Hello guys I’m Ace. Today you’re going to learn exactly how to find the best keywords for your business.
When I first got started with SEO. My approach to keyword research was A total mess back then. I’d fire up the latest and greatest keyword, research tool and start typing in a bunch of random keywords.
So, what’s wrong with this approach?
My competitors were doing the exact same thing! No wonder most of the keywords I found were insanely competitive. Now, over the years, I developed a keyword research blueprint that works. Well, specifically, this blueprint for beginners will help you uncover keywords. That your competition doesn’t know about.
So let’s dive right in with step number one of this process. Which is to identify your customer persona.
This is a step that most people skip and it hurts them.
What is identifying your customer persona actually mean?
Let me explain with an example: what if my site sells SEO training products. To small and medium-sized businesses. Most people in my position would open up a keyword research tool. And type in things like SEO, training and SEO courses into the tool.
What’s the problem with this approach?
First off, like I mentioned before. Your competition is doing the exact same thing. Which means you’re going to run into the exact same set of keywords as your competitors. But more important than that. This approach ignores a very important fact about your customer. The fact of the matter is, your customer spends 99.9 percent of their time online, not searching for what you sell.
In other words, if you only target your customer when they search for the exact thing you sell. You’re missing out on hundreds of other opportunities to get in front of them.
For example, in my case.
I noticed that most of my customers were SEO agencies.
So I went to forums and online communities where SEO agency owners tended to hang out that way.
I could see what my target cost would search for when he wasn’t searching for SEO training. I discovered that there are dozens of keywords that my target customer typed into Google. That were related to my products, but had nothing to do with SEO training. Keywords like, On-Page SEO, list building, how to get more traffic and SEO tools.
If I target these keywords. I could get my business in front of thousands of my target customers every single day. When my target customer is ready to buy, I’m the first person that comes to mind. That’s the power of doing keyword research. Based on your customer persona.
All you need to do for this step. Is say my customer is X.
For example.
If you want an online flower shop. You might say my customer is a bride, getting ready for her upcoming wedding. How it was easy right now that you’ve identified your customer persona. It’s time to find topics that your customer is interested in.
Which leads us to step two in my keyword, research blueprint. Which is to find topics that your customers care about.
So how do you find these topics?
Go to where your target customer hangs out online.
Then look for serious topics that they tend to discuss.
That’s it!
For example, in my case.
My customers tend to hang out at marketing focused communities like inbound dot org. In your case, your target customer may hang out in places like. Pinterest, Reddit, YouTube, industry, blogs and niche forums. Once you’ve identified where your target customer hangs out. It’s time to keep an eye out for topics that are important to them.
For example, in my case.
I notice that link building. Was one of the most popular topics in the online communities, that my audience spent time on. So I wrote down link building as a topic. I then kept digging until I found at least five topics. That our customers talked about in online communities. Now that you have at least five topics. It’s time to drill down into finding keywords.
My four favorite tactics are finding untapped keywords. That your competition doesn’t know about.
First, we have Google Suggest to use this strategy.
Head over to Google and type your topic into the search field, but don’t press Enter. Instead, take a look at the queue words that google suggest for you. These are usually awesome. Longtail keywords that you can go after.
Pro Tip: try putting a few spaces before your keyword. This will show you a completely different set of keyword, ideas.
Next up we have Quora dot com.
Quora is a massive community of people that ask and answer questions on every topic under the sun. All you need to do is search for your topic in Cora and see which keywords tend to show up.
The next tactic for finding keywords is to use Reddit.
Like Quora, Reddit is a massive community of people that discuss every topics. From pets to politics. You can use Reddit for keyword research as well. Head over to Reddit and search for your topic. When you find a thread on your topic. Keep an eye out for words and phrases that tend to come up again and again. These make awesome keyword, ideas.
Next up, we have Google’s Search.
