Learn how to find the best keywords to rank high on.

Ranking high is all about finding the right keywords to rank for. Here we will look at how to find the right keywords to rank for and how to keep track of your competitors in the search results. The goal is to get more traffic, higher CTR, rank higher in the results and not get beaten by your competitors.

When it comes to search engine optimisation, the first thing you should always start with is Keyword Research!

The reason is simple. If you don’t know what people are actually searching for in your market, you don’t know how to optimise your SEO for it. You want to attract the visitors who are actually searching for what you offer.

Here are some tips to get you started with Keyword Search.

Generate good CTR by choosing the RIGHT keywords

When it comes to keywords, people usually make at least one of three mistakes:

1. They don’t optimise for any keyword(s) at all.
2. Trying to optimise for too many keywords.
3. They optimise irrelevant keywords.

You easily solve the first two mistakes by thinking; each page of my website should be targeted to use one main keyword or topic.

If several of your pages are targeting the same keyword, Google will usually choose only one of these pages and you will lose traffic unnecessarily. Google may not even choose the page you prefer to be ranked highest.

Quick tip: send a page link to a friend and ask them what they think the page is about. You will probably get the answer to which keyword should be used.

However, you should always Google the keyword you intend to use. This will give you a good insight into what Google thinks are good results for the chosen keyword. If the search results differ significantly from the content you are going to use the keyword for, it is probably not a good choice of keyword.

The same goes for keywords with extra SERP functionality (e.g. featured snippets, AdWords ads, shopping results, etc.) These types of results will push the organic results way down and thus lower the CTR and bring less traffic.

If you have an e-commerce site, you can take advantage of the opportunity with extra SERP functionality in the form of e.g. shopping results. See how to use Google for Retail and Merchant Centre.

Rank higher by avoiding “Keyword Unicorns”

At certain times when you do your research for your intended keyword, you will find keywords that feel extra good. But just because a keyword has high traffic doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good word to try to rank for. You need to consider the purpose of the search.

For example, “Google Analytics” might seem like a good keyword to rank for at first glance.

It’s definitely a keyword with really good traffic volume per month. But consider that the majority of these searches are done by people who probably just want to log into Google Analytics. These people are unlikely to see more than the first search result.

If we move on in the search results, we find the keyword “how to use Google analytics” which gets a fair number of searches per month. In other words, if you have written a guide on Analytics, “how to use Google analytics” is the better choice of keyword.

Remember, it’s not all about traffic (as long as you’re not selling adverts). Ultimately, it’s about ranking highly on keywords that add value to your business in the form of the specific traffic that generates leads and brings you customers. The important thing is to find keywords that are relevant to the purpose of the search.

Identify “Keyword Unicorns”

• Can those who search for this keyword be seen as potential customers?
  
• Is there a clear path to generate leads with this keyword?
  
• Is the search volume large enough for this keyword to be worth it from a business perspective?
  
• Is the search volume for the keyword coming from your target market and the country where you have your customers?

If the answer to any of the questions above is “No” then you have found yourself a “Keyword Unicorn” and should revisit the choice of keywords.

Use Google Analytics and Search Console for insights on all keywords

When it comes to statistics, Google Analytics is the industry standard. Analytics shows most things, but not which keywords are driving your traffic, not clearly anyway.

Unfortunately, many keywords are listed as “not provided”, which is not very useful.

But you can access this data by using “Search Console -> Queries” in Google Analytics. Just make sure you have enabled Google Search Console for the account and this option will appear in the menu.

New website with low influence? Find low competition keywords to quickly rank high in search results

Do you have a new website where the influence hasn’t reached its peak yet? With that in mind, it will be harder to rank highly on high competition keywords. It’s not impossible, but it’s very difficult and it would require that little bit extra.

Therefore, it might make more sense to start smart and focus on ranking high on less competitive keywords instead. It is one of the most effective ways to quickly generate search traffic to your new website.

To get the keyword difficulty (KD) for a keyword, the most reliable way is to use a service that provides this function. Some examples of such services are SEMrush, Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, Moz Pro or KWFinder.

Example: If we take the keyword “search engine optimisation”, we will see that it is a keyword with a very high KD. I.e. keywords that can be difficult to rank high with. But for the same keyword, we find related keywords that do not have as high KD.

If you look at the keywords “how does search engine optimisation work”, you can see that here the KD is lower or non-existent and definitely easier to work towards. By finding and utilising the lower KD scores/percentages, we can get started faster with bringing in traffic from the search engines.

