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How to do keyword research and why it is important for search engine optimization

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of finding every possible keyword relevant to your site’s content, where people enter into search engines with the intention to find a specific topic, product, service, etc.

Properly done, keyword research also yields the topics for which you should be creating content on your site.

Is keyword research important for search engine optimization?

Keyword research is still important when it comes to ranking on search engines. Keyword research also provides insight into the queries your target users are searching for on search engines

Doing keyword research tells you what topics users are searching for, and what are the most popular topic amongst them that relates back to your website’s content. By researching keywords that have a high volume of searches each month, you are able to identify what content to create to stay on-trend.

How to do keyword research

Keyword research starts with finding out how have your targeted audience been searching for content related to your website. You may also use keyword research tools to help you.

Researching on Short-tail keywords

A short-tail keyword consists of one or two words. For most keyword research tools, you would need to think of a few short-tail keywords for the software to be able to process a whole list of keywords ranking from the keyword with the highest search volume to the lowest one.

Simply put, just think about what people will type into search engines to find something. For example, if you are selling furniture items your seed keywords may be

  • Sofa
  • Table
  • Chairs
  • Wardrobes

Long -tail keywords

There are also keywords known as long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords normally consist of three to five or more words such as

  • Best Sofa in Singapore
  • Where can I get a marble table
  • Where to get comfortable chairs for gaming

If you are not able to think of any keywords, you can put your short-tail keyword in any Search engine and there will be suggestions for you available and these keywords have a high search volume.

Keyword search

Or you can use keyword research tools and they will be able to generate keywords for you and you will be able to see the search volume of it as well.

Keyword research tool

There is also another keyword tool such as you can set up a Google ad for your account and there is a function there that allows you to put in a website as a filter and it requires you to have a keyword listed in there for it to be able to generate keywords for you.

google ad keyword search
paid google ad

The above is when your website spends money on Google ads and gives you a more detailed insight into search queries. While below shows you a website that does not spend money on Google ads.

How to do keyword research and why it is important for search engine optimization 1

Google would simply give you an estimated range of traffic for each keyword and it is a very broad range and does not tell you an accurate picture of what the traffic potential is for this keyword.

Summary

Building a comprehensive and relevant keyword list is important for your website’s SEO. Keyword research should be the first thing you do when you start a brand new SEO project, it is the basics for your on-page content optimization and new content creation. Don’t forget to update your plan regularly and monitor your progress with different trends on SERP!