Keyword research is a kind of practice by search engine optimization (SEO) professionals to find and research the “search terms”; those users enter into search engines when looking for products, services or general information on the web. Search engine optimization professionals’ first research keywords (search terms), and then align web pages with these keywords to achieve better rankings in search engines. Once they find a niche keyword, they expand on it to find similar keywords. Keyword suggestion tools usually aid the process, like the Google Ads Keyword Planner, which offers a thesaurus and alternative keyword suggestions. Google's first party data also aids this research through the likes of Google autocomplete or People Also Ask.
Keywords are the foundation of SEO. If nobody is searching for what you’re writing about, you won’t get traffic from Google, no matter how hard you try. Keyword research is the process of discovering words and phrases that people use in search engines, like Google, Bing and YouTube. Keyword research provides you with specific search data that can help you answer questions like:
- What are people searching for?
- How many people are searching for it?
- In what format do they want that information?
The objective of keyword research is to generate, with good precision and recall, a large number of terms that are highly relevant yet non-obvious to the given input keyword. The process of keyword research involves brainstorming and the use of keyword research tools.
To achieve the best SEO results, it is important to optimize a website's content as well as backlinks for the most relevant keywords. It is good practice to search for related keywords that have low competition and still a high number of searches. This makes it easier to achieve a higher rank in search engines which usually results in higher web traffic. The downside of this practice is that the website is optimized for alternative keywords instead of the main
keyword; main keywords might be very difficult to rank for due to high competition. There are three essential concepts to consider when conducting keyword research. Good keywords are closely related to the subject of the website. Most search engines use an internal quality system to check website relevance related to possible keywords, a non-relevant keyword is unlikely to rank well for a website. Good keywords that are highly competitive are less likely to rank in the top. Keywords that have no monthly searches are believed to generate little to no traffic and therefore of little value for SEO. Keyword stuffing in a web page should be avoided. Keyword research also helps you to answer questions like:
- How hard will it be to rank for this keyword?
- How much traffic am I likely to get if I rank for this keyword?
- What kind of content should I create to rank for this keyword?
- Are people searching for this keyword likely to become my customers?
- Finding the right answers to these questions will help you pick your battles wisely