Take places in search results by beating competitors with their keywords

Wouldn’t it be great if you could see what keywords your competitors are ranking high with and see how much traffic it brings them?

It can be done! Use any of the available SEO services. Examples are “Organic keywords” in Ahrefs Site Explorer or “Marketing Insights/Organic Research” at SEMrush.

With services like these, you have the opportunity to find the keywords your competitors are using and beat them in the rankings by doing the better SEO work and optimising your content.

Stay ahead – Create alerts for competitors’ new keywords in real time

Stay on top of your competitors’ strategies by monitoring their new keywords. If your competitors are trying to use new keywords to rank for, then you can be on your toes and rank for the same keywords.

In the Ahrefs service, you can set notifications for new keywords that your competitors are using. Ahrefs then sends out a digest via email for new keywords that your competitors are ranking on. Other services offer similar keyword management tools.

See the real potential of keywords in traffic by using long-tails

Many pages rank on long-tail terms along with the primary keyword.

For example, let’s say this article ranks on the primary keyword “keyword research”, but it could also rank on “how to do keyword research”, “SEO keyword research” and various other terms.

Because it can look like this, we don’t really see the true potential of traffic volume if we only look at the primary keyword.

To see the true potential, we simply look at the total volume of the keyword including “Keyword Variations”.

Example: Say we want to rank for the keywords “best VPN”. Then you can see that they have a search volume of around 150k.

However, if we look at the total volume for the keyword including “Keyword Variations”, the volume is more than double. The reason is that several long-tail terms are used to capture the true potential of search traffic.

In other words, the real potential for search traffic may be much higher than you think.

Rank higher by finding the gaps in your content

Gaps in your content are keywords that your competitors, but not you, rank for. This could be because you don’t have content that matches the keywords or because the keywords are not used in the content.

You can find these gaps by using available SEO services. There you can see the keywords that your competitors rank on but you don’t, see keywords where your competitors rank better and you have room for improvement.

With these insights, you can easily update existing content for better search engine optimisation or why not plan for content that can provide high rankings where KD is low for the keywords.

Find low CTR keywords and use it to your advantage for more traffic

One of the most useful tools in Google Search Console is the analytics report. Here you can find the keywords that have low CTR in relation to ranking.

Organise the report by position and look at the keywords in the top 5 with low CTR. Then improve these by updating headlines and meta descriptions to attract more clicks.

Answer the frequently asked questions and rank high with these

Forums and Q&A sites (e.g. Quora, Facebook Groups, ASKfm, Stack Exchange, Stack Overflow) are perfect sources for keywords and content ideas.

Frequently asked questions indicate that there may be no good answers when Googling the question. It might be a good question to write about on your page and thus generate traffic.

Should you find a page on Quora or other Q&A sites that ranks high, then it is most likely for a low KD keyword. A perfect opportunity to snatch up a useful keyword.

Use any of the available SEO services to find the keyword being used. Create a query around the keyword you found and answer the question with content on your website. That’s all it takes to get a high ranking on the keyword in question.

Optimise your site for your researched keyword and see the results

Finding the right keywords is only half the battle with keywords. Once you’ve found that perfect keyword, you need to optimise its use in your content to see the benefits of your research.

Read more about how you should use your keyword in your content.

If you run an e-commerce site, you should also make sure you capture visitors with purchase intent, in other words, you want to customise the use of keywords for your products and services. Read more about how to do this in our article on On Page SEO.

Closing tips

To conclude, here are 5 quick tips that should be more or less obvious when working on SEO and marketing your website.

1. Learn as much as you can about SEO from several different sources. Don’t miss our series of articles on search engine optimisation in our knowledge bank.
   
2. Keep up to date. A lot changes and fast. Google is continuously making changes that you want to be up to date with.
   
3. Be patient! Effective SEO requires hard work and time, nothing happens overnight. It’s worth it in the long run. Studies show that SEO is what provides the best ROI for inbound marketing channels.
   
4. Avoid dodgy practices at all costs. For example, buying inbound links can often be more expensive than investing in established methods of SEO.
   
5. Do not spam!

Good luck with your Keyword Research!

Are you keen to learn more about how to optimise your website for search engines?

Don’t miss our other articles on the subject.

• SEO Analysis – How to create a strategy with reports, analyses and measurable KPIs for SEO.
• On-Page SEO – How to adapt your page for the best possible search engine optimisation.
• Off-Page SEO – How to optimise your site with external links (link building), services and tools.

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