Keyword Research for SEO (2024): Easy Guide For Beginners

Your website traffic depends on your proper keyword research for SEO. If you want to reach your goal, you have to optimize your site with proper keywords. 

I know you have heard this phrase many times in your blogging journey. You have heard without your keyword research, it’s hard to rank number one on Google. But The problem is you have no idea about this keyword research. 

Keyword Research for SEO- Step By Step Beginner’s Guide

When other bloggers are talking about Keyword research for SEO, you are just staring at them without having any idea.

You don’t know how to do keyword research, what is keyword research, and how it works. 

Don’t think much! After reading this article you will have a total idea about keywords and keyword research.

This beginner guide is for you. Here I will try to provide some basics of Keyword Research that will help you to understand this topic more deeply.

In this context, I will try to cover the following topics related to keyword research for SEO

Definition of keyword research
Importance of keyword research for SEO
How to do proper keyword research 

Definition of keyword Research 

Keyword research is the process where you do research to find keywords for your target audience.

The easiest keyword research process is finding a keyword that your audience will use to find a website like yours. 

For example, You wanna know “how to cook chicken”. You have googled the term on Google.

Of course, you expect that Google will provide you with the proper solution on the first page. 

Keyword research helps to figure out those visitors’ intentions that they use in terms of words, phrases, or queries to search for their problems.  

As a blogger, we have to know what kinda of terms the users are using to search the solutions to their problems or look for answers to their questions. 

If we can optimize our content with the exact keywords they are using to search for their solution, we can get a huge amount of traffic just from search engines. 

Once you are able to help your users, you will surely be able to grow your business. 

You can also run PPC Ads if you want on platforms like Facebook ads or Google ads to drive traffic to your website or blog.

It’s important to run keyword research just not to drive traffic to your blog. It’s also important to write depth in content. It helps to create value-added content. 

Let’s make it more clear with the following example,

You are a father looking for the “ best baby care products” for your baby. After using this phrase or keyword you are hoping for your desired products for your baby.

Google automatically generates the most wanted queries that are frequently used for this keyword to help you to find the proper products for your baby. 

Now according to your choice and location, you will choose your query or maybe the one suggested by Google. 

The keyword research for SEO shows the process of the most popular searches according to the search intent. 

Now as a blogger or website owner, you have to take help from these stats and make a decision on which keyword search you are going to solve in your website or blog. 

Once you are able to insert the proper keyword in your content, your target customer will discover your site and they will get the solution and you will get your traffic. 

If you are able to solve any user’s problem, they may become your direct audience later. They will visit your site again and again. You will get traffic and traffic means conversions. 

This is how keyword research for SEO works. If you learn this process with little effort you can drive significant traffic to your site. 

Till now I discussed with you who is looking to buy “baby care products” for his baby. Now let’s check this in a seller view. You are a seller or promoter of that baby product.

Now let’s see how you have to use the query as your keywords and which one will be more profitable for you and drive traffic to your site. 

The following interface is of SEMrush that will show the best-related keywords that will be helpful for your search ranking. 

It looks difficult to understand for you right? It’s okay! It seems like that to the newbie. I will try to explain it elaborately here. 

1. Keywords

This is the query you were asking to find your best baby care products. When you are a blogger or seller you have to make content around this phrase. We call this phrase “focus keyword or target keyword”

2. Volume

Volume is the number of search queries. It shows the data on how many people used these keywords to search on search engines in the last thirty days. 

You can see from the above example that there is a good difference in search volume between the two keywords in the last thirty days. 

Best baby skin care products: 260 search volume in a month
Best  baby skincare products for sensitive skin: 90 search volume in a month

3. Trend

This option will help you to find out which keyword search is going up and going down.

For example, Samsung Note 10s is a popular search term in 2020 but when the new version is released it will lose its search value. 

By observing trends, it will be helpful for you to conduct depth keyword research for SEO. 

4. Keyword difficulty 

This one will help you to understand how easy or difficult the keyword is to rank on a search engine.

This is also known as keyword competition. SEMrush shows the exact metric to show you which keyword you should choose. 

You have to choose a low-competition keyword. Because it’s hard to rank on the number one page if you choose the highly difficult keyword. 

There are many other metrics you will get when you perform keyword research for SEO.

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Importance Of Keyword Research For SEO

Your organic traffic totally depends on keyword research. So you think about how important it is to perform keyword research for SEO. Let’s check some of the following important points-

1. Understand Customer Intent

Keyword research helps to understand the language that is used by your target customer on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Baidu, and others. 