To use this feature, simply type your topic into Google Search. Then scroll to the bottom of the results. Google then shows you other searches that are related to the keyword you just put in. These are usually excellent, longtail keywords that you can target with your content.
Finally, we have Wikipedia.
What other site has in-depth articles for topics like. Dog walking, the lingerie football league and yes. The five-second rule to use Wikipedia for keywords research. Head over to Wikipedia and type in your topic. Then take a look at the other entries that that article links to.
These are usually closely related topics and even potential keywords themselves. Also make sure to check out the table of contents for that entry. Again, these are usually keywords that are closely tied to your topic. Now, do you have a list of potential keywords? It’s time to choose the best from your list.
How?
By analyzing each keywords commercial intent. One of the first websites I ever built. Shot to the top of google for my target keyword. And because that keyword, got a ton ff search volume. That single ranking helped that site generate over 10,000 unique visitors per month. All good right? Wrong! Even though that keyword got to ton of searches. The people that search for that keyword were flat broke. Which made monetizing that traffic impossible. Sorry dude I’m broke!
That’s why today I pay very close attention to a keyword’s commercial intent.
Commercial intent means – how likely someone searching for a given keyword is to buy from you.
Here’s how to find out if your keyword has a high commercial intent or not.
First, head over to the Google Keyword planner.
Type in one of your potential keywords. Then take a look at the suggested bid column. This shows you how much advertisers are spending in Adwords for a single click from this keyword. Obviously, the higher the suggested bid. The more valuable that keyword is another simple way to size.
A commercial intent is to see how many AdWords ads appear. When you search for your keyword in Google. If you search for your keyword and see lots of AdWords ads. It means that people are chomping at the bit to bring those searchers to their site.
Ok now it’s time for our last step, which is to look at each keyword’s search volume.
Back in the day, Google would show you exact search volume numbers in the Google Keyword planner. Unfortunately, that ship has sailed today unless you’re running active, AdWords campaigns. They show you an extremely unhelpful search volume range. So how can you see how many people search for your keywords? There are two freemium tools that get the job done.
The first is SEMrush. To find a keyword’s search volume. Type the keyword in to SEMrush. They’ll show you how many searches that keyword gets every month. You can also use kW finder dot com. Just pop your keyword into the tool and you’ll see the exact amount of searches that it gets every month.
Now before we decide on a keyword. I recommend one last bonus step. Now this step is completely optional. But in my experience it helps you find the absolute best keywords for your business. That step is, to look at your keyword’s growth in Google Trends.
For example.
Let’s say that you found two keywords. That have similar search volume and commercial intent. You don’t know which one to pick. But when you look at Google Trends. You notice that one keyword is growing in popularity and the other is dropping like a stone. Obviously, you’d want to go with the keyword that’s growing a couple of years ago.
This step saved my butt. I was debating whether to target one of two keywords. Google Keyword tool or Google Keyword Planner. You see, Google had renamed the Google Keyword tool. To the Google Keyword planner. But the keyword, Google Keyword tool. Still got 20 times more searches than Google Keyword planner. So I almost pulled the trigger on Google Keyword tool.
That is until I looked at Google Trends. That’s when I noticed that searches for the Google Keyword planner were skyrocketing. While searches for the Google Keyword tool were steadily dropping.
I decided to go with the Google Keyword planner and it was a good move. I now rank in the top five for that keyword and it’s a keyword. That’s growing in popularity every day.
Ok, so that’s it!
There is to my steps to the keyword research blueprint for beginners. If you follow the blueprint. You should have a handful of excellent keywords that you can use. Once you have those. It’s a matter of creating landing pages and content optimize around those terms.
If you liked this article make sure to subscribe to my blog. Also, if you want exclusive SEO techniques that I only share with subscribers. Sign up for the newsletter it’s free. Now, I want to turn it over to you which steps from this article was new to you, or maybe you try them all already? If so, you probably have a favorite technique that works well for you either way.
Let me know by leaving a quick comment.
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