what is keyword research seo

How to Do Keyword Research for SEO: A Beginner's Guide

Updated: September 04, 2024

Published: January 30, 2014

Keyword research has remained a constant in a rapidly changing search landscape. If you’re an inbound marketer looking to optimize your website, understanding how to do keyword research is a must.

In this post, we’ll define what keyword research is, why it’s important, how to conduct your research for your SEO strategy , and how to choose the right keywords for your website.

Table of Contents

What is keyword research?

Why is keyword research important, elements of keyword research, how to research keywords for your seo strategy, how to find and choose keywords for your website, best keywords for seo.

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Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing search terms that people enter into search engines with the goal of using that data for a specific purpose, often for search engine optimization (SEO) or general marketing. Keyword research can uncover queries to target, the popularity of these queries, their ranking difficulty, and more.

Keyword research helps you find your SEO sweet spot — the overlap of keywords that aren’t too hard to rank for and keywords that you can confidently produce excellent content on. It also identifies the queries that your target audience is actually searching on Google.

I talked to HubSpot Growth Manager Amal Kalepp , who says that keyword research “determines who your competitors are and which area of the search landscape you can rank for. Doing keyword research and understanding where your blog or website sweet spot is — that’s what gives you rankability.”

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Drill down into your website’s traffic sources and sift through your organic search traffic bucket to identify the keywords people use to arrive at your site.

Repeat this exercise for as many topic buckets as you have.

Remember, if you’re having trouble brainstorming with relevant search terms, you can always head on over to your customer-facing colleagues in sales or service. Ask them what types of terms their prospects or customers have questions about.

Those are often great starting points for keyword research.

Here at HubSpot, we use the Search Insights Report. This template is designed to help you do the same and bucket your keywords into topic clusters, analyze MSV, and inform your editorial calendar and strategy.

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Step 3. Understand how intent affects keyword research and analyze accordingly.

User intent is now one of the most pivotal factors in your ability to rank well on search engines like Google.

That means it’s vital that your web page addresses the problem a searcher wants to solve rather than simply including the keyword the searcher used.

So, how does this affect your keyword research?

It’s tempting to take keywords at face value, but they can have many different meanings.

And because the intent behind a search is so important to your ranking potential, you need to be extra careful about how you interpret the keywords you target.

Let’s say you’re researching the keyword “how to start a blog” for an article you want to create. “Blog” can mean a blog post or the blog website itself, and the searcher’s intent behind that keyword will influence the direction of your article.

Does the searcher want to learn how to start an individual blog post ? Or do they want to know how to launch a website domain for a new blog?

If your content strategy only targets people interested in the latter, you’ll need to determine the keyword’s intent before using it.

To verify a user’s intent, it’s a good idea to simply enter this keyword into a search engine yourself and see what types of results come up.

I did a quick search for “how to start a blog,” and it looks like most users are searching for info on how to start a website with a blog, not an individual blog post:

Step 1. Use Google Keyword Planner to cut down your keyword list.

In Google’s Keyword Planner, you can get search volume and traffic estimates for keywords you’re considering. Then, take the information you learn from Keyword Planner and use Google Trends to fill in some blanks.

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What is keyword research?

If you have a business nowadays, your website might just have become your lifeline. There’s no time to waste: Let’s get started with SEO and improve your rankings in Google. Keyword research is an essential first step. Here, you’ll find out what it is and which factors you should take into account.

Keyword research is all about finding the keywords your audience uses when they’re looking for a product or service you offer, and using this information to guide your keyword strategy. Without keyword research, you might find yourself lost in your own lingo and miss out on popular keywords that your target audience are already searching for. Or you could end up competing with industry giants – a battle you may only have a small chance of winning, even with a great strategy.

There are a variety of  factors you have to take into account when doing keyword research and setting up your keyword strategy . In this blog post we’ll discuss your mission, your audience, and your competition.

If you want to take a deep-dive into keyword research you should start by reading our ultimate guide to keyword research . If you prefer to get started right away, read on below.

Read more: Keyword mistakes: 8 pitfalls you can easily avoid »

Meaningful keywords

We often hear people say: we can’t come up with meaningful keywords. Before you do anything, and this is key, you need to know what makes your company unique. Take a step back and look at your business as a whole. You need to have a clear concept of the mission of your company. You need to determine exactly what you have to offer because that’s what’s going to make you rank.

It’s that simple. SEO is just like regular business. If you’re doing everything on the same or inferior level as your competition, you’re not going to stand out. If you’re not the best result, why should people want to find you? Why should Google rank you? It seems simple, but this factor is often forgotten.

What makes your company unique?

