When starting a blog, it’s tempting just to jump in and start writing. However, if you truly want the best results from your blog, you need to do keyword research first.
By using this guide and following the steps listed below, you’ll be on your way to having a more successful keyword strategy for your blog.
Conduct a Brainstorming Session
The next step in the process is brainstorming. This is where you and your team get together to generate ideas for content, products, or services that would be relevant to your target audience.
Brainstorming can be done as a group or individually, but it must result in a list of new ideas.
The goal of this session is for everyone on the team to have an opportunity to contribute their thoughts and opinions regarding what topics are important for potential customers and how your business might address those topics.
The more people involved in this research stage, the better; if you have five writers on your team, then each should have a chance to present one idea during this keyword research!
Analyze the Data from the Google Keyword Planner
The Google Keyword Planner is a free tool that you can use to get data on search volume, competition, and suggested bids. It’s an excellent way to understand what topics are worth writing about.
For example, when I looked at keyword research tools, it showed me that “keyword research” has approximately 200 searches per month, whereas “keyword tool” has over 2 million searches per month!
The next step is to look at keyword difficulty. This helps you understand how competitive it will be to rank for specific keywords and how much more difficult it will be based on your current website rankings.
Check Out the Competition
First, look at the competition. Then, look at their keywords. Then, look at their content—and see if it’s better than yours.
That’s right: You should be looking at the competition and comparing yourself to them as an objective third party would do.
Don’t worry about being too harsh—it’ll help you stay grounded and ensure your realistic expectations!
Look at Related Topics
What do you see when you look at all the keywords that your competitors are using?
- Do they use all the keywords that you do?
- Are there any keywords that they aren’t using but deserve traffic from?
- Are there any keywords that they’re not even looking at but that might be worth exploring in depth?
Prioritize Your Keywords by Traffic Potential
Once you know the right keywords to target, you need to prioritize them.
The most important thing is to use tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs which let you see the search volume for your chosen keywords.
If a keyword has 10,000 searches per month and another has 100 searches per month, it’s safe to say that the first one is more valuable and should be prioritized over the second.
However (and this is a big however), search volume alone isn’t enough for determining value.
You could have two keywords with identical search volumes but different intent: one might be an informational query about how much it costs to install solar panels in my house?
The other might be an intent-based question: What are solar panel prices today? In this case, even though they have identical search volumes according to Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush (or whatever tool you use), we would likely want more traffic from those informational queries than from those price-related queries because they generate more qualified leads for us at lower CPA targets (more on this later).
Use Your Budget to Prioritize Keywords
It would be best if you start by prioritizing your keywords.
- Use your budget to prioritize keywords.
- Use your keywords to prioritize your content strategy.
- Use your keywords to prioritize SEO (search engine optimization).
Use these steps for a more successful keyword research strategy
By using these steps, you can have a more successful keyword research strategy for your blog.
Keyword research is important because it allows you to better understand the people reading and engaging with your content. It also helps you create more relevant content that will keep those readers coming back for more!
The steps to take when doing keyword research are:
- Research keywords related to your blog’s topic. These should be broad keywords, not specific ones like “blue shoes.” If the people searching for blue shoes aren’t interested in buying them, they’ll just click away from your site before reading any of it—and that’s no good!
Instead, try exploring broader terms such as “shoes” or even just “clothes.” You don’t want too many searches being drawn away from this category either—but if there aren’t enough searches for them already, then maybe what you’re writing about isn’t as interesting as we thought it was!
Conclusion
I hope this keyword research guide has been helpful, and as I mentioned earlier, don’t be afraid to give it a try! It may seem like a lot of work at first, but as you get into the habit of doing keyword research regularly, it will become second nature.
If you have any questions about your process or if something is missing from this article that would help make things clearer, please feel free to visit our blog post section and dive into more!
