How to do keyword research

SEO

Why should you care about keyword research?

It’s a good question.

If you’re a business owner, you care about one thing – sales. So, talking about things with technical-sounding words such as “keyword research” might seem silly.

But far from being irrelevant, keyword research is one of the most important activities that goes into making your website generate leads.

And, leads are crucial for business growth.

So, keyword research really is something that you should know about, and check that your digital marketing agency is doing frequently on your behalf.

Here we look at why keyword research matters, and how to go about doing it. Firstly, what is a keyword?

What’s a keyword?

A digital marketing SEO company will usually start by throwing around terms like keywords, seed keywords, long-tailed keywords and keyword phrases. These can all be a bit confusing. 

But all these really refer to variations of the same thing – the search term a user puts into a search engine to find your service. It might be a long question-type keyword (called a long-tail keyword) or a short collection of words, but they are all keywords. 

Have you ever had the pick and mix at the cinema?

Looking for keywords is a bit like pick and mix. You have lots of places you can find them, and you have to rummage through, select the best and add them to your website.

So, let’s look at how you complete keyword research. 

How to do keyword research

Keyword research involves looking for lots of ideas in lots of different places and pulling them together into one document.

Your aim is to create a spreadsheet of keywords. It will look something like this:

Let’s have a look at what some of those headings mean:

Heading	Meaning
Keyword	The search term that the user types into the search engine.
Intent	The reason why a user performs a search. The main intents (sometimes called search intent or user intent) are – informational, commercial, transactional, and navigational. Information keywords imply the user is looking for knowledge or information. Commercial suggests they’re interested in buying something (either a product or service). Transactional suggests that they’re ready to buy. Navigational keywords are used when looking for a specific website or brand.
Volume	The (estimated) number of searches for this keyword each month. It is normally rounded up.
Keyword difficulty	An estimate of how difficult it would be to rank highly for this keyword.
CPC	How expensive it would be to pay to rank for this keyword.

Your “favourites” (in SEO terms) are those keywords that:

1. Are not too difficult to rank for.
2. Have a medium or high search volume.
3. Bring up your competitors or websites in your niche when used in a search engine. This shows that the search intent matches.

(There are sometimes reasons to look for low-volume keywords, we don’t have time to talk about that in this blog post).

Once you have a list of keywords you can then note certain characteristics about them and decide where they should be placed on your website. 

A quick note about SEO keyword research tools

Most people use an SEO tool to help them do their keyword research. Often, they are free to use or offer an element of service for free. We advise you to check them out. These tools include Google Keyword Planner (housed within Google Ads), Ahrefs, SEMrush, Ubersuggest, Moz, and many more. 

We actually recommend that you use a combination if possible, as all have different strengths and weaknesses. 

These tools will provide you with specific search data that can help you to answer key questions like: 

• What is that people are searching for in this space?
• How many people are searching for it?
• How do they want to see this information presented? 

A reputable digital marketing company will break down the results generated from these tools, and formulate lists of keywords they think you should target as part of your website’s content or SEO campaign.

How to use an SEO tool

To demonstrate how to use an SEO tool, we are going to show how to use Semrush. Each tool will be set up slightly differently, but it will give you an idea of how to use your tool.

On Semrush, the keyword research tool is called the “Keyword Magic Tool”.

Type your first idea into the magic tool. Semrush will pull up a load of ideas.

Sometimes data is populated on the keywords with a higher search volume, but then not for lower volume keywords. So check that each keyword has the intent and CPC data on it. If not you can select it and update the data by clicking “update” and then “keywords on this page”.

Read the list of keywords that comes up and select any that are appropriate for your project. You can see that I’ve selected them by clicking on the little boxes to the left.

You can click “copy” to copy the keywords you’ve selected.

Then, paste the keywords into a Google Spreadsheet document. 

How to find keywords

So where do we find these juicy morsels of keyword goodness? Here are a few suggestions.

Brainstorm using common sense

Using your grey matter brainstorm potential keywords based on what you have learned about your industry and target audience. Make a list of potential keywords that you think people may use to search for your business.

Put them into an SEO tool to determine whether they have search volume or not. If they do, then add them to your list. 

