The SEO's system for themed keyword research.
If Google's Penguin update and Knowledge Graph have taught us anything, it's that concepts have become more important than individual keywords for search marketing.
Many people in the SEO space mistakenly assume that because Google withholds keyword referral data in the form of (not provided), keywords no longer matter.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Every search begins with keywords. Over 5 billion Google searches a day. Consider the following:
- Google's entire business is based on selling keywords – over 40 billion dollars a year, most of it from keyword sales through advertising.
- (not provided) affects only post-click analytics. It doesn't influence the pre-click keywords users type into search boxes.
- Keywords and their meaning remain the primary input search engines use to deliver answers to users (while other inputs such as location data and app integration are on the rise).
Marketers who invest in smart keyword research will continue to have a huge advantage over the competition.
The trick today is turning those keywords into concepts.
From single keywords to themed concepts
When most of us first learned SEO, we learned to research one keyword at a time. We optimized our page for that keyword by placing it in the title tag, in the headline, a few times in the body, and maybe the alt text of a photo.
If we were really fancy we'd optimize a page for two keywords. Oh dear.
In truth, optimizing pages with a single keyword mentality hasn't worked well for a long time.
Content today has to be about something.
The difference today from years past is the shift from individual keywords to concepts. Concepts relate to search marketing in three primary ways:
1. What the user intends
Search engines try to better understand what the user asks by relating that question to concepts. If I search for "movie about tiger on boat" Google will likely understand that I am asking about the movie Life of Pi, not about pages optimized for those specific keywords.
2. What your content is about
Search engines read the keywords on your pages to try and figure out what those pages are conceptually about.
3. Relating concepts to one another
The Knowledge Graph shows us how Google relates concepts to each other. In the case of Life of Pi, this may be showing how the film relates to ratings, reviews, actors, writers, and the cast.
Keyword targeting: the dumb, hard way
In the post How to Rank: 25 Step Master SEO Blueprint, I first addressed the concept of themed keyword research. The guide lists the biggest mistakes people make when choosing keywords. Here's what we want to avoid:
- Choosing keywords that are too broad
- Keywords with too much competition
- Keywords without enough traffic
- Keywords that don't convert
- Trying to rank for one keyword at a time
Instead, let's take the opposite approach.
The basic idea is that we're going to focus our content around ideas instead of keywords, and thus give us the potential to rank for 100s or 1000s of keywords at a time.
The smart system of themed keyword research
Let's explore a new way of thinking about keywords. It requires discarding some of our old ideas and taking advantage of how Google may likely decide what our content is about.
To accomplish this, we'll leverage some obvious truths about search traffic.
Truth #1: Over 70% of the traffic you earn for any given page will come from keywords you didn't try to optimize for.
If you've ever seen a keyword report in your analytics platform or Google Webmaster Tools, you know this is true.
What are these keywords? They may be synonyms, thematically related, or closely related ideas that search engines thought best matched your content. Sometimes they are way off base, but we won't concern ourselves with those.
With this in mind, optimizing for a only a single keyword means ignoring the majority of your potential traffic.
Truth #2: Ranking number one is not a requirement for earning thousands of visits.
Given what we know about point #1, it's often better to rank in position 2 or lower for hundreds or thousands of long tail keywords than it is to rank number one for a single keyword.
Truth #3: The best keyword tools in the world will only show you a fraction of the keywords you can potentially rank for.
Have you ever compared your long tail keyword data with data from Google's own Keyword Planner?
Most of those keywords will show little potential search traffic or won't even register, but you know this isn't true because these are the same keywords that brought you traffic.
Relying on keyword research tools alone won't bring you to your full ranking potential. You need content that fully explores your themed concepts.
Truth #4: Search engines sell keywords grouped into concepts and themes.
We can learn from this strategy.
When you purchase keywords through AdWords, Google suggests keywords to you in tightly grouped themes and ideas. In fact, they do everything they can to discourage you from bidding on individual keywords.
Of course, this is one way for Google to make more money, but it's also because Google knows that concepts are often a better indicator of searcher intent than individual keywords.
Part of this is due to the fact that 15% of all Google searches, or over half a billion per day, have never been seen by before.
