How To Find Best Keywords For SEO

Keywords are the most important part of search engine optimization.

If you want your website to gain much-needed traffic, it has to rank for the right keywords searched for by internet users in a particular niche.

To help you find the best keywords for SEO, our team of SEO experts with over a decade of experience has gathered all the practical knowledge you need in this article.

Quick Summary

What Are Keywords?

Keywords are search engine queries that govern the content on your website. The purpose of a keyword on your website is to be the first point of call whenever an internet user searches for it.

This means you will likely rank on the first page of several search engines and gain a solid amount of traffic, which is highly beneficial to any website.

How To Find The Best Keywords For SEO

If you want to find the best keywords for SEO, you will have to follow these steps:

1. Do A Keyword Research To Find A List Of Keywords

The first thing you need to do is get a list of keywords through keyword research. You can do this by using the best keyword research tools, such as Ahrefs Keyword Explorer. This will save you the stress of having to perform the research manually.

Most keyword research tools will require you to provide a seed keyword. Once this is done, you will be provided with related keywords and their monthly search volume.

2. Focus On Keywords With Solid Traffic Potential

The essence of ranking for a keyword is to attract a reasonable amount of traffic to your website. Hence, there is no point in working with keywords that do not have this attribute.

To find out what are the keywords with a high traffic potential, you have to know what people are searching for, and you can do this using Google’s Keyword Planner or Ahref’s Keyword research tool.

You can also use tools that provide precise keyword search volume estimates, which is very important for determining keywords with high traffic volumes.

3. Use Keywords That Are Relevant To Your Business

As much as keywords are important, you can’t afford to use ones unrelated to the type of business you do or the niche to which you belong.

Rather, you should focus on keywords that strongly correlate with your business or what some might call “strong business value”.

The higher the keyword’s business value, the higher the chances that your website will attract the right visitors who may end up becoming your clients.

4. Use Keywords With High Profitability

Before you proceed to rank for any keyword, you need to ask yourself if that keyword will be highly profitable for your business website.

For example, if you run an e-commerce store, you need to ask yourself if the keyword you are ranking for is based on an e-commerce product you have on sale.

If it is, then you are on the right path because your website directly relates to that keyword and efficiently solves the problem posed by it.

However, if the keyword is based on some other form of content, you have to ask yourself if your page can work with it so that you do not make the grave mistake of ranking for keywords with low profitability.

5. Determine The Keyword Difficulty Level Before You Rank

You may have gotten the right keywords and all that. But the next thing you should ask yourself is if your website can rank for that keyword.

This is because stiff competition makes keywords with very high difficulty levels harder to rank. To know which keywords have low or high difficulty levels, simply use the keyword difficulty score (KDS), a feature you will find in most SEO tools.

This keyword difficulty score tool will give you an idea of which keywords have low difficulty and which have a high difficulty, so you can decide which to go for.

In most cases, keywords with high difficulty levels imply that you will need more backlinks if you are going to rank well on search engine results pages.

What To Keep In Mind When Choosing The Best Keywords For SEO

There are certain factors you should look out for when choosing the best keywords for SEO. 

Relevance

Before you decide to work with a particular keyword, you have to make sure that your content will meet the intent for which that keyword was brought about in the first place. Your content should also be the best source out there for that keyword.

When you achieve this, Google will rank your website highly since keyword relevance is one of its most important factors.

Volume

You should work with keywords that are certain to get regular searches on the internet. This way, once you have it included in your website content, you will be able to gain traffic for it since the keyword has a large search volume.

Authority

When putting keywords into your content, try as much as possible to make it authoritative. This way, Google will believe that your content is highly valuable and will pick your website as its first choice before others.

Also, in terms of authority, avoid using keywords that well-known, authoritative sites such as Yahoo News, Forbes, Healthline, etc., have already overused because your chances of outranking them become very slim.

Types Of Keywords

For SEO, there are indeed numerous types of keywords. Here, I will discuss the most important ones you should take note of for your website.

1. Short-Tail Keywords

Short-tail keywords are phrases searched for online and usually begin a keyword research process. For example, “bottle” is a short-tail keyword, and this word alone will generate tons of similar keywords.

