What is the purpose of keyword research

What to write about ….never normally a problem for most bloggers.

But what your audience wants you to write about …..that is a different matter.

Keyword research has the purpose of finding the queries that people type into the search engines in order to find the answers they seek. Finding relevant queries you can answer will help your site become an authority within your niche.

Finding the queries that people within your niche are looking for is the main purpose of keyword research, this way you are talking to your niche directly.

But how do you do that….

What are searchers looking for

A lot of people are using the internet to find information, answers to question, researching topics, comparing products, or looking to buy products.

Using search engines is one of the easiest methods of finding this information.

You tend to build up a relationship with your own favorite search engine…’I like this one because….’

But a lot of people turn to Google

So imagine you are looking to replace your phone…always a nightmare…

Through the head of the searcher goes loads of questions…

If they have a specific brand they like then that goes in first…so ‘Samsung’ and maybe ‘latest phones’.

Now Google responds with the most relevant results it can find to satisfy the searcher and ideally they will click on one of the ads at the top and make google a bit more money…but if not google wants to keep the searcher interested in using it’s service.

So up pop a load of results with :

  • Compare the latest
  • Browse the latest
  • 9 best Samsung

Google tries to determine the intent of the searcher – why did they type this into the query box – what information were they looking for – does it have commercial intent ( remember Google is a business…).

Choosing the ‘9 best…’, as the others were the manufacturers sites and really not that interesting…

You can now see almost at a glance :

  • The best overall
  • The biggest screen
  • The most compact
  • The most featured

So this searcher maybe satisfied with their results and time spent on the site indicates to Google that it has done it’s job.

This searcher may now decide on a specific model and type that into Google to find similar phones either from the same manufacturer or different ones, whether anyone has found faults with it, is it easy to use, etc.

And you are narrowing down towards the purchase of the phone.

So searcher are really all about ‘WIIFM’ or What’s In It for Me ,and this is what you, as a blogger, need to satisfy…

But first you need to find out what searchers are typing into the search engines to create content about them.

What makes a good keyword

Searchers are typing in queries all day long, 4.9 billion and counting, so how do you find them and more importantly – what makes a good keyword.

The easiest way is to let google tell you.

A lot of the times if you have gone through some courses you are told – use a keyword tools to find the keywords….

I agree in principle, but they don’t give you the whole story….

They don’t tell you, at a glance who is ranking at the top…

Are there other questions that are better …

Or related searches you maybe never thought of….

Typing into Google ‘what’s the best Samsung phone’

Gave back the questions :

  • What is the best Samsung phone 2020?
  • Which Samsung phone is best?
  • Which Samsung phone has the best camera?
  • What is the best samsung mid range phone?

It maybe a small change in the words for the second question but it may make a big difference in who is ranking at the top of page one and whether you have a chance of ranking.

The query itself is a bit subjective – you are giving your opinion on which is the best – so the searcher must have a little trust in you and your words.

And looking at the top results they are all authority sites with no chance of a beginner site ranking.

Changing the query to the other ‘which Samsung phone is best’ gives similar sites at the top.…so a good keyword – a bit ambiguous, but very competitive.

So you need to find the smaller markets – say those looking at just the cameras in the phones – again the top sites are all authority sites – but it gives me the idea to use the autocomplete for ‘ Which Samsung phone has the best’

I cheated a little as I use a wonderful tool that looks at the google autocomplete called keyword researcher pro by clever Gizmos – I really am a fan of the keyword part and some of the other bits as I talk about in this review…

But it came up with 98 results…..going from a through z..

A quick filter on the number of words greater than 7 showed one that i took as promising  – which Samsung phone has the best battery life.

Putting that into Google there are no sites at the top that are on target ( that answer that query…) meaning that google doesn’t have any relevant sites for that specific query and there maybe a chance for a young site to have a chance of ranking….

With a bit of research into how long the battery life is on each model and a table for easy comparison of that and other uses factors – i suspect that that could be an article which does well in the SERPs ( Search engine Result Pages).

So what makes a good keyword – well one that there are no other results for that particular query on page one of google.

Ideally one where you have forums answering the question.

But it must make sense, be a complete answerable query and be answered in between 1000 and 4000 words…

I talked a little about one of the tools i use above, but how does the research they do benefit you as a blogger…

How does keyword research benefit you

You can come into creating a blog with the intention of talking about yourself, your lifestyle and what you benefits of keyword researchaccomplish.

