Keyword Research for SEO: The Ultimate Guide for Beginners (2024)

Using the right keywords will increase search engine traffic.

Optimize your website keywords to achieve your company goals…

How many times have you received such advice during your path as a business owner or wannabe SEO?

Probably a lot.

That’s because keywords and keyword research are the first things you should understand if you want to expand your internet business through search engine optimization.

I’ve been in your situation before, and I know how useful keyword research can be for anyone, including you and me.

And therefore,

This guide was written to help a beginner like you understand the most fundamental concept of SEO: keyword research.

Even if you’ve never understood keyword research or how to execute it, this article will explain everything.

My goal today is to teach you about:

• What is Keyword Research?
• What is the value of keyword research?
• How can keyword research help you?
• How do you perform keyword research?

Let’s start with the basics…

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is the act of identifying terms that will deliver targeted traffic to your organization. This is primarily accomplished by determining how your target users discover similar websites.

Let me simplify it.

When we are looking for a solution to an issue, we utilize a search engine such as “Google” or “Duckduckgo”.

We anticipate the search engine to provide a solution on the first page of results, often known as SERP.

Keyword research allows us to find the “phrases,” “words,” and “questions” that the general public searches for utilizing a search engine.

When we know what types of queries users (a lot) are asking through search engines, we may optimize or build new pages to assist users in finding the answer and use that traffic to promote our business.

Alternatively, using the same keywords (queries), you may run PPC advertising on platforms such as Google advertising or Facebook Ads to generate traffic to your or your client’s sites.

In technical words;

The purpose of keyword research is to identify “topics” and “ideas” that your target audience frequently uses and attribute a business value to them. Another way to look at keyword research is that it allows you to find the questions and inquiries that your target customers are asking on the internet, giving you the advantage of speaking the language your customers understand.

Let me explain this with an example:

Let’s imagine a new father who wishes to buy a stroller for his child. He searches Google for “best baby stroller” to find the greatest brand. Something like this…

Since Google search is intelligent, it auto-populates a large number of regularly used searches to assist the Blogger in asking the appropriate query.

Now, depending on his location and understanding, the father will remain with his question or choose one given by Google.

Now, the search engine keeps track of how frequently these inquiries are requested by millions of users worldwide.

Keyword research reveals the most frequent inquiry, as well as geolocation, and the number of times these inquiries have been asked in a given period (for example, 30 days).

As a business owner, these statistics will help you determine which of these questions you should answer on your website, allowing users to discover your website and the solution.

The solution ultimately assists owners in driving more focused traffic from search engines, which leads to direct sales, ad sales, or even affiliate sales.

Here’s how SEO keyword research can help.

With a little preparation, you can bring large traffic to your blog or business, allowing you to get the most out of your efforts.

The practice of optimizing your term for search engines is known as “on-page SEO”.

That is a topic for expert users, but today we are going to go deep into keyword research.

Performing keyword research allows you to gain experience in the business quickly. Because you are combining data with emotions, you will be able to enhance your productivity.

Let’s use an example…

Using keyword research tools, we may determine which keyword “Also known as queries, question, the search term” a parent is using on a search engine to locate a solution.

The following result is from a tool called “Semrush“, which shows comparable queries with a lot of data, as shown below.

Let’s try to figure out what’s going on in this image. (Don’t worry if you cannot understand everything; it’s common for a beginning.)

1. Keyword: This is the query that consumers use to find the best baby stroller. This is the term that we “target” when conducting SEO, hence we commonly refer to it as the “target keyword” or the “focus keyword.”

2. Volume: This indicates roughly how many people search for that certain keyword in a given month. This is a crucial indicator because, even if you believe a search term will be popular, search data will show you otherwise. In the preceding example, you can see two comparable keywords with a significant variance in monthly search traffic.

• SEO plugin for WordPress: 880 searches per month
• Best SEO plugin for WordPress: 260 searches per month.

