Why is it important to learn how to do keyword research?
While some bloggers drive traffic to their sites from social media, the most successful blogs diversify their marketing. This includes strategic keyword research and thoughtful content planning that drives search engine traffic. Keyword research is crucial for bloggers relying on search engine traffic. It can determine your success or failure in attracting readers through platforms like Google. Mastering your keyword research game is essential for achieving success as a blogger.
Effective keyword research for affiliate marketing forms the foundation of a successful affiliate marketing campaign. By identifying and targeting the right keywords, you can increase your visibility. And attract potential customers who are seeking the products or services you promote.
What is Keyword Research
Keyword research helps bloggers and content marketers find relevant search terms on search engines like Google.
These words and phrases give content creators an idea of what people seek online. Therefore, what topics do you write about to bring readers to your site? By using the right keyword research blogging tool, you can answer important questions like:
- How many people search for this keyword every month?
- What related keywords are the same people searching for?
- What should be covered in a blog post for this key phrase?
- Who are the other sites competing to rank for this keyword?
If you want to create valuable blog content, keyword research is a great place. Start to ensure you write blog posts that provide real value to people looking for answers.
Why is keyword research necessary, and how does it work in SEO
SEO improves your blog’s search engine ranking by making it more search engine friendly.
The higher the ranking, the more likely search engines will visit your site. Here are a few SEO-related statistics that further confirm the importance of keyword research:
- Google is responsible for 92.04% of all organic traffic
- 95% of search engines make it past the first page of Google search results.
- Nearly half of all clicks on SERPs ( Search Engine Result Pages ) are on the top 3 ads
- 51% of all website traffic comes from organic search, 10% from paid search, and 5% from social
Keyword research is a necessary foundation for building an SEO-friendly website. Moreover, keyword research will not only show you what trends are happening in your industry. But find out what kind of competition exists for the keywords you want to rank for. Okay, that all sounds great… But how do you do keyword research? How to use keyword research to create high-ranking content for your blog?
Start by identifying your initial keywords.
To create a successful keyword research content plan for your blog, you must figure out what people are searching for online. If you have identified your niche, the next step is to look for initial keywords that can reflect the broad purpose of your blog. Seed keywords are the base keywords relevant to your business or niche. These overarching ideas will serve as your main categories of content, which you can then narrow down to more specific blog post ideas.
To narrow down the keywords that will represent the overall purpose of your blog, think about your niche and the parts that interest you the most. List five to ten key phrases that best reflect these topics. Now, these are your initial keywords.
The importance of long-tail and medium-tail keywords
When you do keyword research, you will naturally be attracted to terms that receive high search volume.
However, if you’re only considering one or two-word keywords, you won’t be able to rank #1. The only caveat is if your blog already has an extremely high domain authority that you can use to your advantage. But even then, you will compete with huge sites for those keywords.
Instead of trying to rank your blog content for keywords like “digital” or “digital marketing blog,” targeting these long keywords will help your content rank faster and lead to more targeted readers with higher intentions. A narrower keyword phrase means you’ll have a better chance of giving search engines the information they want. Of course, long-tail and medium-tail keywords don’t have as high a search volume as one- or two-word keywords. But you’re much more likely to convert those long-tail visitors into subscribers or paying customers because you give them what they want. This is a big win if you are looking to monetize your blog.
How to analyze competitors by keywords
Another essential factor to consider when researching keywords is your competition. Look at other blogs in your niche and conclude what makes them attractive to readers. Use these ideas to improve your approach to content and positioning your brand (or, if need be, go back to the drawing board and build a new site with the best website builder or theme). More importantly, you can use your competitors for keyword research and gain an edge.
Analysis of the Top Ten Results of Google Research
The best way to determine what Google currently prioritizes is to type in a target keyword phrase and analyze the top ten search results. These will be your top competitors for the keyword you are trying to rank for. It will also give you invaluable insight into which content format you should focus on. For example, top-ranking results could be blog posts, infographics, explainer videos, or even product pages of companies that sell products focused on the need behind that key phrase. When big companies create top-ranking posts, competing with them can be difficult.
This doesn’t mean your blog can’t rank in highly competitive terms. Still, it does mean it will take a lot of time and effort through strategic tactics like guest blogging, tweaking your blog’s SEO, and other growth initiatives. Keep this in mind as you conduct your keyword research and prioritize. As you research your keywords, you will better understand how difficult it is for your content to outperform existing search results and always strive to find ways to better respond to reader searches on your post.
Check backlinks to see how successful your competitors are
Another way to learn more about your competitors is through the backlinks they have accumulated. Backlinks are created when an external site links to your content. Almost without exception, the more backlinks (from high-authority sites) a blog post has, the more search engines, such as Google, will consider your post authoritative and, therefore, worthy of ranking higher in search engine results. By the number of backlinks to a particular article, you can determine how successful its content is since people don’t usually link to low-quality content. If you want to know how many backlinks a competitor’s article gets, paste their URL into the backlink checker. There are many options for backlink-checking tools, but I recommend Ahrefs, Moz, and SemRush.
Closing Thoughts: Using Keyword Research to Understand Your Audience and Create Content
Keyword research is a great start when you want to create outstanding content and drive more traffic to your blog, but it doesn’t stop there. Good keyword research can tell you a lot about the public, but you need to work hard and develop a solid understanding of your target audience. Who are you trying to attract to your blog, and what are they interested in? If you have chosen a blogging niche you are personally interested in; you probably have a good idea of what your audience is looking for. If you have a clear picture of your target audience, your keyword research will focus on what will attract them. Let’s discuss using this keyword research to create transformative blog content. In my ultimate guide to how to write blog articles, I lay out the fundamental concept of blogging. When it comes to content creation, you need to find what you are interested in and what your audience would like to read about.
When you do keyword research, keep this essential element in mind. If you don’t want to write about a topic and the keywords don’t resonate with your audience, then it doesn’t matter how popular those terms might be. There are better blog ideas out there – and you’ll learn more about whether a topic suits you in writing a blog post outline.