Do you feel like you have posted quality content, but the number of visitors is still not increasing?
Maybe this is caused by a stuck website ranking. To get top rankings on SERP, you need to know how to determine the right keywords.
Keywords are an important aspect that determines the success of SEO practices. Therefore, keyword research is the main step that must be done before you carry out other optimization steps.
In this article, we will guide you to understand more deeply about keyword research to increase website visibility. Let's move on to the full discussion!
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Keyword Function
Before moving on to how to determine the right keywords, first know what keywords are used for in search engines. In short, keywords are phrases or terms used by users to search for certain information using search engines.
With keywords, search engines can search and display information according to user instructions. The higher the quality of the keywords, the more relevant the results displayed by search engines. This relates to how SEO works to optimize site performance. There are 5 ways SEO works in order, including:
- Crawling
- Indexing
- Ranking
- Calculating relevance
- Retrieving results
SEO works starting from releasing robots (crawlers) to find new content and collect details from each website page. From this it can be seen that keywords have an important role so that websites and their content can be identified by search engines.
How to Do Keyword Research on Search Engines?
How to determine the right keywords begins with in-depth keyword research . This research involves a series of stages, including determining goals and target audience. By knowing who your target audience is, you can adjust relevant topics and content.
In this example, you can use the Google search engine to do keyword research. Here are some features that you can use:
1. Google Search Suggestions
Keyword research can utilize search suggestions provided by search engines. When you write certain keywords in the search column, usually you will get a drop down list . This is what is called search suggestions.
Google provides keyword suggestions based on the sentences or phrases you write in the search column. These suggestions are keywords that are widely used by users to search for the information you mean.
Note down any keyword suggestions provided by Google. You can use it as your choice list to select the right keywords to optimize content and sites.
2. People Also Ask
Search results usually come with a ' People Also Ask ' column. This is a collection of questions asked by users to search for related information. From this list you can also collect potential keywords to build a website SEO strategy.
3. Related Searches
At the end of the search results page the Related Searches ' section is displayed. This is another keyword that is still connected to a related topic. These keywords are obtained from users' habits in using search engines to find information.
For example, you do a search about website hosting.
So, Related Searches will display search references with other keywords that have been done by other users. Some of them, such as 'free website hosting' , 'hosting is', 'cheap hosting', and others.
Tips for Choosing the Right Keywords
Then, how do you choose the right keywords? Basically, to find out which keywords are the right ones, you need to pay attention to the metrics of the keywords. For more details, follow the tips for choosing quality keywords below!
1. Pay Attention to Search Volume
Search volume is one of the important metrics in how to determine the right keywords. Through this metric, you can find out how many searches were carried out using a keyword.
Logically, the greater the search volume, the more popular the keyword. You can use free tools to check the Search Volume (SV) of keywords. For example, like the Ahrefs keyword generator , SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool, or others.
2. Know the Keyword Competition
How to determine the right keywords also involves competitor research, you know . Get to know first how high the level of keyword competition is. You can know this from the Keyword Difficulty (KD) metric. Usually this metric is also provided by keyword research tools along with the Search Volume metric.
Keywords with high KD mean they have a difficult level of competition. You may need to compete with websites or big brands to be able to display content with selected keywords on the first page of search results. Alternatively, choose keywords with medium or low KD.
3. Get to Know Competitors on SERP
Try searching with keywords that you think have potential. This will show what websites use these keywords. Apart from that, also check what type of content uses these keywords.
From here, you can get website references and the type of content that should be created. As a result, you can display content on SERPs and get more visitors.
4. Tailor Content to User Search Intent
Many website owners are still not aware of this point. Each user searches with different intentions. Let's say a user searches for the keyword 'How to sew jeans'. The expectation from this search is content that contains tutorials.
This is different from the intentions of users who search with the keyword 'Cheap restaurants in Lagos'. The expectation is that it is a restaurant reference in the Jakarta area. Users who search with location tags are usually potential buyers.
Match keyword choices and content to user intent. Try to see it from the perspective of a user or potential buyer. Find out what the expectations are from conducting a search with certain keywords.
That's a brief discussion about keyword research and tips on how to determine the right keywords.
Make sure to do in-depth research regarding the target audience, especially in terms of search intent, user habits and interests. Hopefully this article can be useful.