Now let's put these ideas into action.
Step 1: Gather your keyword seeds
Folks talk about different processes of keyword research depending on whether you are going after
- Traffic: good for pure pageviews and ad-based revenue sites, or
- Conversions: for example, when you sell goods or services or need brand awareness
Most of the time, you already have a good idea of what your keyword topic broadly covers, especially if you're working with an established business or website.
For our purposes, let's explore ideas around the keyword "seo tools" – a term near and dear to our hearts here at Moz. In reality, this is an extremely competitive keyword, and for your own research you'd likely want to begin with a longer-tail, less competitive term.
Brainstorming
There are literally hundreds of keyword research tools out there to experiment with, but a few SEO favorites include:
- Moz Keyword Explorer
- Übersuggest
- Google AdWords Keyword Planner
- Bing Keyword Tool
- Keyword Spy
- Wordstream
- Google Display Planner
- SEO Book keyword tools
- Google Trends
- Soovle
- SEMrush
- MarketMuse A relative newcomer in the space with interesting technology
In the end, you will likely rely heavily on Moz Keyword Explorer, but you never want to rely on it as your sole tool. It's best to explore and play around with many tools to discover new ideas.
Here are keyword suggestions from Grepwords.
There are no rules except to have fun and try to discover new keywords you haven't considered before.
Step 2: Get specific with modifiers
This is basic stuff, but it bears emphasizing: The more specific your keywords, the easier it typically is to rank for those keywords.
Sure, it would be great to rank for the keyword "SEO tools" itself, but most people aren't searching that way. Instead, they are likely looking for something more specific.
Common keyword modifiers include:
- Time and Date: "SEO Tools 2014"
- Quality and/or Price: "Free SEO Tools", "Fastest SEO Tools"
- Intent: "Buy SEO Tools", "Find SEO Tools"
- Location: "SEO Tools Online", "Canadian SEO Tools"
Your chosen keyword research tools will uncover these and many more qualifiers, but you'll want to include them in your searches as well.
Case Study: the $70,000 keyword modifier
Seasonal keywords are often super-effective. I discovered this myself a few years ago as an independent SEO with the keyword "IRA contribution limits." The keyword had good volume but was super-competitive, so I knew I was never going to rank for it.
Using Google Trends, I found that usage for this keyword spiked at certain times of the year, and that in fact people were looking for information for a specific year, i.e. "IRA contribution limits 2012."
Using Google Trends is a great way to validate any keyword idea, as it will often reveal hidden patterns and insight not present in other tools.
Armed with the new knowledge, I found many more date-specific keywords themed around this topic and built an entire domain around them. Although it took a lot of hard work, the site eventually drew tons of seasonal traffic and I was able to sell the site with a significant profit.
It's a good idea to validate all your important keyword ideas through Google Trends, as it will often reveal patterns and insights not present in other keyword research tools.
Step 3: Using Google AdWords Keyword Planner
For small and medium-sized research jobs, nothing beats going directly to Google's AdWords Keyword Tool for relevant suggestions and search volume. (For larger and enterprise-type projects, see the alternatives at the end of the post.)
This is basic stuff, but you'll want to search for New Keyword and Adgroup Ideas and head straight to the to the Keyword Ideas tab. For a more complete guide to using the planner, Kristi Hines wrote a great guide here.
Hint: While most seasoned SEOs skip over the Ad Groups tab, there's a wealth of ideas there tightly grouped into themed keywords – exactly what we are looking for!
Traditionally, marketers use Google's keyword tool because of search volume and competition scores, but most web marketers underplay one of the most powerful features of this tool: the ability to sort keyword suggestions by relevance.
This gives us a huge advantage in creating themed keyword lists, and helps us create more targeted content.
Because the top suggestions often contain your core keywords, it's helpful to use negative keywords to discover more variation.
Step 4: Defining the concepts further
Now that you have your basic keyword idea, the next step is creating your keyword theme by finding keywords that are conceptually related.
There are several ways to do this. For our example of "SEO tools" let's try the popular methods to build out our themed list.
Google's Related Searches
At the bottom of most Google results is a section called Related Searches. This is a gold mine of conceptually related concepts.