If you’re struggling to find the right keywords, try asking yourself the following questions:

• What do you have to offer?
• What is your mission?
• What are your core values and strengths?
• What makes you stand out from the crowd? Think about the niche aspects of your business you excel at.

You don’t have to be better than your competition at absolutely everything, so long as you identify enough points to build a  keyword strategy  around. For smaller companies, this means that you probably have to be better at the things the bigger fish haven’t thought of or aren’t actively looking to do.

The role of your audience in your keyword research

Once you’ve determined what you have to offer, it’s time to consider  your audience . How does your offering connect with the needs and goals of real people? Ultimately, SEO is all about making sure your users are able to find what they’re looking for – but there’s much more to it than just choosing the right keywords. Understanding your audience’s needs is essential for making great user-centric content , which is an important part of good SEO too. So the first thing you have to do is find out which words your potential audience uses to find the information they’re looking for.

Let’s look at an example. At Yoast, we call our  SEO training courses platform “Yoast SEO Academy.” So at first, it might seem logical for us to optimize for the keyword [Yoast SEO Academy]. However, when we analyze traffic data, it turns out that our audience searches for [SEO training] or [SEO courses] way  more often. So it makes much more sense to optimize for that term instead.

Every company has its internal vocabulary, which often doesn’t match the vocabulary of its audience. Therefore, you should always select your keywords from your audience’s perspective . By using the integrated Semrush features in the Yoast SEO plugin , you can find keyword data and suggestions with just a few clicks. You can also try out the Yoast Suggest tool for more ideas.

What about your competition?

Lastly, you simply can’t devise a proper keyword research strategy without considering your competition. All too often, websites optimize for terms they have absolutely no chance of ranking for. For instance, keywords with a high search volume can help a website connect with much bigger audiences, but you’ll only see positive results if you can rank well. The search terms that deliver the highest traffic are highly competitive, so you need to  research your competition and assess the situation.

You could go overboard and make a thorough analysis of all the competitors in your field, and that can certainly be worthwhile. But let’s stick to the basics for now. It’s actually quite easy to get a general idea of your SEO competition. Just Google some search terms you would like to rank for and see which companies show up and compare them with where your site ranks. How big are the companies you are competing with for those top three rankings? Would your company fit within these results? This is all quite easy to determine using only Google search results.

But be aware!  You can’t just blindly trust the search results because Google tailors them to  your personal  search history, which means your site will come up higher for you than for others doing the same search. You can get around this by searching in incognito mode, although there’s still a local search component even in that. If this is likely to be a problem for you, consider using a VPN to conceal your location or use Valentin.app to even choose a location yourself!

Go Premium and learn how to do keyword research !

Did you know you get access to all Yoast training courses if you get Yoast SEO Premium? Find out how to do keyword research, optimize your site structure, how to write great copy for SEO, and much more !

Expanding your strategy step-by-step

Big sites can rank for the most general terms. Smaller sites within a very specific niche can do the same. Of course, it’s also easier if you’re writing in a language that is not spoken all over the world. For most smaller sites that are writing in English, however, the general rule of thumb is this: start with a big set of long tail keywords which have little traffic, but you can rank for more easily. Then, work yourself up to the rankings step-by-step. Once you’ve gained some SEO authority, start optimizing for more general keywords. And in the end, maybe you will even be able to rank for your head keywords!

Read more: Keyword research: the ultimate guide »

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Willemien was the Manager Content of yoast.com. She loves creating user-friendly content and making it easy to find for people and search engines.

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Smx london 2024, webinar: how to start with seo (october 24, 2024), 10 responses to what is keyword research.

“I like your blog and especially your thought on this topic about keyword research. Because keywords are a very essential part of on-page SEO. This blog very helpful for Keyword research thanks for sharing.”

Thanks for the feedback! Getting your keywords right is definitely a key step for good SEO results. We have a collection of blog posts about keyword research , if you’d like to read more.

A very well-written article. I think the most important thing in keyword research is creating value. Am I right??

Creating an article that can be of value to your audience is definitely important! It’s what differentiates your content from other search results. But it’s also important to choose the right words to focus on, words that your audience is using. Thanks for your addition and lots of luck with your keyword research :)

thanks for the post. It will help out in my future writings!

You’re welcome and good luck with your writing :)

This is another really helpful post. A great guide for those who are just starting out. It is really important to know what keywords to put on your posts. Thank you for this! Great post!

You’re very welcome!

Keywords analysis is really important. Do long-tail keywords help in SEO?

Hi there! They can help you with your rankings, especially when you’re in a competitive market or just getting started with your SEO :) Read more in our post on long-tail keywords .