3. Trend: This one helps you whether the keyword trend is increasing (more people are searching) or decreasing. For example, iPhone 11 Pro may be a popular phrase in 2019-2020, but as new iPhones are released, this word loses value. As we progress through our keyword research guide, you will gain greater awareness of this.

4. Keyword difficulty: This is an important indicator that can help you determine how difficult or easy it will be to rank for a desired keyword on Google’s first page. To rank such queries, these tools compare all of the existing ranking pages for things like “On-page SEO”, “Backlink profile”, “domain authority”, and a few others. The lower the keyword difficulty, the easier it will be to rank for.

When you begin keyword research, you will receive several matrices similar to this.

In a nutshell, keyword research enables you to make decisions based on information. In case you didn’t know, data is the new oil.

Before we move ahead,

Moving ahead, let’s look at the benefits of keyword research.

What is the importance of keyword research?

1. Not all keywords are equal, and we’ll try to measure this. Keyword research can benefit your business in the following ways:

2. Keyword research allows you to understand the language used by your target audience on search engines. We often start with Google search because it is the most popular search engine.

3. It assists you in identifying untapped inquiries that may immediately lead to paid clients from organic searches on Google, Baidu, and other platforms.

4. Market and customer trends: Conducting keyword research regularly can assist you in understanding where the market and customers are headed.

5. Competitive edge: By incorporating keywords and SEO before your competition, you will gain a significant advantage. If done correctly in a less competitive field, it can help you gain a lot of backlinks as a first-mover advantage.

6. Reduce PPC Cost: Keywords SEO will assist you in driving traffic for free, which is typically paid for by businesses through PPC. Such organic ranking could drastically lower your company’s digital marketing costs.

7. More Ad revenue: Marketers and bloggers who rely on income from Google AdSense or Setupad might use Keyword research to uncover high CPC phrases and so greatly improve their ad revenue, with the same effort.

There are many more benefits to keyword research, but the ones listed above are the most important.

Here’s a less-known fact regarding keyword research:

Many individuals believe that keyword research entails simply discovering high-volume terms, which is incorrect.

Your job as an SEO specialist is to delete terms that will not promote your business in any manner. Furthermore, once you’ve identified profitable keywords, you’ll discover how to prioritize them for maximum results in the shortest amount of time.

I’m not going to go into detail about how you should target it, but if you’re interested, you should read these two guides:

• How to Write SEO-Friendly Content
• On-Page SEO Guide: The Only Guide You’ll Ever Need

The good thing about keyword research abilities is that once practiced, they improve over time.

Now it’s time to delve into the fundamentals of keyword research.

Types of Keywords Based on User Intent

In the prior example of “SEO,” a blogger may have a different intent while asking the inquiry. For example:

• A blogger writes a post about “best coffee shops in New York City.”
• A blogger creates a detailed guide on “how to start a blog.”
• A blogger focuses on producing high-quality, engaging content about “healthy recipes for beginners.”
• A blogger writes a comprehensive review of the “latest smartphones in 2024.”

Do you see how the same question has multiple meanings when used for different purposes? This is known as search intent.

This leads us to the point: that keywords can be classified into several categories depending on the user’s purpose.

Here are the 4 most common types:

1. Commercial Keywords
2. Transactional Keywords
3. Informational Keywords
4. Navigational Keywords

These 4 types determine which keywords will directly affect your revenue. This is also strongly tied to the content funnel (TOFU, MOFU, BOFU), but it is a lesson for another day.

Other approaches to organizing keywords include:

Several words:

• Short tail keywords (also known as head keywords): (Example: SEO Plugin)
• Long-tail keywords. (Example: Best SEO Plugin for WordPress)

What do you need for keyword research?

Here at ShoutDreams, I have a unique style for researching keywords.

For keyword research, you’ll need the following:

1. A free or paid tool for researching keywords.
2. A list of Seed Words or SEO-competitive domains/businesses. (More on this later.)
3. Utilizing seed words to generate a list of SEO keywords or leveraging competitive websites to locate profitable keywords.
4. A document (excel or equivalent) for capturing and cleaning up the keywords.
5. A process for allocating final keywords for production (creating blog articles, eBooks, video material, product pages)
6. Using a keyword rank tracking tool to find out rankings.