By clicking through the results and then examining those related searches (and repeating this process over and over) you can quickly find many long-tail opportunities much easier than using Google's AdWords Keyword Planner.
Google Trends
At the bottom of each trends report is a "Related Searches" section that can be used to discover conceptually related queries.
Wikistalker
This cool tool introduced to me by Peter Bray "illustrates the relations between different things by visualizing the semantic relevance between the inter-connected structure of their Wikipedia entry articles."
So if we search Wikistalker for "Search Engine Optimization" it shows us the following Wikipedia articles with the highest semantic relevance.
- Internet Marketing: 85% relevant
- Google Webmaster Tools: 70% relevant
- Marketing: 59% relevant
Other tools
In fact, many other keyword research tools like Deeperweb Search, SEMRush, YouTube Analytics or WordStream can help you discover related keyword phrases.
Step 5: Empathy, your secret keyword weapon
Ask yourself what a visitor wants to find on this page.
As Rand explains in this excellent Whiteboard Friday, putting yourself in the visitor's shoes and anticipating their needs provides a wealth of conceptually related keyword ideas.
Searchers of "SEO tools" are usually asking a number of similar questions:
- How much does it cost? Free, plans and pricing, free trial
- What kinds of tools are there? Link building, crawling, and indexing
- Who are the tools for? Agency software, small business
- How good are the tools? Best, endorsed by, customer review
By answering as many searcher questions as we can, we continue to build our themed keyword concept.
Step 6: Can you rank? Getting strategic with competition
In this case, it's much better to go straight to the search engine results page (SERP). This was covered in How to Rank, so let me plagiarize myself by repeating the important points here.
You have two basic methods of ranking the competition:
- Automated tools like Moz's Keyword Difficulty Tool
- Eyeballing the SERPs
If you have a paid subscription to Moz, or even a free trial, the Keyword Difficulty Tool calculates — on a 100-point scale — a difficulty score for each individual keyword phrase you enter.
If you run a full report you can break down the SERP for each keyword and judge the individual strengths of each URL that ranks. You can even add your own URL to see how you stack up.
Keyword phrases in the 60-100 range are typically very competitive, while keywords in the 30-40 range might be considered low to moderately difficult.
Manual method: the eyeball check
Even without automated tools, the best way to size up the competition is to simply look at the top results currently ranking.
Run a non-personalized search query for your keywords. Examine the top few results and ask yourself the following questions (SEO toolbars like the MozBar or SEOquake can help speed up the process):
- Are the first few results optimized for the keyword?
- Is the keyword in the title tag? In the URL? On the page?
- What's the Page and/or Domain Authority of the URL?
- What's the inbound anchor text?
- Can you build links and/or mentions around this keyword?
- Can you deliver a higher quality resource for this keyword than the top ranking sites?
The last question is the most important: can you deliver higher quality content for this keyword than the competition?
The answer must be yes if you expect to deserve to rank.
Step 7: Pulling it all together
By this point, you've probably analyzed hundreds or thousands of keywords and organized them into themed, related groups.
You've found keywords that relate to your business or website, around which you can create shareable content, with a high enough search volume, and that you believe you can rank for.
Often, the keywords that you choose depend as much on your business or website as they do on the competition. We chose the keywords above not only because they relate to our primary keyword, but also because they relate to our business. Google may rank keywords based on relevance, but only you can decide if those keywords relate to your audience, product, and brand.
In the case of our "SEO Tools" example, our themed keyword list might look like this.
- Free SEO Tools
- Best SEO Software
- Keyword Research
- Search Engine Optimization
- Link Building Toolset
- Best SEO Tools in 2013
- Online Marketing
- SEO for Google
- Best SEO Tools for Agencies
Remember, we started with a very broad keyword. In practice, your final keyword will be much more tightly focused.
We'll now use this list for creating content around our keyword theme. In a future post, we'll discuss integrating these concepts for optimal on-page SEO.
Tips for scaling and large sites
The above method works if you're building out keyword lists for small to medium sites, but scaling this process for large and enterprise sites requires a different, more mathematical approach.
