In this blog:

• What is keyword research?
• Why should you do keyword research?
• 3 steps of keyword research
• A few points to note

Keyword research is the process of determining what search phrases your target audience uses to find businesses and websites similar to yours in search engines.  

It is the very first step of the SEO process. No matter how good your content is, without keyword research and SEO, you will not get good results. So, you need to analyze, compare, and prioritize your website's top keyword opportunities.  

After completing your keyword research, you will have learned a lot about your audience, what information they are looking for, and what they are interested in at the moment. Basically, you will be able to identify the trends of different components of your service. You can curate personalized content apt for your audience if you have this valuable information. In addition, the search engine will also understand your company's services and show your web pages to apt audiences.

Bingo! That is what every person owning a website wants!

Now before we start our keyword hunting journey, keep the following questions in mind during the process:

• How difficult would it be to rank for this keyword?
• What kind of traffic can I expect if I rank for this keyword?
• What should I write in order to rank for this keyword?
• Is it probable that people looking for this term will become my customers?

Have you noted them down? Good! Let's begin now!

3 Steps of keyword research:

Step 1: Brainstorm

Jot down topic buckets.

Consider the subjects you want to rank for in terms of general buckets to begin this step. Then, come up with a few topic buckets that you believe are relevant to your business, and use those topic buckets to help you come up with particular keywords later on.

Every company has a USP. They will either sell something or offer some service. Of course, you know your company better than anyone, so jot down all the things that you offer. 

Put yourself in the shoes of your buyer personas: what sorts of subjects would your target audience look for to find your company? For example, if you have online classes where you teach baking, you might want to rank for:

• Bake
• Baking classes
• Online baking classes
• Learn to bake
• Baking recipes 

It's worth noting that the topic buckets you come up with are not final. This is the starting point for the next steps in keyword research. So don't get too worked up about your topic buckets. Finding them should just take a few minutes. Proceed to the next step once you have a few basic topic buckets that you think will work for your website. 

Stage 2: Find related keywords for all the content buckets:

Determine the terms or phrases your target consumer could use to search for information, goods, or services in each of your topic buckets. You can use SEO tools at this stage. If you are a beginner, we suggest you go with Google Keyword Researcher because it is simple and easy.

Login to Google Keyword planner -> Click on "Discover new keywords" -> Enter one of the topic buckets you chose and click on "Get started" -> Now note down the keywords, search volume and trend in a Spreadsheet.

This will help you analyze and prioritize your content while creating them. 

For example, the topic bucket, "Learn to bake", can have related keywords such as:

• Learn to bake cake
• Learn to bake online
• Learn to bake cakes online

Step 3: Come up with blog titles:

There are many ways to come up with titles using SEO tools, but if you are just getting started, the easiest way to do it is using, yep, you guessed it, Google.

Pick a keyword, type it in the google search box, and note down the google autocomplete phrases. Then click on enter.

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Note down the questions in the "People also ask" section and the "Related searches" section on the search results page.

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The phrases in the above sections are generated based on real searches, which will help you develop your blog titles and your content calendar.

A few points to note:

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• Prioritize keywords that have high search volume and low difficulty. This will help you rank easily when you start. 
• Once you start seeing results, you can take up more challenging and difficult keywords.
• See how your competitors are doing for your target keywords. Then, read some of their content and see if there are any sections you can pick up and make better.
• Learn to use some essential SEO tools. These will help you analyze the performance of your website to improve your strategy.

Start small, but start strong! And if you get stuck anywhere, feel free to reach out to our SEO experts for guidance and support!

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