When you implement keyword research into your business marketing strategy, it allows you to expand organically.

I define the steps of keyword research as follows:

• Research
• Cleanup
• Execute/Delegate
• Monitor
• Optimize

These 5 methods cover every aspect of keyword research.

Now that I believe we’re on the same page, let’s learn how to conduct keyword research.

3 Different strategies for keyword research:

There are various strategies you might use to investigate SEO keywords. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular, which may be carried out by anyone.

This is perhaps the simplest technique to uncover keywords that are already effective for an existing website. During this procedure, we identify 2 to 3 top websites in the niche we are targeting. For example, “Best SEO Plugin”.

A quick Google search provided the findings for these top three websites. You might repeat the process for your goal keyword, and once you’ve identified the top 3 or 4 winning websites, go to Semrush, a keyword research tool.

On the Semrush dashboard, enter the domain name from your Google search and utilize it to find keywords for which the domain ranks.

Semrush will show you all the important details, such as:

• Which keyword receives the most traffic to the particular website?
• The volume, traffic percentage, KD, and keyword position
• Which page on the website receives traffic for what keyword?

Semrush also allows you to filter keywords based on a variety of characteristics. If you require a more extensive guide, please let me know in the comments area below.

And in minutes, you’ve discovered Pandora’s box of valuable keywords for your firm.

This is an underappreciated keyword research strategy that can help you identify terms that your competitors rank for but you do not. This is a good place for an established website to find low-hanging fruit.

This applies to both new and existing websites. This takes longer than the other two ways, but it will help you find unique keywords that no one else is targeting.

You can utilize this strategy with keyword research tools or a long-tail keyword tool.

We’ll use Semrush again to have a better understanding of this strategy.

• Head over to Semrush
• Click the Keyword Magic Tool.

Enter your seed keyword and select the principal country you want to target.

Now, click Search, and Semrush will produce hundreds of keywords based on your seed term in a matter of seconds.

You can filter the keywords using a variety of parameters, including:

• The exact match will include the exact phrase ‘Best SEO Plugin’ with the same word sequence. As a result, you will see searches like ‘Top 5 SEO Plugin’, ‘Where to Search Best SEO Plugin’, ‘Search Best SEO Plugin For WordPress’, and so on.
• The broad match will include all variants of the words ‘purchase’ and ‘new’ and will offer several word order combinations. So you will receive all terms from the exact match plus ”purchase the newest baby stroller’, ‘buy baby stroller new’, ‘buy a super-new baby stroller in New York’, and so on.
• Phrase Match
• Related Keywords

You can do the same thing with Google Keyword Planner (GKP), which is free. The only drawback is that Google’s Keyword Planner tool is designed for PPC and is not particularly useful for SEO keyword research. However, for those on a tight budget, Google’s Keyword Planner service is unhelpful.

Note: In this post, I utilized Semrush, which is my go-to keyword research tool. However, similar tools, such as KWFinder, can be used to achieve the same result.

The above techniques will assist you in capturing the primary keyword. Now that you have the important piece of data, you must do a few things, such as:

• Create a cluster of similar keywords.
• Create an SEO plan to produce new content or product pages and website structure.
• Measuring and optimizing it.

For further reading:

• WordPress Security Guide: 14 Pro Tips to Secure Your WordPress Website
• 7 Best WordPress Themes For Bloggers (Updated 2024)
• Your A to Z Guide To Learn Blogging [Step-by-Step]
• 12 Best WordPress Plugins for Blogs and Business Websites in 2024.

For the time being, I hope this article has helped you understand what keyword research is and how to conduct it.

I understand this is an extensive topic and you may have a few questions. Please use the comments area to ask questions about keyword research.

Also, if you are an expert SEO, please share your keyword research methods in the comments section below.