If you want to research tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of keywords at a time, I highly recommend the looking into the following resources:
- Grepwords – Keyword Suggestion API with search volume
- SEOGadget for Excel – Link Research and Keyword Data. Integrates with Grepwords and SEMRush
- How to do Keyword Research for SEO – Written by Nick Eubanks, this $37 guide is well worth the money and offers a number of tips and tricks.
Conclusion
The above method is only one method of keyword research. There are hundreds more and you'll likely invent your own method.
Regardless of the method you use, thinking about keywords in terms of concepts and themes represents a hugely important step in content development.
What are your favorite keyword tips to organize content around concepts?
Great insights. I generally target a keyword them or a related keyword cluster as well when focusing on a target audience. Some things I have seen that can help you rank is bringing seasonality or locality into play with your keyword themes as you mentioned. So instead of trying to rank for the broad term "beach hotels" you would probably have much better success and conversion rates with "miami beach hotels in the winter time" or something along those lines.
Excellent piece. Targeting single keywords has always been a bad idea.
I think two of your ‘5 things to avoid in keyword research’ can be revisited for all but new sites:
2. Keywords with too much competition
The amount of competition is irrelevant. All that matters is whether or not your site can beat it.
3. Keywords without enough traffic
No harm in targeting keywords with small amounts of traffic if they bring good response and ROI. Just give them little effort (perhaps no more than a few internal links, paragraphs of content or pages) and move on to the next target.
Related to this, I would also add the simplest and most effective keyword research tactic of all:
• Convert your GA keyword reports from their default single keyword status to reports on groups of keywords (I call these ‘keyword niches’)
• Sort those groups (niches) by response rate
• Target the highest responding first (match effort to traffic amount, i.e. potential)
• Then target the next highest responding group of keywords.
• Repeat (new keyword niches always emerge)
For any group of keywords you currently get results for, there are more results to be had. And you are already beating the competition for enough to so some degree (and so could not care less what any tool tells you about the level of competition).
This is really easy SEO. All you need is the ability to convert single keyword GA reports to ‘keyword niche’ reports. You can do this manually (and tediously) with filters and advanced segments. Or you can use the GA api and crunch the data yourself (Wordtracker used to have a tool for this - Strategizer - but that is now privately managed.)
Hey Mark,
Thanks for the thoughtful comments! Really helpful tips. Sounds like we mostly agree. That said, let me address a couple points.
"Keywords without enough traffic" - Helping 1000s of customers at Moz over the years, I've seen far too many people track keywords that return exactly zero visits to their site. They obsess over their number one ranking and then wonder why they have no traffic.
"Keywords with Too Much Competition" - You're right, the only thing that matters is if you can beat it, and I suppose this is the real mistake many people make. Smaller businesses want to go after keywords like "mattress" and "car repair" which, realistically they are going to have a very hard time beating.
For the majority of people like this, it's better to target mid-to-long tail terms, because at the end of the day these are simply easier to rank for.
I see site owners make these 2 mistakes (and others) almost daily, so forgive me for standing on the soap box. :)
Like I said, I think we're mostly on the same page, just a difference of emphasis.
Cheers and thanks again!
We agree on the need to target groups of keywords (eg, concepts, themes or niches) and not single keywords. I once got results for one page from 10,474 different keywords (there's an old article on it somewhere).
But on how to use that perspective there is a discussion to be had.
I think your 'errors of the thousands' (targeting keywords bringing no results or those with too much competition) are most usefully seen as a process issue rather than a wrong result (wrong keywords).
If you look at the errors as choosing the wrong keywords then you can end up giving a generic answer like 'it's better to target mid-to-long tail terms'.
See it a process problem and you can suggest a process that leads to targeting the best keywords for a site.
But first we must distinguish between SEO for new sites with no organic traffic and those with existing results:
• A site with existing results can use a simple process that builds on success (like the one I sketch out above).
• Things are more tedious for sites without results. For such sites the kind of long process you give (with no use of a site's existing results) is relevant. I would suggest adding PPC testing (and so real results for your site) to such a process. And as soon as you have real organic results switch to the simpler process.
Cyrus, this is a great strategic example of how to do keyword research for today's search results -- thanks!
