Beginner’s Guide To Blogger Keyword Research

Keyword research is, for a lack of a better word, the key to monumental traffic to your blog.

It’s what helped me propel this blog to new and great heights!

In this post, I’ll show you how to do keyword research so you can also generate organic traffic to your blog.

Sounds good? Then let’s get into it!

The Ultimate Guide To Keyword Research

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What is Keyword Research?

Before we get into the meat of bones on how to do keyword research, we need to know what it is first.

Keyword research is the pillar of a successful SEO campaign.

Basically, the goal is for you to find keywords that lots of people search on Google.

You also need to determine how easy it is to get your blog on top of Google search for that keyword.

Once you find these keywords, use them to create content that Google loves.

What I do mean here?

It means that you must observe the best on-page SEO practices on your post in relation to your keyword.

Pretty cut and dry, right?

WRONG.

While keyword research is simple in theory, it is also deceptively difficult.

Researching for the best keywords for your blog takes time.

There’s more to keyword research than just finding search terms that generate lots of searches from users every month.

We’ll get to these factors as we move forward in the article.

But here’s one thing I’ve done over the years to grow my blog traffic using keyword research:

I grouped similar keywords together to create content that targets multiple keywords at once.

Doing so allowed me to rank for these search queries for the same page.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a screenshot from Ahrefs of some of my best-performing posts:

One of my posts is ranking for more than 1,600 keywords!

And everything is by design! I know that I’ll be ranking for them because I optimized the post for these keywords.

This strategy of mine is what I am going to share with you later on this post!

So here’s the key to attracting LOTS of visitors to your blog:

It’s not about the number of blog posts you publish regularly.

Also, it’s not just about the quality of your post and how useful it is to your audience.

So what is it then?

It’s about how smart you approach keyword research!

If you want to smarten up about keyword research, then keep reading!

Types of Keyword Research

Now, onto the meat and bones of this post!

There are two types of keyword research: traditional and competitive.

Both follow different processes but can help you find the good keywords for your blog.

1. Traditional

With traditional keyword research, you generate keyword ideas from a seed keyword.

The seed keyword, in this case, is your short-tail keyword.

Basically, you want to extract long-tail and medium-tail keyword ideas that contain your seed keyword.

More importantly, you want to find keywords that are easy to rank for on organic search and have lots of monthly searches.

You will identify these keywords using different metrics available on your chosen keyword tools.

Here’s an example on how to do traditional keyword research on Ubersuggest:

On the left, you will see a list of keyword suggestions for the seed keyword “content marketing.”

Clicking on each keyword will show you the Google SERP on the right side of the screen.

View the pages ranking for each and determine whether or not you can rank on the first page for this keyword with your content.

Traditional keyword research works best for newbie bloggers. They haven’t published blog posts yet and want to find keywords they can optimize for in their content.

On the downside, the traditional approach won’t provide you information about your competitors.

And that’s why we have the second type of keyword research.

2. Competitor-based

Unlike the traditional way, you will come up with ideas from keywords your competitors are ranking for.

Normally, you type in the domain URL of your competitor on your premium keyword tool.

It should then process the keywords that it is ranking for on organic search. Also, you should see the position of each keyword on SERPs.

Once you have extracted their keywords, you can choose which ones to optimize for your blog.

What makes competitor-based keyword research more potent than the traditional method?

You gain access to proven keywords that you can target.

Think about it for a second:

If your competitors are ranking for them, then so should you!

However, this keyword research type only works if you have an established blog with pages ranking for certain search terms.

Also, you need to use premium keyword tools to conduct competitor-based research.

And as you know, these tools cost a fortune.

Still, these drawbacks don’t take away the fact that competitor-based keyword research is arguably the better approach in the long run.

In the screenshot above, I’m using Ahrefs to find keywords that contentmarketinginstitute.com is ranking for.

Not only do you see the volume and difficulty of each keyword. You also see the position where the page on the site is ranking on Google organic search.

Later, we’ll talk about how to effectively run a competitor-based keyword research using Ahrefs and other tools.

For now, however, you need to know how to determine the value of a keyword based on different variables. And we’ll discuss the most crucial ones below.

Factors of Keyword Research

Want to know why keyword research is difficult? Here’s why:

No keywords are ever the same.

Even if they share common words together, they are still fundamentally unique from each other.

People search certain keywords more often than others.

Some are much easier to rank for on search results than others.

Using this information, you can narrow down your keyword list to ones that work to your advantage, namely:

Keywords with high search volume and low competition!

To do this, you must manually analyze each keyword in your research using different factors.

They will help you determine which ones to optimize for.

Below are the factors I’m referring to:

1. Search Intent

To do keyword research effectively, you must find keywords that you want your audience to use for finding your blog.

So how do you do that?

You need to understand search intent.

It explains why people typed in that phrase on search engines.

By researching for keywords with the search intent that fits your blog, you drive more qualified traffic to your pages.

As a result, you get to increase your sales, email subscribers, and others!

Below are three types of search intent:

2. Informational

People search for informational keywords if they want to know the answer to a question.

For example, “selling shoes” is a keyword phrases. However, its intent is unclear at the moment.

