How to do keyword research and SEO

Being a successful online Entrepreneur takes knowledge, time and persistence, part of the knowledge that you need to make your website or blog profitable is how to do keyword research and SEO. Keywords and SEO or search engine optimization are the key components in making your site easier to find and rank for the big search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Duck go go.

How important is keyword research?

To be honest without the help of a good keyword tool you could waste a lot of time choosing the wrong keywords that won’t get your content ranked on page one of the search results. Good keyword research is so important in relation to SEO because it gives website owners an understanding of the demand for that keyword and how difficult it will be to compete with other websites.

Why do keyword research?

Keyword research can be time consuming however it is time well spent not only is it about confirming the number of monthly searches for a particular keyword it’s also about discovering the different ways that people use vocabulary when searching the internet.

Why do research?

Content marketing is the only way to get your posts ranked, keyword research is closely linked to content marketing because it tells you more about your target audience and their needs. Knowing what their needs are means you can write content that fulfils their needs that drives the right kind of traffic to your site that ultimately converts into sales.

How much keyword research should you do?

There are literally tens of millions of keywords just waiting to be found, keyword research is an ongoing part of SEO, keywords are the very foundation of any site so checking and maintaining your website and its keywords will take up most of your time. New keywords are being discovered every day as more and more people turn to their browsers for answers to their questions, keyword analysis is ever changing, adapting to change is key to servicing the needs of your target audience.

Is there a best way to do keyword research?

Brainstorming for keyword ideas is a big part of how to do keyword research and SEO, usually throws up a topic subject, idea or a “seed” or head keyword, your thought process based on experience from your career or just stuff you have personally learned gives you ideas that you can scribble down. When you have your “seed idea” go to Google and type it into your browser, for example let’s say your “seed idea” is “keyword tool” here are the results when you add “b” after that phrase.

Keyword tool

Keep adding words to your list, now you need to find out if any of these keywords are popular and how hard it will be to rank them in the (serps) search engine results. Open this keyword tool and put the “seed” word into the search bar, up pops a long list of related keywords with details of search popularity, competing websites and SEO difficulty. By using the “seed” keyword the handy keyword tool gives you a list of other keywords that you can work with to create great content that ranks in the serps.

Keyword search results

Take a look at what happened when the “seed” keyword was entered into the keyword tool a long list of results come up immediately, let’s take a closer look at the results and what each symbol means

Avg is average amount of times per month that that word or phrase is used

Traffic means the number of website visitors you can expect if you make the top of the serps

Qsr is the approximate number of websites you are competing with for that keyword phrase

KQI is the keyword quality indication green is best

SEO is how difficult it is to rank in the serps for that keyword or phrase, the higher the number the better.

When trying to interpret the results I recommend that you write content around a keyword or phrase where the Avg is 50 or less the Kqi is good and the SEO is green, the reason for this is the big brands have a lot if spending power and will spend their way to the top 10 results. It’s nearly impossible to beat them for popular keywords so go for the example that I have just given you, by targeting less popular keywords means that you stand a better chance in the serps.

How to get organic traffic

This method is referred to as achieving first page results on big search engines such as Google organically or naturally compare to the big brands that pay Google for advertising that pushes their sites onto the first page of the results. Part of this keyword strategy is the use of long tail keywords; this is a keyword with four or more words to it for example let’s take the 2nd phrase from the above results “why do we use keywords”.

This would be a good long tail keyword to use for your content, search volume is 64, competition is 21 sites and the SEO or difficulty is green meaning good, the chances of making it onto the first page of the rankings are much higher than if you just used the “seed keyword”. Now you can see how to use a keyword tool to give ideas or long tail keywords that are useful for website content that is SEO optimized for best rankings in the search engine result.

What is SEO (search engine optimization)?

SEO or search engine is practise of maximizing your site or blog content so that these search robots understand exactly what each post is about and how it can answer the question posed by a person searching on the internet on the best possible way. Sorry if that sounds a little long winded the shorter version of SEO means the method of increasing quality and quantity of traffic (website visitors) through organic search (not paid) results.

What is the breakdown of SEO?

To fully understand what the exact meaning of SEO is let’s break it down into smaller parts:

• Traffic quality

A website needs quality traffic or traffic that comes to it by natural means, in other words a real person types a word or phrase into their browser and are immediately directed to the site that best answers their question as determined by the serps.

• Traffic quantity

Traffic quantity is so much better when it is achieved organically in terms of the target market because you are reaching people that without having to pay.

How does SEO work?

How you organise your website content and the search engines are closely linked, as soon as you write your content using a chosen keyword it will when published be indexed by the search engines , they use a scoring system to determine exactly what your post means, what the images on your post mean, how long is your post, does it have links to other pages on your site and a plethora of other variables.

These results are then fed into an algorithm that attempts to match all the data with a search query from someone searching the world wide web. Learning the art of SEO is paramount to the success of your online endeavours, I have put together a post on how to SEO your website here.

Website optimization

Website optimization is the practice of using meta tags, meta descriptions, headings, images, internal and external links, readability score to make each post on a website understandable to a search engine robot, not a real person! Having said that the content that you write has to be first and foremost written for human beings in a way that is easy to find and understand.

How to learn SEO

If you are scratching your head when it comes to the question of SEO don’t worry this website was built to help people understand fully how to do SEO and become successful at getting posts right onto the first page of Google. Take a good look around go to the top of the site and click under SEO there is a ton of information there just waiting for you. Once you grasp how to do SEO its then time to apply it to your site even if it is an older site. Here are the top six step by step things that you can implement immediately to your site that will enhance your website ranking.

1. Create an SEO friendly site

Work to improve the SEO of your site by following these SEO tips.

2. Create SEO friendly content

SEO friendly content means a well-researched long tail keyword SEO optimized posts where you utilize alt description in the images, use your keyword throughout the content but not spamming it, use H1 and H2 headers, link to relevant posts, create internal reference links.

3. Submit your content to the search engines

4. Use Google console to determine what keywords your site is being found for, the click through rate and the keyword position overall.

5. Link topics

Learn in a deeper way about anchor links, redirection, 404 dead links, find out about do follow, do not follow, find out how to build quality backlinks to your site by following this guide.

6. Keep up to date on SEO

SEO is changing as people’s habits change, it’s important to keep abreast of any changes so that you can keep your site up to date, keep checking in to this site by leaving your email fir further SEO updates here.

Conclusion

I hope that you have found this post on how to do keyword research and SEO helpful, just to conclude these are the most relevant points to remember

• Use a quality keyword tool

• Find long tail keywords that aren’t too competitive

• Create content using the best SEO practises

• Use images that have alt description

• Use H1 and H2 headers

• Link each post to other relevant content

• Use reference authority sites links

• Submit your posts to the search engines

• Monitor your sites progress in Google search console

• Make necessary changes

• Keep abreast of SEO changes

References

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank