforms. The objective of SEM keyword analysis is to identify keywords with commercial intent that are likely to drive conversions or desired actions. The emphasis is on selecting keywords that align with the products or services being promoted and have high search volume and a reasonable level of competition. SEM keyword analysis helps determine the bid prices for keywords in order to optimize ad placement and budget allocation for maximum return on investment (ROI).
- Why Keyword Research Is Important For SEO
Keyword research is crucial for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for several reasons:
Targeting the Right Audience: Keyword research helps you understand the language and search behavior of your target audience. By identifying the specific words and phrases they use when searching for products, services, or information related to your business, you can align your content and website optimization efforts accordingly. This ensures that your website appears in front of the right audience who are actively seeking what you offer.
Increasing Organic Traffic: By optimizing your website with relevant keywords, you enhance its visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). When your website ranks higher for targeted keywords, it increases the likelihood of attracting organic traffic. Keyword research enables you to discover high-volume, low-competition keywords, improving your chances of ranking well and driving more organic traffic to your website.
Content Optimization: Keyword research helps you create and optimize your content to meet the needs of your target audience. By incorporating relevant keywords into your website pages, blog posts, articles, and other content, you make it more discoverable by search engines. This improves the overall search engine friendliness of your website, making it easier for search engines to understand and rank your content.
Competition Analysis: Keyword research allows you to analyse the keywords your competitors are targeting. Understanding their keyword strategies provides insights into their strengths and weaknesses, helping you identify opportunities and areas where you can differentiate yourself. By uncovering untapped keyword niches or finding long-tail keywords that your competitors may be overlooking, you can gain a competitive advantage.
Improving User Experience: Keyword research not only helps with search engine optimization but also aids in enhancing the user experience on your website. By targeting relevant keywords, you ensure that your content matches the intent of users’ search queries. When visitors find the information they’re looking for easily, it improves their overall experience and increases the likelihood of them engaging with your website or converting into customers.
Long-Term Strategy: Keyword research is an ongoing process that allows you to adapt and optimise your SEO strategy over time. As search trends and user behaviour evolve, new keywords emerge, and old ones may lose relevance. By regularly conducting keyword research and monitoring keyword performance, you can stay up-to-date with changing search dynamics and refine your SEO efforts accordingly.
In summary, keyword research is essential for SEO because it helps you understand your audience, increase organic traffic, optimise content, analyse competition, improve user experience, and establish a long-term SEO strategy. By investing time and effort into thorough keyword research, you can effectively optimise your website to drive relevant traffic and achieve higher rankings in search engine results.
Keyword Research Basics
Monthly Search Volume (MSV) is a predominant measure of keyword value. It’s a useful metric as a starting point to consider if anyone is searching for that keyword, but it shouldn’t be used in isolation or as the only measure of value.
Just because a keyword has a high MSV doesn’t mean it is the right keyword for you to rank on.
High-volume keywords generally deliver ‘browsing’ traffic at the top of the funnel. They are useful for brand awareness but not for direct conversion.
Low-volume keywords can be much more valuable because they can deliver users who are ready to buy a product.
User Intent
User intent refers to what type of result they want to see when they search for a query – the intention of their search.
You will hear user intent talked about a lot in keyword research, as it is one of the most important factors in the process.
User intent is important in two ways, firstly because your primary aim in creating content and pages on a website are to provide a user with information that they want to know.
There’s no point in creating a page about what you care about – your user only cares about their problems and needs.
You can have the best page in the world about the history of cupcakes, but if a user searching for [cupcake] wants a recipe for cupcakes, then they will not click on your link.
Secondly, Google considers relevance when serving results pages (as we said above, they want to deliver the best result for a query). So, the better your page fits user intent, the better it might rank.
Relevancy
When Google considers which pages it will show in search results, the algorithm will look at other pages that users are clicking on for that query.
If we have a query such as [cupcake], Google has to consider if a user wants to know what a cupcake is, how to make a cupcake, or wants to buy a cupcake.
By looking at a search result page, you can get a good idea of user intent from the other results.
Reviewing the search results page of a query should be part of your research process for every keyword you want to consider.
Keyword relevance and user intent are much the same things. It’s about knowing what the user really means when they search. This is more ambiguous for head keywords and less so for long-tail queries.
Types of Search Query
There are three types of Search queries as according to my experience
- Generic or Research Intent Keywords: No Appropriate intent comes from these keywords, however traffic is high for these however conversions are low.
Example: Iphone. Here we are not able to understand what user wants, these terms are mostly informational in nature
- Advance Research Intent Keywords: Some specific intent comes from these keywords, however traffic is moderate for these and conversions are also mediocre.
Example: Iphone 13 pro max 256 GB. The statement shows that a person is looking for a particular product
- Buying Intent Keywords: Buying intent comes from these keywords, however traffic is low for these but conversions are high.
Example: Buy Iphone 13 pro max 256 GB, Iphone 14 pro Max 512 GB Price in Delhi. The statement shows that a person is looking to buy a particular product
- How to find keywords
For this You will have to think about four things
- Target Audience: Whom To Target
- The Base terms or the search keywords they type in
- Take help from competition websites for base keywords
- Take Help from GKP (Google Keywords Planner Tool)
- How to choose the right keywords
Once you have your raw list, it’s time to start to analyze and sort by value and opportunity.
- Search Volume
Search volume will tell you if anyone is actively searching for this term.
For a first-stage strategy, you should aim for keywords with a mid-range and long-tail volume for quick wins and then build up to approach more competitive terms with higher volumes.
Head keywords with super high volumes (like ‘iPhone’) are not the best keywords to focus on as they can be too ambiguous and rarely have a specific intent.
Also, the amount of work that is needed to rank can be too high a barrier for entry unless you have an established domain of significant authority.
If a tool shows a keyword with zero search volume, this doesn’t always mean you should discard the term.
If the keyword is shown in the tool, then there can be value to consider targeting it in your strategy. However, make sure you know your audience and what is relevant to them before you invest resources in a zero-volume keyword.
- Search Intent
After you have sorted your raw lists by search volumes, it’s then time to review the intent for each keyword that you would like to target.
The SERP will tell you everything that you need to know, and you should always review SERPs for clues on how to construct content and rank.
Look at the other listing that rank highly:
- Are they ‘how-to’ guides that indicate it’s informational?
- Do the titles say ‘buy,’ ‘best,’ or include product names?
- Is there a shopping carousel that indicates a buying keyword?
- Is there a location map that indicates it’s a local search?
- Tag each keyword type and then consider which are the strongest keywords from each group.
You can also use a research tool that will tell you the type of keyword.
- Topic Clusters
Grouping keywords into topic clusters is an advanced keyword strategy that can help to strengthen the topic authority of a site.
To do this, you would start with a high-volume head keyword and then research a series of keywords that supports that head term.
After creating pages of content that target each keyword, you use internal linking to connect pages with the same topic.
- How To Choose Organic Keywords
- Keyword Difficulty
Keyword difficulty is one of the most important keyword metrics when doing your research.
If a keyword is so competitive that you need hundreds of thousands of dollars to rank, then you need to get strategic.
The easiest way to calculate keyword difficulty is to use a research tool that gives a score for each keyword.
Or, you can refer to Google Keyword Planner Tool and look at the CPC and level of difficulty. The higher the CPC bid, the higher the competition.
If you are starting out, first approach the lower competition keywords that are achievable and then build your way up to more competitive terms.
- KEI
Another Strategy is to Use KEI Methodology that takes into consideration:
- Search Volume
- No of Competition Pages
- Page Rank of the Particular Website