To make a keyword’s intent informational, you need to answer this question:

What do people want to learn about this topic?

In most cases, keywords that start with an interrogative word or the 5 Ws: who, what, when, where, why (and 1 H: how) are prime examples of informational keywords.

To find this using Ahrefs, type in the keyword in the search bar of Keyword Explorer.

To filter the keywords with informational intent from the results, click Questions from the left sidebar.

From here, you will see a list of keywords related to selling shoes that begin with any of the 5 Ws and 1 H.

The search phrases come in the form of a question. This means that the user wants to find out all there is to know about selling shoes.

Informational keywords are perfect for bloggers whose goal is to share information.

They can build a content strategy revolving around these keywords so they can grow their traffic.

But how about bloggers who want to earn money? Let’s say they use their blog to sell products and services and to promote affiliate programs.

Then they need to optimize for keywords with the next type keyword intent.

3. Commercial

I’m pretty sure you used Google Search to compare products and services before making a decision.

Whether you are aware of it or not, you used commercial keywords in your buyer’s journey.

People use these keywords if they have plans on buying something but are not sure which one yet.

An example would be “best professional drones.”

The user wants to know the top-of-the-line commercial drones in the market.

Most of the results from Google SERPs are list posts from e-commerce and review sites:

Usually, a keyword (usually a product or service) has commercial intent if you add the following affixes to it:

Best
Top 10
Cheap
Affordable
Review

As mentioned, e-commerce and review sites benefit the most from optimizing for this keyword intent.

Most review site owners are affiliate marketers who recommend affiliate products to buy for their target audience.

They help guide customers make the best decision based on the available information.

In return, they earn a commission from every successful transaction!

Let’s say your audience knows what to buy already. What’s the next step?

That brings us to the third and last type of keyword intent.

4. Transactional

Unlike commercial intent, keywords with transactional intent point you to where and how you can buy the product you want.

For example, I want to buy a DJI Mavic 2 Pro as my professional drone.

Here are affixes added to the keyword that changed its intent into a transactional one:

Buy DJI Mavic 2 Pro
DJI Mavic 2 Pro deals
DJI Mavic 2 Pro discount codes
DJI Mavic 2 Pro shipping

As you can see, there is a clear intent from the user to buy the drone judging from these keywords.

I mean, nobody would search for discount codes and deals about the product unless they’re interested in buying it!

True enough, the results on Google SERPs show the different discount codes you can use to buy this drone.

For bloggers with products to sell on their site, you need to research for keywords with transaction intent.

They should help bring in more conversions to your blog if you optimize them correctly.

Now that we’ve covered search intent in depth, let’s talk about search volume.

5. Search Volume

Search volume refers to the number of times users searched the keyword in a month.

Ideally, you want to target keywords with high search volume for your blog.

Here’s the simple math:

More searches means more chances for people to find your site on Google.

Of course, this is only possible if you rank on the first page of search results for your keyword.

So you must be asking yourself:

How much traffic can I generate from a keyword based on its search volume?

Let’s refer to Advanced Web Ranking’s CTR study, in which:

The top result garners approximately 30% clicks of all users
The second result generate more or less 15% of all clicks
The third result receives 10% clicks

Here’s a screenshot of the graph for your reference:

Let’s say your keyword has a search volume of 2,000 and you rank second on organic search for it.

The 15% of 2,000 is equivalent to 300 clicks.

That’s how many visitors you can expect to receive in a month.

And that’s quite a lot!

So does that mean you should always target keywords with high search volume?

Not really.

There’s more to a keyword that the volume of searches every month.

In fact, the factor below is arguably the most crucial one in this list,

6. Keyword Difficulty

Keyword difficulty refers to the degree of competition you must face in getting your blog to rank for a keyword.

Understanding how keyword difficulty works is crucial to your keyword research.

As mentioned earlier, you shouldn’t just find keywords that generate lots of monthly searches.

Here’s why:

They’re the most competitive to rank in organic search.

Keywords with high search volume promise the greatest visibility for sites that rank on the top three spots in Google Search.

That’s why almost all sites want to get a piece of the action and understandably so!

So instead of optimizing for a keyword that everybody wants to rank for, why not travel the road less traveled instead?

In other words:

Why not target keywords with low competition?

The lack of competition gives your blog a much easier path to rank on top on SERPs.

However, and here’s the kicker with keywords with low competition:

There have abysmal search volumes.

We’re talking here of less than 100 searches in a month!

Obviously, that doesn’t discredit the value that keyword difficulty brings to the table.

So here’s why ranking for keywords with low competition is easy:

The sites that rank on the first page for the keyword aren’t optimized.

Basically, the content in these pages don’t observe the best on-page SEO practices.

Also, it’s possible that the keyword doesn’t have a specific content ranking on SERPs.

These are huge opportunities for you to capitalize on!

Keywords with low competition is a prime characteristic of long-tail keywords.

In a nutshell, these are search phrases that contain at least four words.

These might have low search volumes. But long-tail keywords usually come in question format.

All bloggers such as yourself need to do is provide the best answer to these queries. Then, optimize the page so you can rank on top of search results for the keyword!

The benefit of ranking on top of search results for a long-tail keyword is you enjoy higher conversions.