2. Keywords by Search Intent

Search intent is the reason behind a user’s keyword, and this could be divided into four categories, as shown below:

3. Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords usually combine three or more words that get a few searches per month. This type of keyword is specific and easy to rank for because it is less competitive.

4. Niche Keywords

In this case, users are seeking answers from a specialized or targeted audience on the internet search for these keywords.

For example, if you search for something like “a crocodile-patterned vest”, you are probably focusing on those in the fashion space, and the item in question might even be rare.

This means if you decide to include it on your website, it will most likely be easy to rank for and will bring you small but high-quality traffic quickly.

5. Branded And Unbranded Keywords

Ranking for branded keywords will allow your website to attract visitors who are looking to get some type of information from your business.

Ranking for unbranded keywords, on the other hand, will only attract users who are searching for information about a product or service related to your business who do not know your brand and what it stands for.

Why Are Keywords Important For SEO?

Keywords are important for SEO because they help you answer the queries internet users are searching for.

Remember that to enjoy these benefits, you have to run regular keyword checks to know if you should remove no longer valuable keywords and update your website with new ones.

4 SEO Tools To Find The Best Keywords

There are tons of SEO tools out there, but the following are some of the best tools for finding relevant keywords:

1. Ahrefs Keyword Explorer

Ahrefs is the best SEO tool on the market, and its Keyword Explorer allows you to discover thousands of great keyword ideas, analyze their difficulty levels, and calculate their traffic potential.

You will also get to know the search volume, CPC, and global volume for each keyword.

2. Semrush

Semrush is a search engine optimization tool with six keyword tools for you to work with. However, priority should be given to its Keyword Magic Tool because it provides a database of 24 billion keywords and all the metrics you need, such as intent, search volumes, and trends.

3. Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is a free keyword tool that helps you identify new keywords, find related keywords, determine the number of searches, and the level of competition.

All you need to use the Google Keyword Planner is to set up a Google Ads account, and you are good to go.

4. Keyword.io

Keyword.io is an SEO keyword research tool that provides you with hundreds of keyword suggestions for free. This tool derives its keywords from various search engines, not just Google.

As such, you only need to sign up, choose your preferred search engine, and input your keyword, and it will show you a list of related keywords.

Every search by a user demands relevant results, and keywords integrated throughout a website’s copy tell the algorithm exactly what information is included.
– Summit Ghimire, Founder of Outpace

How SEO Agencies Can Help You Find The Best Keywords For SEO

Finding the right keywords for SEO is great, but this requires skill and a lot of time to get it right.

Several SEO agencies can help you with this and much more, should you lack the expertise or the time to do it.

Given that they have SEO experts working with them, you can be sure that your website will most likely be on the first page of any search engine for a chosen keyword.

The fundamental point of SEO is to connect a search with the most relevant content. When you craft content and audit your page, always keep social SEO in mind and optimise every facet of your social footprint to connect with a relevant search.
– Rebecca Kowalewicz, Vice President at Clearbridge Branding Agency

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How Do I Know If A Keyword Is Trending?

You will know if the keyword is trending by simply typing the keyword into the Google Trends tool or other similar tools, and it will show you its historical search volume over time, which is an indication.

What Is A Good Keyword Search Volume?

A good keyword search volume is between 100 and 1000 searches a month. If it is more, even better, as this is an indication that it will provide a decent amount of traffic for your website.

What Are The Three Main Factors That Go Into Choosing A Keyword?

The three main factors that go into choosing a keyword are authority, relevance, and search volume. These factors will help you decide if a keyword should be included on your web page or not.

What Is The Best Source Of Keywords?

The best source of keywords are search engines. For example, Google and Bing. Tons of keyword tools usually get their keywords from these search engines.

Improve Your Website’s SEO With The Best Keywords Today

Using the right keywords for your website will make it stand out from competitors and rank high on all search engines.

Good optimization is the key to online success, so never underestimate the power of strong keywords.

To achieve this, you will need to learn how to do keyword research so that you only focus on the keywords that matter.

Article by

Matt Diggity

Matt is the founder of Diggity Marketing, LeadSpring, The Search Initiative, The Affiliate Lab, and the Chiang Mai SEO Conference. He actually does SEO too.

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