How to do keyword research | Flow hashtag media

Keyword Research Basics

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is process of identifying words and phrases that people use to search 

Information on search engines. In SEO keywords are crucial for websites , as they determine your website ranking and traffic. It helps you to understand what your audience searches for so that you can create content around it and drive traffic to your website .

Why is keyword research important?

Keyword research  forms the basic foundation of search engine optimization. It helps in driving qualified traffic to your website ultimately boosting online visibility , brand awareness and conversion. We at Flow Hashtag Media believe that keyword research is essential to ensure client website ranks for words that are relevant to their industries. 

How to Find Keyword Ideas

Brainstorm “seed” keywords

Seed keywords are the starting point of any keyword research . It helps in defining your niche and these keywords are used to generate a long list of keywords. For example if you are a digital marketing agency the seed keywords are digital marketing , social media marketing , web development services , seo services etc.

Note it is not necessary to target for seed keywords , as their name suggests they are basically used to generate keyword ideas .

See what keywords your competitors rank for

Identifying keywords for which your competitors rank for is the best way forward as these keywords are already driving traffic to the websites . One way of identifying competitors is by searching your keywords and seeing who ranks for those keywords on google search . 

By understanding their target keywords , you can find potential opportunities for your own sites.

Use keyword research tools

Keyword research tools help in discovering many potential keywords . Google keyword planner is a well known tool which is used for keyword research . Here we plug in some seed keywords and get the keyword ideas from their database .

For instance for keyword digital marketing agency , the below are few keywords suggested by google keyword planner with there average monthly searches.

Study your niche

All these keywords we generate using keyword research tools might not be useful , one has to study their niche and narrow down the keywords that suit their niche .

Let us now discuss few metrics that help us to narrow down on keywords 

Search volume

Search volume tells you about the average number of times the keyword got searched in a month. For example, digital marketing agency  keyword saw search of 10k -100k searches per month. 

For a new website one has to target keywords whose search volume is less than 10k has they will be less competitive and easy to rank on search engines . 

Keyword Difficulty

Keyword difficulty helps us determine how difficult it is to rank for particular keywords . Ahref keyword difficulty classifies keyword difficulty into 4 categories - easy , medium , hard , super hard . 

For instance for keyword digital marketing agency , the keyword difficulty score is hard 

Generally people target easy keywords, however one should not neglect hard keywords . It is recommended to start targeting hard keywords as soon as possible . You need a lot of backlinks for hard keywords which take time to build .

Key takeaways

If you want to get search traffic, you have to create content on topics that people are searching for.

The best way to kickstart your keyword research process is to study what keywords are bringing search traffic to your competitors.

Professional keyword research tools have vast databases of keywords, and they can show you millions of keyword ideas that contain your seed keywords in them.

Search volume is an important metric to understand the popularity of a given keyword. But if you want to predict how much search traffic you may get from ranking for it, you need to look at the Traffic Potential.

Keyword Difficulty helps you to gauge how many links you’ll need to get to your page in order for it to rank in the top 10. But this simple two-digit number cannot give you an answer to the question, “How to rank #1 in Google?”