One thought I had. Theme-based is critical, of course. Back in the day, I remember people seeing two keywords such as "buy sneakers online" and "buy tennis shoes online" and then debating which one to target because one would have high search volume and high competition, but the other would have low volume and low competition.
Obviously, that day is long past. Google has gotten smart enough to know that "buy sneakers online" and "buy tennis shoes online" is essentially the same thing (with the same user intent). But that leads me to my question: in such a context, how important is the competition factor today?
Say research reveals a set of five keywords that are all specifically related to a single concept. Four of them have low competition, but one has high competition. Should I just throw out any consideration of that specific keyword as I'm planning the on-page optimization and page content? Or, should I include it anyway since it's topically related and obviously influential? If the answer is the latter, then why focus on competition values at all?
Whenever people ask me, "How competitive are our keywords?" I sometimes lean towards saying, "It doesn't matter. The keywords you're targeting match both the user intent of your target audience and the content on your site. And those are the keywords you should target regardless of the competitive value." Why would one ever focus on keywords (or concepts) that are less relevant just because they seem to be less competitive?
Well, just some rambling thoughts this morning. Again, Cyrus, great post -- I'd love to hear your thoughts.
What's interesting to me is that although Google has made huge strides in conceptual understanding, very specific keywords are still important - especially for less competitive, long-tail searches.
For high-volume and common concepts its not unusual to see Google rewrite your query and return a popular site that may or may not include your original keywords. As you dive down into less popular and more obscure queries, it's almost like Google isn't quite sure what you are asking and falls back to more traditional keyword matching.
Thanks for taking the time to reply with this further great information -- it's interesting that traditional-keyword matching may still be relevant in some contexts (for better or worse)!
Thanks good blog.
I'm still surprised despite Penguin that optimising for an exact match still seems to have a big impact on rank. I do agree that long tail is key though, particularly if you are in an industry with a core of heavily competed keywords. I also think Google will dial up the semantic nature of searches, I think if they had done it all in one go with Penguin there would have been too much backlash so I suspect they will gradually increase over time.
This is the most comprehensive guide to performing keyword research post-Hummingbird (and even before that). As Cyrus said, optimizing pages for one keyword doesn't get the job done any longer and isn't a cost-effective strategy long-term. This blog post does a great job conveying why this "keywords to concepts" idea is how all SEOs should be spending their time.
Don't know about you, but I can definitely take a few things away from this… most importantly the scaling tips at the end! I've done some of these strategies for small to medium sized businesses… can't imagine a global business or massive websites that get 10s of thousands of visits per day. Looking forward to that challenge in the near future.
I like to add one more site : seorch
Thank you Cyrus for broadening my knowledge horizon here with this great post and yes, I do know life has changed on keywords. It is getting to the content in concepts and realizing the search engines are can I say becoming smarter!
I think semantic indexing also helps with this themed approach as well. Not so sure in years past that this approach would work as you almost HAD to target specific keywords.
Great post. I shared with others at SEMrush, where I'm the SR Account Manager. I think, however, you're pooling "keyword research" tools together too much.
I'm not seeing here how you can get ideas from competitor research which is our number 1 mission. If the industry leader ranks for certain end-tail words, you can use those in ways not mentioned in your piece. The tools you mention don't look at actual Google data. I'm passing this on, but w/ the understanding that "keyword tools" should be expanded from what you've written. Fantastic job.
Ooo does Grepwords do what the old AdWords Keyword Tool does and only show suggestions based on what you've put in (e.g. if you put in "seo tools", you get anything phrase match)? That's my biggest bug-bear with the Keyword Planner: the "relevant" keywords are often way off the mark... I remember putting something like "graphic design" in there and one of the suggestions was "what is philosophy" - I mean WTF? Haha! I've found it more time consuming, more fiddly and more frustrating to get the actual data that I want/need for my clients.
Anyway, I might have to check out the free trial... Thanks! :-)
This is a great post and what makes it interesting is that I have always believed in this concept. Feels logical and straightforward. Interestingly, when you go with a keyword theme base, you start ranking for keywords which you are not even targeting but they still are super duper relevant to your target niche.
I've seen a couple of systems for doing keyword research before but it's 2014 so I must give way to fruitful changes this year. Thanks for this smart web marketer's guide.
