Keyword research

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Keyword research is a practice search engine optimization (SEO) professionals use to find and analyze search terms that users enter into search engines when looking for products, services, or general information. Keywords are related to search queries.

Importance of research

Keyword research

The objective of keyword research is to generate, with good

Keyword stuffing
on a web page should be avoided.

Types of keywords

Keywords are divided into two primary groups based on search volume.

  • Short-Tail Keywords — most commonly searched keywords and the conversion rate is between 15-20%. They do not contain any specific details and have fewer word counts (1-2 words). They get high search traffic but have a lower conversion rate. For example: "Buy shoes" is a short tail keyword.
  • Long-Tail Keywords — conversion rate is between 70-80%. They contain more specific details and have longer word counts (2-5 words). They get less search traffic but have a higher conversion rate. For example: "Buy breathable running shoes" is a long-tail keyword.

Research examples

A very popular and highly competitive keyword on

Google search engine is "making money." It has 4,860,000,000 search results, meaning that billions of websites are relevant or competing for that keyword. Keyword research starts with finding all possible word combinations that are relevant to the "making money" keyword. For example, the keyword "acquiring money" has significantly fewer search results, only 116,000,000, but it has the same meaning as "making money." Another way is to be more specific about a keyword by adding additional filters. For example, the keyword "making money online from home in Canada" is less competitive on a global scale and therefore easier to rank for. Furthermore, keywords also have various intents
(informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional) which can affect whether the marketer would want to target that keyword. Multiple tools are available (both free and commercial) to find keywords and analyze them.

Keyword research tools

Google search engine
.

Google recently released an update to the Google Keyword Planner and changed some of its policies by which the first campaign must be set in order to get the Keyword Planner back. This is a type of Google Ads account that is used by agencies and consultants to manage many different advertising accounts.

Features of Google Ads Keyword Planner:[4]

  • Get search volume estimates for the keyword.
  • Generate new keywords by combining different keyword lists.
  • Create new keyword variations based on the primary keyword.
  • Provide Keywords used for websites – useful for competitive analysis.

Limitations of Google Ads Keyword Planner:

  • Hides long tail keywords' data as the tool is made for Google Ads and not for SEO purposes.
  • Keywords generated by the device may not produce good results as the tool is targeted towards advertisers and not SEO.
  • The search volume displayed received a change in 2016, Google started limiting the output options to advertisers (or accounts) with lower or no monthly spending.[5]
  • The tool is challenging to use on mobile devices, as it is primarily optimized for desktop usage.

Google Trends is a free research tool provided by Google to see the trends of any particular keyword. It particularly helps to visualize and compare the data from Google searches. The tool uses graphs to showcase the trend of data over time. It allows users to compare multiple keyword trends to find out which keywords are more popular than others in particular regions at a particular time.

Google Suggest

Google introduced Google Suggest in 2004 as the new Labs project.[6] Google Suggest is typically used as a live feature while a user is typing a search phrase into the browser or Google website.[7] Google Suggest uses the organic search input of billions of users and tries to "guess" that way what a user might be searching for even before he completed entering the query or all the words of a keyword phrase.

This makes Google Suggest a relevant source for keyword research, as it contains numerous organic keywords very closely related to a full or partial keyword and can be used to find additional most searched appending keywords that make the whole keyword less competitive. Google Suggest can be researched through the Google Search website or through a compatible browser for a small number of keywords, but also on a large scale using free scraper tools.

Bing Ads Keyword Planner

The

Bing
Keyword Planner:

  • Get search volume data and trends.
  • Get performance and cost estimates.
  • Multiply keyword lists to get new keywords.

Limitations of Bing Ads Keyword Planner:

  • Bing holds only 20 percent of the U.S. search engine market share, the data provided may not be reliable at least not for optimizing websites for Google search engine.
  • Similar to Google Ads Keyword Planner, data furnished by the tool is for helping advertisers and not publishers.

See also

References

  1. S2CID 1273892
    .
  2. ISBN 978-0596157074
    .
  3. S2CID 207169220
    .
  4. ^ "Keyword Research & Strategy with Keyword Planner - Google Ads". ads.google.com. Retrieved 2019-06-23.
  5. ^ "Re: Updates to the Keyword Planner Tool". 2016-08-12. Retrieved 2017-04-05.
  6. ^ "I've got a suggestion". Official Google Blog. Retrieved 2024-03-03.
  7. ^ "How Google autocomplete predictions work - Google Search Help". support.google.com. Retrieved 2024-03-03.
  8. ^ "Keyword Planner". Bing ads. Retrieved 2017-04-05.
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