Be systematic

Here are some ways to discover commercial and transactional keywords:

1. Start with the broad industry keywords (we call them seed keywords). SEO keyword research tools always have a keyword discovery function that will search for other keywords associated with the one you supply. Put them into your tool’s function and see what other keywords it pulls up. You can then select the keywords that seem best.
2. I then tend to go down through the services for that particular industry (these are secondary keywords), looking for other keywords that I might have missed, similarly putting them into my SEO tool. 
3. Then look for thematic keywords that are associated with your industry. For example, for an employee benefits broker, this might include themes like “employee engagement” or “employee retention”. For a non-destructive testing company, it might include themes such as “reducing operational disruption” or “reducing shutdown times”.
4. Look for local keywords. It might be that there are lots of iterations of “cleaning company Birmingham” or “Worcester electrical repair company” for example.
5. Consider sector-specific keywords. Terms such as “cleaning company for healthcare settings” or “CQC-compliant cleaning” might yield results if you provide cleaning services.

The lists these tools will provide you with will probably be very large. So, after you have generated a list of potential keywords, narrow it down to the most relevant and profitable keywords. 

Each keyword will have metrics such as search volume (weekly, monthly etc), frequency, competition, and relevance.

Analyse your competitors

Look at your competitors’ websites and identify the keywords they are targeting. This will give you an idea of what keywords you should target to compete with them. What have they missed, is there a gap or niche that you could fill that they haven’t thought of…does that align with trending search terms?

A good SEO tool will allow you to pull keyword data from another website. You can then work through the list, copying over keywords that you think you should try and rank for. 

Google

You can use Google Keyword Planner to find keywords that are connected to your industry. You do need to have a Google Ads account to do this, though. 

Now what?

Once you have narrowed down your list of keywords, you need to filter and group them in different ways in order to determine where they should go. There are several different ways you need to categorise them. 

Clustering

Keywords that are similar can be clustered together. If you see lots of keywords associated with a particular service, you know you need to create a page that includes those keywords. Look for patterns or large groups of keywords that are all about one service/topic. This will tell you the type of pages you need to create. 

To help me cluster keywords, I tend to go down my list noting what service/page of the website would best fit the keyword. 

Here you can see that I’ve added a suggested location on the website for each keyword in my keyword list.

Customer journey position

The eagle-eyed amongst you will see another column the spreadsheet above – “Customer Journey Position”. The different keywords can be mapped out onto a basic customer journey. 

1. Awareness

A lot of Informational keywords are used by prospects who are firmly in the awareness stage of their journey. They’ve become aware of their problem and are looking for a potential solution. Writing blog content that answers these questions is a great way to get these Clients into your sales funnel. 

Exposure at this level can help further along their journey when those you have had interactions with come to the commercial investigation and transactional stages. This can be the difference between them choosing you, or a competitor. This is why we make a big deal about content marketing. 

2. Interest

Navigational and Commercial keywords are associated with those who are in the Interest stage of their journey. They know what service they need to meet their needs and are looking for a company to do business with. These keywords need to be on the sales pages of your website. 

3. Desire

Those using transactional keywords are much lower down their journey. They’ve figured out exactly what they need and are looking for a very specific service. They are still in the process of investigating what company to use and are therefore looking to be persuaded that it could be you. These keywords need to be on your sales pages and pages that provide proof of your talents. 

Don’t make the mistake of only fishing in the transactional pond. These consumers might be more likely to convert in the here and now, but it’s the smallest pool there is, and you’d be missing out on rich pickings available further up the funnel. 90% of your prospects are actually “higher up the sales funnel” and are using keywords connected to the Awareness and Interest stages of their journey. 

Your digital marketing agency will compile all of this information into a spreadsheet for you, and formulate your keyword and wider SEO plan, based on these results. This is a constant flow and will need to be reviewed and updated regularly to reflect the impact of keywords used and changes in trends. 

Keyword research: the foundation of a successful online presence.

Keyword research is far more than a technical exercise—it’s the foundation of a successful online presence. By understanding the words and phrases your audience is searching for, you can create targeted content that not only drives traffic to your website but also converts visitors into leads and customers.

Keyword research ensures your website speaks the language of your potential customers, addressing their needs, answering their questions, and positioning your business as the solution they’ve been searching for. It’s not just about rankings; it’s about relevance and connection.

Whether you’re working with a digital marketing agency or doing it yourself, consistent keyword research is a must for staying ahead of your competitors and adapting to changing trends. Think of it as your secret weapon in the battle for online visibility. By investing time and effort into this process, you’re setting the stage for sustainable growth and long-term success in the digital world.