Thanks for the post Cyrus! I agree that keyword research has become more difficult (or should I say challenging/fun). Concentrating on concepts and themes for what you are trying to rank for is key. You have to get into the mindset of your customers, as you say in your article, and figure out what those potential customers will be searching for. The challenging/fun part about it is that they may all be looking for the same thing, but all typing different search queries.
I see this post as an update for How to Rank: 25 Step SEO Master Blueprint (for keyword research part of that post). Since that post serves me as SEO gospel (pocket edition),i sincerely hope you will continue to post updates and modifications for different parts of that post when you think is necessary.Thanks.
Thanks Stelian!
I love the keyword theme approach! I started using it since i read some of your early articles on the topic and i have seen some great short term success. The big thing that i noticed is i went from having 10-15 targeted keyword lists for most clients up to 60+!
Overall, great tips and always good to have a refresher that keywords and on-page optimization is still a major role in our lives as SEOs - Kyle
It's really helpful post in the current market scenario. Strategy about Keywords directly reflects about traffic.
This is awesome post. Past two three months almost all internet marketing website talking about not to concentrate about keyword. In this post cleared all doubts. Thank you very much
Great Article on Keywords Research; Now that's what I called keyword research. The Old method has gone and now Google has become more and more smarter than ever before. So we also need to change our way of doing SEO.
And one more think I would like to suggest is that it is a good way to target theme base keywords on your target page but don't do this in a spammy way such as "Cheap SEO tool, Best SEO tool, SEO tool" etc. Buy doing this you are going to waste your Keyword Research time and obviously this will make your website looks over optimized which will leads to Penguin Penalty.
Great tip!
Thanks Cyrus. :)
Hi Cyrus,
Its great strategy to keyword research, Google become more smarter to give result of search query. You are right that previously got result on specific keyword and today will get conceptual result which relate to another keyword you explain it by good example. In short all the points which you included in this post are amazing. Thank you cyrus getting very precious information form your post, waiting for your next post.
What if the keyword you have selected won't work/perform?
Try different keywords. Better still:
• Target keyword themes/niches/groups that already deliver results on your site
• If you have no results (or not enough) then first test any new 'keywords' on PPC first
I think PPC cost too much than SEO. I do SEO for my business of my own and do not have much resource to invest in PPC. Any ways thanks for your response.
Hi Ehtesham,
That's always a challenge. As I pointed out in the post, good keywords need to meet 4 different criteria.
Specifically, you've found keywords that:
Finding keywords that meet all of these criteria can be quite a challenge, and you won't always hit 100%. With refinement and revisiting the process, you can usually start to hone it in to something that begins to work.
Cyrus, you are awesome. I am training a person in Search Marketing and this post is perfect. Clearer, impossible. Thanks!
This theme approach is awesome...although I do find myself guilty of relying on the keyword tools a little too much. I found that after Google switched to its Keyword Planner the search volumes are really off sometimes. Just intuitively they don't make sense. For example I was doing keyword research for someone in the real estate industry yesterday and the search results that came back for a term that should be very common (and in a very large state) just made zero sense. I guess that's where the idea of empathy comes into play, though. And covering broad topics vs single keywords is probably a good workaround for this issue.
Cheers Eugene. It's funny that despite following guides like this, or whatever your preferred method is, nothing ever works out 100%. (It's typically like 60-80%, if you're lucky).
Keywords you were sure you could rank for sometimes don't work out, and other keywords suprise you in completely unexpected ways. Kinda magic, really.
Look at your competitor data w/ a tool. Choose your tool, but they're out there. They will tell you about theme relationships.
Thanks for this truly in depth post on Key Word Research. Something I need to spend more time on. As Google is apparently getting smarter by the minute we must follow their lead or get left behind. Your helpful article has given me some great new tools to check out going forward. Thanks Cyrus!!
Thank you Cyrus for this great article. I will need to review again your post and go on study your other posts about keywords research. We at oxxalis want to do the best for referencing the white papers we produce for our customers.