Unfortunately most people are not interested, and even you nan may give up after a few months….

Realizing most people are interested in what we talked about above WIIFM, you are going to have to put you aside and give value to your niche.

So you find keywords, as shown above, and create content that helps them solve their problem.

If you can create your posts in such a way that you internally link to other posts that they maybe interested in then you become more valuable to them.

Again all of these posts are keyword driven – some maybe more highly competitive and not ranked but linked to from other more easily ranked articles.

But the value of keywords, especially choosing the right ones to be able to rank highly at the start of your online journey cannot be stated highly enough.

They can be the difference between your site growing or gathering dust.

And the realization that you only have a business when you get traffic buying through your site – other than that it is a hobby blog…

You need to learn how to gather the keywords that you will create articles about and also learn about SEO ( Search Engine Optimization) – how to satisfy the search engines – but always satisfy the needs of your niche first.

As you write the article you will add other keywords which Google will pick up on and also look at the relevance of your article compared to others ( along with over 200 other factors affecting ranking…)

Once you get started there is one thing that is more valuable than money, and you will find that there is never enough of it – no matter what you do, there is always something else that needs attention.

But the thing that is more valuable than money …is time….

And one way you can save time is by using tools.

So are the keyword tools worth looking at….

Keyword tools – are they worth it

If you type keyword tools into Google you get 449 million results ( according to the top of google ) but scrolling down and clicking on the last page – google showed me that there were 177 real results…

So out of all the keyword tools what do you pick, free or paid…

What data are you looking for…

If there was one that showed which keywords were really that easy to rank for then everybody would be using it….but it would be very expensive as well…

For me the answer came down to what I wanted, and that was information to sift through.

I am a member of a program called wealthy affiliates and they have a built in keyword tool called jaaxy.

It’s ok, but a bit limited on the information to returns…very good for beginners…

So I had to look elsewhere.

One free one I came across seemed to answer my requirements – called keyword shitter (no kidding…but apparently pronounced sheeter….).

There is now a second version called keyword shitter 2 and that is even better.

You put in a seed keyword ( a one or two word keyword to add other words to on the topic you are after, so in our example above Samsung mobile or Samsung phone).

And it returns all the keywords it can find from the google autocomplete…and there can be thousands….

You now have to filter, grade, sort and test for the ones you can use.

And that is sort of what most of the paid tools do, just to save you time.

Or you can create a spreadsheet and setup the filters yourself…

As i said above the one i have stuck with and tend to use daily is Keyword Researcher Pro, and as it is updated for life for free and a one time payment rather than monthly…..

So are keyword tools worth it.…yes and no.

If it gives you valuable keywords that you can use to create content that will rank….yes.

If it saves you time finding the keywords….yes.

If it overwhelms you and you don’t find the data useful…no.

If it doesn’t allow filtering, sorting or selecting then…no.

Would I recommend a keyword tool…yes to save you time, but try a few out to find the type you get on with….as I say personally I really like keyword Researcher Pro…

Keyword research…the last word

So what is the purpose of keyword research…to help your business grow…

If you know what your niche want, you can create content to satisfy them.

And to get to know this requirement, you need to know what they are asking.

As they will be using search engines, then using the collected data from these will be useful to find these keywords.

A lot of keyword tools use the massive database of collected information.

And some perform it live…

Learning how to perform keyword research will help your business grow.

But you must understand the market you are in and the people you want to attract first.

So creating an ideal persona and detailing the purpose of your site is extremely important.

Here are some keyword tools for you to try:

  • Keyword researcher pro (free limited tool, paid pro version)
  • Long tail pro (7 day free trial,paid version)
  • Serpstat ( free limited tool, paid version)
  • Keyword shitter (free tool)
  • Keyword shitter 2 (fre tool)
  • Ubersuggest (free limited tool, paid tool)
  • Jaaxy (very lmited free tool, paid version)
  • Ahrefs (limited free tool, paid version)
  • Wordstream (limited free tool, paid version)
  • Rb keyword research  (wordpress free plugin)
  • Keyword research ( free wordpress plugin)
  • Spyfu (free limited version, paid tool)

As you can see from the short list above the free versions of the tools are limited or you need to do more work post getting the list ( keyword sheeter).

So have a look at each one and see which you like – leave a comment below if you find another which is good.

I really like the ones which will show the questions easily – this way you get ieas for blog posts quickly…( keyword researcher pro, wordstream, serpstat)

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