Basic Keyword Research Tips for Beginners

What is Keyword Research? Keyword research is the basis of search engine optimisation. In this post, we are going to talk about basic keyword research tips for beginners.

Keyword denotes the search words and phrases people use to search for a particular item. Knowing and writing content around those terms help in search engine optimisation. It is simple but has a huge impact on SEO all over the internet.

Keyword research is the first step in creating a content strategy for a blog and its monetisation. We all know how important is search engine traffic to grow our blogs. Any kind of search engine optimisation starts with understanding what your target audience is searching online and then creating content around it.

(I talk about Profitable SEO in my book. It’s available on Amazon Kindle)

If you have just begun the optimising your content for search engines or a new blogger, this step is huge in growing your blog. Keyword research in the right direction can be a major boost for traffic and growth of any blog.

Exploring keywords not only give you the insight of what people are seeking but also brainstorming ideas for any blogging niche, an idea to coin your blog headlines and know where the people need help. Doing the research for keywords in a blogging niche will also help to drive the right traffic to any blog. 

That’s why I am sharing these basic keyword research tips for beginners so that if you have just started SEO and keyword research, you should be on the right track.

Basic keyword research tips for beginners

Planning and research are essential to a blog’s growth and traffic. Writing for any keyword randomly is not an SEO strategy. We have to dig dipper and learn what people are searching and how they are finding the content they need.

Keyword research should be the first step in planning a profitable blog. People often skip this step as it is time consuming. But there is no point of writing content that nobody reads. Social media traffic frizzles down with time and there is hardly any consistency in it. But organic traffic or traffic which comes from search engine results is constant and often turns up to become loyal readers.

So, let’s dig into how to get keyword research done.

Before you begin doing keyword research, finish the following simple tasks-

• Understand why people search
• What are their pain points aka queries
• How many people are searching
• What type of content are they consuming

Also read: Why Blogging Goals are Necessary for blog monetisation?

These steps are essential as we have to understand our readers first. Any random person can be our readers based on what he/she is searching and what we are offering.

We often skip this simple thing that what we want to rank for and what are readers are looking for are two different things. We often write blog posts which we think that we can rank for. Often it is the case that those posts that we were so confident or love are read by nobody.

It is disappointing. Honestly. I felt that point so many times. I learnt to do the thorough keyword research in a hard way. And this post is all the knowledge I acquired on the way to become a better blogger.

Anyway, here is how to know what people are looking for reading.

Open your browser and search about the term you want to rank for. Google, being Google, will show you what people are searching in that niche.

Here is an example of a keyword search. Here I am searching for blogging tips.

Whenever we search something on Google, it shows the other terms people are also searching. It also shows what questions people are searching for the specific term. In this case, for the term blogging tips, people also search about blogging tips for writers, blogging tips for beginners and ask questions like how to blog for free or how to make a good blog.

The cool thing about this question feature is that if you click any question from the list, Google will keep adding other inquiries related to the keyword. This feature helps in understanding what people have in their mind and understand in phrasing the targeted keyword for a blog post.

Whenever the screen is scrolled down, Google also shows what other things people are searching. This feature called Google Suggest.

Now, how to choose the targeted keyword for a blog post?

As we now know what people are searching, let us choose the right keyword to write a blog post. To select the target keyword, we must know how many people are searching for the term and how high or low the competition is.

I use a simple tool called Keywords Everywhere to research about any targeted keywords. It is a Chrome extension which can be easily added to Google Chrome browser, and it will show how many times a keyword is searched on any search engine. There is another Chrome extension called Ubersuggest that offers the same results.

The good thing about Keywords Everywhere is that it works with any kind of search engines, including YouTube, and Amazon Search bar. Now, if you see the above picture carefully, you will notice that it is showing the number of searches in a month and the competition. It also helps in knowing the search volume and competition of related keywords.

SEO seems hard in the first attempt. It seems impossible to compete with other high-ranking websites when the search term is generic. So, how do we outsmart our competition? Well, it is by using one easy trick, keyword research for long-tail keywords.

After you get potential keywords, choose the search term that has 3+ words and enough search volume with low competition. This longer keyword with 3+ words is called Long Term Keyword. Long term keywords often have lower competition and easy to rank for.

For example, it is hard to rank for the term Indian summer or travel in Delhi. But it is easier to rank for tips for Indian summer or Indian summer vegetables or budget travel in New Delhi or Cheap hotels for Travel in Delhi. Did you get my point? The more specific our keyword is the more chance our blogs to be found by search engines.

Keyword research is a continuous process. I hope these basic keyword research tips will help you to understand it better and get more traffic.

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