I think Keywords can make an accurate measure of the relevancy of your webpage and its content - See more at:
https://www.searcheccentric.com/strategically-placing-keywords-websites-seo
Cyrus, it is a great and more useful insight and you have done a great work for the SEO to know better how we can use the Google analytics and trends. Many SEO is practicing and using these techniques but your detail is what we all need to do while choosing the best keywords that helps us in gaining and retaining the most users and that can positively affect on our sales
Hello,
Good day,Very well done and comprehensive set of topics and concepts to consider when writing blog posts. I love it!
Regards,
Savoy
Glad you enjoyed it! Just a quick note, please don't use your URL as a blog signature, it looks like spam and will be removed by the moderators.
Love the article Cyrus. Thanks for sharing.
I do have a question in terms of how the themed approach could translate to AdWords. Would your AdGroups look something like the following?:
Would you recommend doing the themed keyword research prior to setting up an AdWords structure? Each Campaign could be a concept/theme and then AdGroups based around that?
My last question is how many keywords should you target in a particular concept/theme?
Hi, That's a great article indeed an eye opener! I sell keyword articles, but never ventured into keyword research. I thought it was not my cup of tea until I read this article. I'll try my hands on it now.
[link removed]
Great insights! fantastic. Thank you.
This is a great content about keywords research and i wonder if these tips are usefull for the foreing languages. Our site www.oxxalis.com is a French one. Our white papers we write for French customers are French. Our download forme : téléchargez notre livre blanc also. So do you think these techniques are successfull in French ?
The keyword difficulty tool saves us a huge amount of time collecting data. Is there a keyword research tool in the works?
Great post Cyrus! Builds nicely upon your How to rank: 25 step master SEO blueprint post.
Really like the list of tools too. Haven't seen some of these tools yet. I'm gonna check them out soon. It's good to see that my work is definitely not for nothing. Really amazing how large this post is. Can't imaging how many hours go into an in-depth post such as this one. Keep up the good work!
This is a great article, Cyrus! Do you have the "future post" you allude to in this post, where you'll discuss integrating these concepts for optimal on-page SEO? That would be very helpful!
Awesome guidelines on finding and using proper keywords. I really believe that keywords and targeting them well is more important in 2015 then ever. Google may fight spam but will become your friend if your content is well targeted.
As many others SEO factors : on page seo, link acquisition etc - Keyword Research is the base of the pyramid. You can get on a downside road from the start if you try to target to wide keywords like : 'SEO' . Better use the tools provided in this blog post and discover semantic relative or at least no so wide terms.
Users started to notice the irrelevance in search and try to use alternative terms to find what they are looking for. For years many individuals and companies tried to rank in Google and other search engines for keywords like : 'SEO'. The results are in my opinion horrible from an user point of view. I didn't like what results I've received on this term so I research for more accurate results: 'SEO Companies in US' or similar...
Targeting and understanding what your users may look must be a key factor in any Offline or Online Activities.
Thanks for this guide,
Dan,
SEO Checker
Hi Cyrus Great Post!!!
But what about Image alt tags and using keywords (obviously by not stuffing) in alt tag? Can we use these in Onpage!
Great post, Cyrus. Thanks!
Great Stuff....
Wow, I'm glad I did a little backtracking to find this blog. Thanks for the great post!
Thanks for this brilliant tips! Lots of us has agreed with your points. Another knowledge that's worth sharing for! :)
I think it is very interesting how much of our SEO time is the keyword-research in this time.
in earlier SEO years we just watched (or thought may be in some cases) what would be the biggest traffic bringer keyword and optimized and build links for that.
Keyword "research" in the early years was done in a few minutes and is now such a big topic. Just because google wanna have quality SERPs .... :)
great post - like the most Cyrus
How do you continue to optimize the pages over time?
Previously, when you optimized and built links for a single keyword, to increase the ranking, you just tried to build more links with that keyword.
Now that you are using groups of concept/idea based keywords, how do you approach ongoing optimization?
I would like to mention a simple tool I use for local but found it very practical for Keyword research : Places scout. It's gathering suggestions + related from Google, Google Local and Bing all in one place,
This is great report Cyrus! However, Google webmaster is the best way to get back your smart keyword as it has recently updated with more details and changes signals.