2. Discover Untapped Queries

This is an amazing task you can do by doing keyword research. It will help you to find out the untapped queries that can drive paid customers to your site from organic searches.

3. Increase conversion 

You will get an audience that is completely ready to buy. Thus you will be able to increase your conversions with high engagement.

Because organic traffic is like a hot customer. When they intend to search for something they need to buy, they purchase if you can provide value.

4. Trend

If you continually do keyword research for SEO, it will help you to understand your market and customer trends.

You will know in which direction your customers and marketing are heading. By considering these factors you can choose which keyword would be profitable for you.

5. Reduce Ads Investment

Organic traffic makes it happen to get some hot sales. You will get a lot of organic traffic through keyword research for SEO which will save your PPC cost.

 When you get your target customer by organic search, why do you need to invest in ads? It will save your ads costing dramatically.

6. Increase Ads Revenue

Bloggers who are dependent on Google ads and Media.net Ads will be able to find high CPC keywords by doing proper keyword research. This will insanely increase its ad revenue. 

These are some of the many advantages of keyword research for SEO. There are some advanced keyword research formulas but I will try to discuss only the basics in this article. 

The expertise of doing keyword research for SEO takes time. The more you engage in this, the more you will learn. 

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How To Do Keyword Research For SEO Using SEMrush

You can follow different kinds of techniques to do your keyword research for SEO. But in this guide, I will try to share only the most used formula. 

1. Spy on your competitors 

This one is the easiest option to find keywords that are already ranking for a website. All you need to do is find the top 10 websites and check exactly for which keyword they are ranking on the top. 

Let’s try to find out the competitors using the keyword “best baby care products”

Look google has given a quick result when you search for the keyword. All you need to do is Go to SEMrush enter the domain name and find out exactly for which keyword they are ranking on the top.

SEMrush will show you all the important data you will need for your keyword research for SEO like the above image.

You will be able to find out which keyword is driving most of the traffic to that website, the volume, keyword difficulty, keyword position, and traffic percentage. 

You will be able to find profitable keywords for your business within minutes with the SEMrush SEO tool. 

2. Use The Keyword Gap

A keyword gap is finding the keyword that is increasing traffic to your competitor’s site but not to your site. 

You can pick one or two of your competitors’ websites and check for which keyword they are ranking on the top.

Figure out the keywords and try to optimize your next content using those keywords. 

SEMrush is better for doing this task. 

3. Use Seed Word Formula

This formula is the most time-consuming keyword research for SEO. I will show you the process using SEMrush. 

Enter the seed keyword and mark the country that you are gonna target. Now click on search to proceed. SEMrush will automatically generate tons of keywords from the seed keyword.

You can filter the keywords using different parameters like:

Exact match

That will help you to find the same word keywords for you. Like you are looking for baby care products” keyword. The tool will show you “where to find baby products in New York” Brooklyn and so on.

Broad match

This option will help you to get keywords of some broad match words like “Buy natural baby care products” or baby care products for sensitive skin. It will suggest to you some best variations of words. 

Phrase match and related keywords

Phrase match will help to find close keywords that match the phrases and search intent of the user. 

Related keywords will show the metric of low competitive keywords that has low competition and there is a better chance of getting a high ranking for that keyword. 

I am showing all the research using SEMrush. Because this is the best tool I recommend and I personally use it for my keyword research.

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Read also,

What is the Best KGR Calculator Tool?
SEMrush Tutorial & Reviews- Beginner’s Guide With 7-Day Free Trial
WordPress BreadCrumbs: Are You Ignoring This Important SEO Factor
Keyword Cannibalization Impact On SEO[How To Fix This Issue]

Wrapping Up

These are some basic keyword research for SEO. There are many advanced options for keyword research.

But as a newbie, you have to grab the basics first. Make sure you are good at this basic stuff.

You won’t be an expert in keyword research on day one. You will need some time to achieve expertise.

The expertise of becoming a keyword researcher depends on the practice. The more you will keep practicing, the more expert you will become.

If you have not started your blog yet, check here for this detailed guide to start your blog.

Now you know proper keyword research. You can check this article to learn how you can write SEO-friendly articles properly.

I hope now you know what is keyword research how to do keyword research for SEO and how can make your article SEO-friendly. If this guide helps you please feel free to share it with your friends.