Thanks for a great article. It makes perfect sense to me and a great list of research tools too. If only there was enough time in teh day!
Cyrus!! You are my favorite man. Again an awesome post. You always come up with such a state of the art analysis that I wonder how many hour do you spend in writing blog like this? I also see Google following a keyword relationship post Humming bird update. Perhaps the phrase match keywords would be more valuable ones now. We can see "Long tail Keywords" would be more important. Also thanks for the tools that you shared and the pedagogy to be followed in keyword research.
Keyword research and keyword targeting is the most challenging work for SEO. How do you optimize your site. Please tell me? Thanks for this post.
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Great post, Cyrus. This is a good extension on you're 25 steps to rank. Will you be doing any more similar? Would love to see one for link building.
Google Adwords is definitely a help for most of busineeses. It's a efficient and effective way for businesses to manage their online campaigns, and measure the online advertising performance.
Did you see the new WMT update today, some more research can be done (and more aqccurite) with WMT now.
Thanks Chris - here's the article. Basically, Google Webmaster Tools now shows the exact number of keyword clicks for each URL.
Definitely a big improvement in revealing more keyword data. Not a solution to (not provided) but welcome nonetheless.
I'd say it's still not exact. They are not showing accurate numbers for all, but for some they definitely are. They pick a group to show all. It's not all of the top keywords in their database, though.
Great post. I shared with others at SEMrush, where I'm the SR Account Manager. I think, however, you're pooling "keyword research" tools together to much. I'm not seeing here how you can get ideas from competitor research which is our number 1 mission. If the industry leader ranks for certain end-tail words, you can use those in ways not mentioned in your piece. The tools you mention don't look at actual Google data. I'm passing this on, but w/ the understanding that "keyword tools" should be expanded from what you've written. Fantastic job.
Yes I think it is better to use a concept because it you are just going after one keyword then a lot of times your content will not be written well. If you go after concepts then your content will be more comprehensive and this is good for users and also good for Google.
Awesome post Cyrus,
I took away some really good stuff from reading this. Was not aware of the statistic:
Over 70% of the traffic you earn for any given page will come from keywords you didn't try to optimize for.
Looking forward to reading more of your posts.
Catching up on all my reading and blog feeds and glad I got to yours today... well at 8pm. Nonetheless, it's given me some ideas now to work with this week when developing content for us and clients.
Should we look at your things to avoid and flip them around, ie:
1. Instead of “Choosing keywords that are too broad”, focus on the idea of the keywords you want to rank for in longer tail keywords or even asking questions?
2. Instead of “Keywords with too much competition”, work to obtain rankings for less competitive keywords?
3. Instead of “Keywords without enough traffic”, target keywords that get very little traffic according to the keyword planner, however may deliver more specific searchers to your site?
4. Instead of “Keywords that don't convert”, target ideas which will help searchers finding your site make a decision through linking them to other pages in your site?
5. Instead of “Trying to rank for one keyword at a time”, allow the content being posted to pages and blog articles to develop multiple keywords and phrases that could potentially rank high with very little effort?
If that is what we’re getting at, I agree and know our website ranks for a lot more than we know about. My only objection to all of that is getting the clients to understand it all. In their mind “service + city” which is broad, probably has high competition, has a lot of search volume, may convert better and is a single keyword to most pages ranking is all they have known about or have been told over the years. An attorney or dentist wouldn’t know about all of this and they just want to beat their closest competitor and see their Analytics reports.
It is a challenge for sure and appreciate you sharing your thoughts on what is taking place and what is to be seen in the future of search and content marketing. Thanks, Cyrus! - Patrick
Thanks for sharing, that's great insights you shared ! Nice to read your articles, will read more :)
I am very new to SEO and hope you can help me this my questions.
Very nice post. But I got a question Cyrus.
Do you mean you use all of the keywords you found in one site of your webpage than?
Which of keywords you found do you use in your title tag than?
How often do you use these keywords in your article?
first for the "very new" once, read this: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
do what we all had done: stop sleeping start learning - use google, start A-B testings...
Simply: read - learn - try - repeat
For tools ask Google or wait for posts here... Google may be the faster way
Answers of all your questions : https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
Great post.